ABSTRACT
When one reads about students complaining about the psychological distress they have suffered on account of their involvement in political activism, it is tempting to draw the conclusion that they are simply pretending to be upset, or at least exaggerating their plight. Writing of the Brown University students ‘who burst into tears every time they encounter some mild pushback on a relatively trivial issue’, one journalist observed that their ‘anguish seems grossly disproportionate to their situation’. 1 However, it is important not to interpret these exhibitions of emotional anguish as simply a case of people overreacting, or exaggerating their problems to make a statement. As noted in the previous chapter, the idiom of vulnerability through which students interpret and express their experience has been thoroughly internalised through the process of their socialisation and education.
