A prime example of the mushy, arrogant ignorance of too many students at elite colleges has surfaced in the pages of the Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper at Columbia University in New York City – and yes, that would be the same university which plans on hosting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a speech tomorrow.

Idris Leppla, a senior at Barnard, Columbia’s affiliated college for women, wrote of her “anger and fear” in realizing that the United States Naval Academy, to which her mother recently had chauffeured her brother to enroll, “was not a school; this was the military.”

This even though “my family had countless talks about what it might mean to be at an academy” and “knew that someday he would be required to serve.”

The mother returned from Annapolis, wrote the daughter, “scared by the extent to which her son had suddenly become the property of the U.S. Navy.” Mom forced daughter to try to retrieve the son – by telephone. Daughter failed, despite reminding the officer whom she reached that her brother had “signed the oath after he had been yelled at all day and his hair just been shaven off during his first day there.”

The daughter expressed surprise that leadership seminars in the course catalog were “seminars about weaponry and leading troops into combat.”

Was Ms. Leppla brought up in a cave?

It’s hard to figure out what is the most appalling: that she’s upset about her brother being “yelled at” (new guys probably were yelled at in Caesar’s legions), or that she didn’t understand academy graduates become warriors and may have to kill people in the lawful service of their country.

The brother “ended up liking” the academy and will stay, his sister reports.

Ms. Leppla concluded, “For anyone else out there considering a career in the academy, let it be known: The U.S. Naval Academy is not an elite college; it is first and foremost a branch of the U.S. military.” This warning is unnecessary outside the Ivy League, but in it . . . well, it may be useful.