University of Florida Makes Students Assess ‘Emotional Risk’ When Planning Events

Student organizations at the University of Florida are required to complete a permit application before holding any events on campus. Part of the process includes assessing “potential risk associated” with a proposed event, including “emotional risk.” The infantilization of students, grown adults, by institutions of so-called “higher learning” is a phenomenon doing significant harm to students. Rather than preparing them for the real world, this leftist babying of college students does a disservice to the next generation. The students are prompted to “select all possibilities of Emotional Risk that may apply” with the following options:

• Sensitive Subject Matter
• Reaction of Participants
• Potential Controversy

Requiring students to apply these highly subjective qualifiers is absurd. A student’s answer to this question is used by UF’s office of Student Activities and Involvement (SAI) to determine staffing needs for events. Each risk factor, including emotional risk, “are given a point value and tallied to identify if the event will need an SAI staff presence,” according to UF’s website. The University of Florida claims in its mission to be a “comprehensive learning institution” that enables its students “to lead and influence the next generation and beyond,” but its internal bureaucracy coddles students in a sad attempt to protect them from the reality of the outside world. The real world doesn’t assign staff to oversee and protect students from events that may carry an “emotional risk.”