I'm not encouraging my kids to apply to places like Yale or my own alma mater (an elite college which has watered down its curriculum in recent years). When I hear about this stuff, I think about the escalation of tuition and the costs of textbooks as crippling factors in the cost of higher education. For example, a quick web search told me that the cost of Yale this year is over $68,000.

The protesting students there would get a lot more sympathy from me if they were complaining about problems that have real and lasting effects on lower-income* and minority students, rather than...Halloween costumes.

*And at $68K per year and rising at so-called elite colleges, these days, "lower income" means <98th percentile, while "can barely afford it" means ~99th to 99.5th percentile. $68K (likely $70K+ next year) for that? No way.