The Style section of today’s Washington Post features an article about old people, aka “senior citizens,” attending college. [Aside: I’ve always been of the opinion that euphemisms, such as the ever popular “senior citizens” for old people, far from reflecting sensitivity, actually re-inforce the underlying stigma attached to the terms they avoid. After all, if there’s nothing wrong with being old, why avoid the word?]
Now it appears that old people may be the newest darlings of diversity. In describing his mother’s experience returning to college late in life (she’s been living in dorms at Iowa State for the pas 15 years), Harry S. Morgan, director of the Center for Geriatric and Family Psychiatry in Glastonbury, Conn., explained that she “was from another nation called old age, and other residents valued her for that.”
And in a similar vein, Joseph McCarthy, senior associate dean at the Kennedy School at Harvard, gushes that “[d]iversity of all kinds, including age, creates a rich learning environment.”
Sure. That’s why the University of Michigan and all its elite cohorts who swear that diversity is the mother’s milk of liberal education go all out to recruit very old and very young students and faculty in all their schools and programs, even to the point of flouting the Age Discrimination Act by giving them preferences.
Don’t they?
I believe the age discrimination act allows discrimination in favor of seniors. It is only discrimination against them that is prohibited.