But do college-educated borrowers need more breathing room, at taxpayers’ expense?

Breathing room at Vanderbilt: Not to be too cheap (pun intended), but it seems some of our most elite universities—which saddle students with the most massive bills—are leaving plenty of time for extracurriculars, rather than essentials.

Case in point: Vanderbilt (price tag: $89,590 per year), the site of the latest Israel/Palestine activist stunt, in which a group of students occupied Kirkland Hall, “calling for the administration to allow the student body to vote on a [student government] constitutional amendment to prevent…funds from being used on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement’s targets” per The Vanderbilt Hustler. Of course, the newsworthy chunk is not that a small group of students occupied the chancellor’s office for 21-hours; it’s that they made themselves the least sympathetic group of all time by blowing their self-imposed hardships comically out of proportion.

“For 21 hours, we were deprived of medical attention, we were deprived of sleep, we were deprived of food, water, resources, and at 5:30 in the morning, I got a pat on my back, I was told to stand up, I was handcuffed, and I was escorted out of my university….It’s disgusting that this is how they treat student protesters on this campus,” said one activist, his voice breaking. “In jail, I experienced better conditions than at Vanderbilt University.”

In jail, he says, “I had access to water, I had access to a bathroom, I had access to my friends, and the ability to rest. How dare this university deprive us of basic humanity? How dare a top 15, 20, university in this country have more inhumane conditions than that of a jail?” he adds, following up that the protesters demand charges be dropped as well as an apology.

I am glad he got to socialize while in jail, but enduring a three-hour stint with a dozen of your closest pals does not make you Nelson Mandela. Hunger strikes, for example, only persuade others if you bear your cross humbly and solemnly; if you can give your beliefs some heft, proving your commitment to your cause via abstention; if you can endure some legitimate hardship in solidarity with those who are forced to live that way every day.

Otherwise, you simply look like a petulant child in need of a good shower.

Of course, this is one campus saga. But it’s a pattern that’s played out at elite campuses since Hamas’ October 7 massacre: 30 Harvard students endured a whole 12-hour hunger strike last month (in solidarity with a group of 17 Brown students who actually logged a whole eight days, though two caved mid-strike). Other students have engaged in campus shout-downs, and counter-demonstrators at the University of California, Berkeley, broke down doors trying to end an event organized by Jewish students.

These are some of the same students who want amnesty for their loans. But it’s past time for students to get back to work and for colleges to bring prices down. What’s currently happening on elite campuses is not something this taxpayer wants to subsidize.