When I was younger some of my girlfriends were university students, and I would visit them and spend time on campus at social events (this was around 1999-2001).
Seemed like a blast to me at the time, there was a fair amount of sexual experimentation and casual sex, there were pranks and parties, there was a streaking event, we drank excessively and tried drugs, the dorms themselves were a paradise for reckless young people free from their parents for the first time (while still working hard to finish assignments, qualify for sports competitions, and pass their classes).
When I got to experience it for myself, as a student, I was already grown up - it was 2011 and things had REALLY changed.
I was embarrassed on behalf of the young men and women around me, who were so coddled and spoiled by the learning environment that it was downright offensive, and... surreal.
The tests and assignments were a joke, most of them were open book and online, and they had become designed so that even international students with little understanding of English could understand them.
They brought in therapy dogs during exams, not for those with serious and officially diagnosed issues with anxiety, not for a child testifying in a trial while facing the man who raped them, but for the general student population.
They put bean-bag chairs in the main lobby, gave people free popcorn, and wheeled in televisions to play Disney movies to calm people down in between exams.
Student sports had completely shut down, no one cared anymore, and the wild parties from a decade ago were gone.
They closed the dance floor in the bar in the student union building when a girl claimed to have been groped.
Pranks? Not in the post-911 environment of heightened security (they shut the whole campus down, and locked the classroom doors, when a homeless man came into the building to use the bathroom).
There were countless organizations and services designed specifically to protect and advocate for students and their 'diversity' or emotional needs. One girl was taking a business class, and when the subject of an employer's legal responsibilities for workplace harassment was brought up, she fled the classroom while crying. She was granted an immediate audience with the dean, who then brought it to the professor, who then had to submit a formal and public apology for 'triggering' her post-traumatic stress disorder (despite having no knowledge of her personal history or mental problems, and without having targeted her or saying anything hurtful or wrong).
There had never been a recorded instance of a violent rape in the schools history, and yet, there were teams of volunteers that would surround and escort women to their cars or public transit after the sun had gone down (this was in a very safe city, where violent crime and sexual assault by strangers was exceptionally rare).
Women made up the overwhelming majority of the student population, not to mention the staff and faculty, and yet every wall and screen was plastered with a constant propaganda campaign about the dangers of sexual harassment by men against women.
I stopped going to campus altogether after my first two semesters, save for tests and labs.