Residential versus Commuter Colleges and Intersectionality

In a comment on Arnold Kling's post on intersectionality today, John Alcorn writes:

A hypothesis: Ideology of intersectionality will flourish more at (residential) colleges than at the workplace, because residential colleges are structurally totalitarian institutions.

Alcorn goes on to explain why.

Alcorn could have substituted "commuter colleges" for "the workplace."

A friend who has been on the faculty at San Jose State University (SJSU) for about 15 years told me recently that he happened to be wandering around UC Davis, which has a large residential component, much larger than that of SJSU. He told me that the difference in the vibes between the two colleges was palpable. He said that there is relatively little political correctness at SJSU and attributed that to the fact that such a large percent of their students commute and many of them work full-time jobs and take night courses.

That's kind of like what I experienced at the Naval Postgraduate School, for different but related reasons. The students were (and are) all full-time workers, had (and have) a median age somewhere between 30 and 33, and were in the various militaries.

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