Q: What did Hinton James and Bob Kennel have in common?
A: When Hinton dismounted his faithful steed Choo Choo in February 1789 at The New Well in Chapel Hill…. 
and several years later when young Robert Kennel from New Bern stepped from the stagecoach into The Brickyard at NC State, both did so with a bit of trepidation for what lay before them in “going off to college”.
170 years later I stood on a balcony at Ehringhaus Dorm @ UNC watching my folks drive away leaving me to my wits and gumption to “make good decisions” or at least avoid ones that time and/or penicillin could not cure.
When BobLee and Blondie left Kid at Defoe Dorm @ Mizzou just eight years ago…. it was the same as it had been for 100,000s of self-absorbed 18 y/os since Socrates gathered his students under the Hemlock tree for “higher education”. … Uh oh… what have I gotten myself into now?
“Going off to college” had always been “a rite of passage” – a gauntlet to run – from Mamma’s apron strings to learning to “look an often unfair world in the eye and not blink”. Maybe “squint” at times…. but not blink.
You go to classes and learn all manner of stuff in case you ever get on Jeopardy; but you also learn that (1) roommates with bad personal hygiene are to be avoided…. (2) no hangover remedy really works very well…. (3) kids from places other than your hometown are pretty much like the kids from your hometown. Some you will get along with and vice versa…. and some you won’t and vice versa.
That four or so years experience would leave a few scars psychologically, emotionally and even physically (if you played with knives, fireworks or Dean Wormer’s daughter Crazy Shirley). But most of us survived it to exaggerate those “road trips” and PJ parties in endless retellings well into our middle years and beyond.
Apparently ‘Dem Days is over in America’s Institutions of Pampered Indoctrination.
Now we have “Snowflakes” -18-19-20 y/os with the delicate sensitivity of those precipitous crystals no two of which are supposedly alike.
Actually our current College “Snowflakes” seem to ALL be alike. Every day now we read hair-raising accounts of these dear delicate little “snowflakes” being subject to “bad words” or simply “words and opinions they don’t agree with”…. and being quite traumatized by the experience.
They run screaming to a Dean or to a Provost or to an understanding little Chancellor who hands them a lapel ribbon and a votive candle and assure them they “feel their emotional pain”…. and invites them to a LGBTQ recruiting session. Castrate them if necessary or at least warn them Not To “Pray”…. or ever vote for a Republican.
In June 1944, 10,000s of 18-19-20 y/o kids many of whom survived to be the grandfathers of today’s “snowflakes” stumbled out of landing crafts onto Omaha Beach. What those “kids” faced was just a tad more dangerous than “hurtful words”.
Meanwhile 18-19-20 girls, many of whom are grandmothers of today’s delicate little “snowflakes” went to work in munitions factories taking the place of their “menfolk” as Rosie The Riveter doing their part when they would have much preferred going on picnics and sparking in the backseats of “hot rods” with those young GIs and Leathernecks running INTO the fire in Europe and The Pacific, and not running away from the fire.
Sure that is an extreme example of the difference today from “back then”. But the situation on today’s college campuses is also a far cry from what it was “even in the 60s– 70s -80s -90s” and even the early years of The New Millennium.
Adult humans in their 30s, just a decade removed from campuses, would be shocked at the spineless little snowflakes tweeting their fears as they scurry about looking for “safe zones” from the “trigger words”….. those AWFUL AWFUL “Trigger Words”.
Many of you refuse to believe that. You are stuck in a time warp from your goofy halcyon days “off at college”. Maybe “your kids” are different. These pathetic little “snowflakes” – it’s a uni-sex term BTW – are the products of others’ loins. For your sake I hope so.
But as an entire gutless generation curls into a fetal position and sucks its post-adolescent thumb…. I, AgentPierce, have found “a pony” buried in this ridiculous pile of horse**** – a use for all those obsolete telephone booths piling up in warehouses.
Recall “the warehouse” at the end of Indiana Jones where they stored The Arc? There are those all over America filled with “telephone booths”. What to do with all those “telephone booths”? 
Cell phones wiped out the phone booth manufacturers over the past 10-15 years. Their back-ups hope was that more Clark Kents would need places to change clothes. Alas, that didn’t happen. But….. fear not ….. or maybe “Fear” is the Solution.
Telephone booths will make perfect “Safe Zones” for snowflakes to retreat to whenever they think a “trigger word” or an “epithet” might be headed their way. Put them all over every college campus in America.
Walk-in, pull the bi-fold door shut and wait until the “harsh word” has gone away. The 2015 version of The Archangel of Death that Jehovah sent to force Egypt’s Pharaoh to “let my people go”.
Then come out and head over to whatever candlelight vigil the little snowflake was headed to – Praying For The Syrian Terrorists…. or Bisexuals For Mizzou…. or My Parents Are Spending Real $$$ For Me To Do This Crap.
Telephone booths are uni-gender, as I recall, so any snowflake can go in any Safe Zone booth. I’m sure one can tweet and text from inside them, even take a selfie without one of those sticks.
What more does a little “Snowflake” need in their shallow little well-padded closeted lives …. off at college?
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