Word: trivialize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...issues such as racial equality and the right to political protest. But since 1998, students have sued schools in astounding numbers, with as many as 94 disciplinary cases reaching appellate courts in one year. And while lots of these suits claim First Amendment violations, the speech involved can feel trivial: inappropriate clothes, online insults or, as in a current Supreme Court case, BONG HITS 4 JESUS written on a banner...
...those days. The modern age’s excessive narcissism makes you want to be there, to be part of something greater than yourself. But today’s students are paralyzed by the impotent sensation of having nothing to fight for. Everything seems either too big (Iraq), too trivial (cage-free eggs), or too intractable (Darfur). In the days of postmodernism, irony, and moral relativism, it’s difficult to find something to latch on to. In the meantime, those dreaming strikers will stay on in Harvard Yard, bang their drums (or Poland Spring water bottles...
Beantown transplants may question why such a trivial issue would garner front-page coverage in a major newspaper, but true Bostonians would never doubt the relevance of the Herald’s lurid press account. The Tom Brady ball cap controversy only underscores the importance of the Red Sox in local culture—a team beloved by New Englanders for the egalitarian, working class values it embodies...
...truth is that during Red Sox season, all local stories not concerning our national pastime are considered trivial to the consummate New Englander. While the arrest of dirty cop Jose Ortiz is of direct interest to a handful of local drug dealers, the fate of the hometown team each night is obsessed over by the millions that comprise Red Sox nation...
...need for college students to understand the nature of mental illness is imperative and timely, for most illnesses’ symptoms first surface in late adolescence and early adulthood. Be sensitive, be open-minded, be aware and get informed: When others reference mental health in a trivial or stigmatizing way, remind them that mental illness is a serious issue that affects everybody. Hundreds of Harvard students live with mental illness; you or a loved one may suffer from a disease that others may, in their ignorance, attempt to render funny. Ideally, the result of education about mental illness will...