College Control of Social Life of its Students

In recent years, many college campuses have taken an in loco parentis approach in dealing with their students. For example, Lehigh University banned parties on campus unless a staff member or other adult was present, Princeton University ended a 25-year tradition known as the ôNude Olympicsö, in which sophomores ran naked at midnight after the first snowfall, and, at Harvard, students live in houses supervised by faculty members, staff and resident tutors. Recently, Dartmouth College announced that it was abolishing all single-sex fraternities. DartmouthÆs trustees and new president indicated that the school ômust begin to change its fraternity-dominated social cultureàand must stamp out alcohol abuse.ö

The crux of the problem presented by this issue is the extent to which a college should interfere with the social and private lives of individual

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d of sufferingö and instead is ôto interfere only when means of success have been employed which is contrary to the general interest to permitùnamely, fraud or treachery, and force.ö Gerald Dworkin takes a different approach to liberty than Mill. In his essay, Paternalism, he rejects MillÆs contention that only children of ônon-ageö require restriction of their liberty. Instead, Dworkin maintains that parental paternalism is nothing more than wagers by parents that, by curbing a childÆs liberty, the child will ultimately recognize the wisdom of such restrictions. In essence, the parents focus on ôfuture oriented consent, on what the child will come to welcome, rather than on what he does welcome.ö Accordingly, adults may, like children, lack the capacity to make and implement rational decisions. Therefore, Dworkin argues that the focus should be on the issue of ôconsentö and the extent to which all people must consent to limited restrictions on their liberty as members of society. People ôconsent to a system of government, run by elected representatives, with an understanding that they may act to safeguard our interests in certain limited ways.ö He considers his concept of paternalistic interference to be a type of ôinsura
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Approximate Word count = 2071
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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