Guilty of being white with no license to exist

How crazy is academe (choose that college carefully)? Dorothy Kim, an assistant professor of English at Vassar, demanded that all faculty who specialize in Middle Ages use their classrooms to address white supremacy and assure their students "you are not a white supremacist." Diversity! Inclusion! Intersectionality! Of course, this is impossible. Being an English speaking person of European heritage will always brand one--usually as a toxic male, but women get smeared, too. Kim demanded her colleagues in the rather esoteric specialty take a side because not taking a side is choosing a side. Crazy totalitarian battleground classrooms. Faculty drunk with power over their students. People of fair and light skin are being marginalized and bullied--for existing. So is it the behavior and the hate, or the ethnicity that makes bullying and prejudice wrong?

This is a link to a very biased article, written by someone named Xu for the Vassar paper.

 http://miscellanynews.org/2017/09/27/news/vassar-medievalist-harassed-for-advocating-diversity/

A different point of view—I think this is a gay publication. https://www.dangerous.com/49082/why-is-inside-higher-ed-propping-up-this-abusive-lying-fraud/

Morehouse to accept women who think they are men

In the name of inclusiveness, the nation's only all male black college will be accepting women who think they are men. Black women have historically had a much higher rate of college entry and graduation than black men. 71 percent of master’s degrees and 65 percent of all doctorates awarded to black students go to black women. Why do they need to take up slots intended for black men when there are plenty of co-ed schools? Why not just make Morehouse co-ed?

https://ux.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2019/04/13/morehouse-college-transgender/39341305/

He thinks the federal government is a college student’s friend—an e-mail exchange

Really?  Your source?  Did you know the government and its own predatory loans, grants, scholarships, etc. is the main reason the bubble of student loans is bigger than the housing bubble of 2007?  When I entered Manchester College (private) in 1957, a college education was about $1,000 a year with tuition, fees, housing, food and transportation. My sophomore year at the University of Illinois (public) was about the same. 

If you use a calculator for 1957-58 dollars and convert to 2018 dollars, 60 years later, you’ll see what throwing money at colleges does to the costs.  College costs have soared far higher and at a faster rate than medical costs, even though medicine has gone through far greater changes and technological and pharmaceutical improvements. Our lives have been extended by the medical improvements.  A college education has been cheapened; a BA or BS is today not worth a lot except to go on to graduate school and leave with $70,000 in debt.  Colleges have made few changes except to shift most of the faculty to the left of center, add programs in “area studies,” remove Shakespeare and American history, and deny conservatives their right to a bias-free education. The more money government provides to students, the more the universities and colleges raise their tuition and fees. Funny how the “market” works, isn’t it?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index, prices in 2018 are 772.10% higher than prices in 1958. The dollar experienced an average inflation rate of 3.68% per year during this period.  In other words, $1,000 in 1958 is equivalent in purchasing power to $8,721.04 in 2018, a difference of $7,721.04 over 60 years.

Do you know any college/university where a student can attend for $8,721 a year? All costs, not just tuition and fees. Administrative costs have soared as more and more non-faculty are added, especially in the huge departments of equality, diversity, disability that may have 50 or so employees (at OSU) as well as those assigned to the individual departments, courses are watered down or expanded so it now takes 5-6 years to finish rather than 4, young men and women are encouraged to remain adolescents longer and remain in parents’ care until late 20s, very odd courses are required for students, staff and faculty like “hate speech” or “appropriate non-sexist dating behavior” which chew up many hours that could be  useful for studying and which make the old “in loco parentis” of my era look like wild freedom.

No one can reverse this overbearing, interfering federal meddling in higher education except the Department of Education, and since even Republicans don’t like to give up power, I think not much will come of this except more money being thrown at the problem, and a bigger bureaucracy to make sure the tax payers get screwed again.

The predictable New Old Left of the 21st century

Today's New Old Left has merged with the New Left of the 1960s--Jerry Rubin, Jane Fonda, and Bill Ayers, Obama's old neighborhood buddy, who helped launch his presidency. The New Old Left uses the methods of Mao and Stalin, yet instead of organizing coal miners, they want to destroy the coal industry. They've got a long list of forbidden words, whereas the New Left liked to shout out obscene words to shock.

"No wonder the New Old Left shares the worst traits of both inheritances: protestors shout profanities and yell in classrooms and lecture halls, but their shouts are boring and predictable. With all the boilerplate directives of “white privilege”, “intersectionality” and “institutional racism,” Antifa protestors sound like hippies as they shout out New Left obscenities, but they also put on black riot gear and masks, and resemble the old well-organized communist street mobs of the 1930s."

Victor Davis Hanson, “The Rise of the New Old Left.” https://www.hoover.org/research/rise-new-old-left?

What are liberals doing to college students?

Some of us, usually Republicans or Conservatives, think it's a bad idea to have such a high percent of our college faculty  liberal/Democrat/progressive. They are turning out graduates with $70,000 debt much of it from the government, who leave with social science degrees and poor earning potential, who can't afford to get married, or to buy a home, or to have children. Then with envy in their hearts they listen to socialists and vote for Democrats. Is this the Democrats' secret plan to bring down the country?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8427-2005Mar28.html  (2005)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/11/the-dramatic-shift-among-college-professors-thats-hurting-students-education/?utm_term=.60388b5d2ab4  (2016)

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/02/27/research-confirms-professors-lean-left-questions-assumptions-about-what-means (2017) defensive

http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/05/07/nearly-40-percent-top-liberal-arts-colleges-have-no-republican-professors (2018)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/most-u-s-college-students-afraid-to-disagree-with-professors-1540588198 (2018, James Freeman)

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/college-students-love-socialism-dont-have-clue-what-it-means

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/01/10/students-more-liberal-but-its-not-because-their-professors-james-piereson-naomi-riley-column/1012622001/ (opposite viewpoint)

Keeping college students ignorant

This could be the problem. Less than 1/3 of the top universities in the U.S. require a course in American history for a history major. Not. One.

 

• That means, not only do our future leaders from our elite universities not know about the Spanish, French, Dutch and Portuguese explorers and settlers; they don't know that less than 400,000 African slaves came to the former British colonies and that about 18 million went to the islands and South America.

• They don't know about the NW Ordinance of 1787, signed before the Constitution that outlawed slavery in new states and guaranteed religious freedom; they aren't taught about the horrific expense in blood and treasure of the Civil War; they don't know why we have a relationship with Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, former colonies of Spain.

• They don't know the contribution of churches to the big 3 of the 19th century--abolition, temperance and women's rights; they don't know that whites and blacks marched together in the civil rights movement and it was Republicans that led the way for 100 years before LBJ got in the act.
• They don't know the incredible improvements in public health that our parents and grandparents paid for--they've never seen an iron lung or a person's face destroyed by small pox. Their babies don't die of measles.

• They don't know how the federal government has lied to native Americans still to this day and yet offer them cradle to grave assistance to keep them poor; they don't know why the Great Depression in the U.S. extended for a decade due to government programs instituted by FDR; they don't know how or when the military and schools were racially integrated or about the great bi-partisan efforts.
• They don't know that the U.S. government at the highest levels actually was infiltrated by Communist spies and sympathizers and it wasn't just about who could make movies. They probably don't know which came first Viet Nam or Korea or who we were fighting.

Yes, it's a shame that today's millennials learn history with social media lies or from late night comedy shows. They at least should know as much as the new immigrants do when they raise their hands to become citizens.

http://www.goacta.org/images/download/no_u.s._history.pdf

 "Of the 23 programs that do list a requirement for United States history, 11 allow courses so narrow in scope—such as “History of Sexualities” or “History of the FBI”—that it takes a leap of the imagination to see these as an adequate fulfillment of an undergraduate history requirement."

"Some strange topics can take the place of United States history. Of the schools that do not require a single course in U.S. history, majors have free-range to choose from niche courses such as “Soccer and History in Latin America: Making the Beautiful Game” (Williams College), “Modern Addiction: Cigarette Smoking in the 20th Century” (Swarthmore College), “Lawn Boy Meets Valley Girl” (Bowdoin College), and “Witchcraft and Possession” (University of Pennsylvania)."

And students and their parents go into debt for this drivel?

"Our colleges and universities, whether in the name of “inclusion” or globalism or a debased hope that they will attract more students by eliminating requirements, have created a vicious circle of historical illiteracy and the civic illiteracy that accompanies it."

I didn't major in history--I was a foreign language major, but I did have 2 or 3 courses in American history plus one in political science. This survey is just shocking, and certain explains how we've become so divided in the U.S.

Why is college freshman orientation two weeks?

This baffles me.  I’m sure I had freshman orientation when I was dropped off by my sister at Manchester College in the fall of 1957.  Was it a day, half a day, to learn the names of the campus buildings and admire the upper classmen and learn how to get our weekly quota of clean sheets in Oakwood Hall and learn the meal routine in the dining room (where I gained 20 lbs.)?  But that’s just not good enough for our delicate millennials.  They have to be brain washed—even if their families are liberals, it won’t be good enough.  The strings to normalcy must be cut and cauterized.  And for conservatives?  Wow.  Let’s hope their parents warned them.  This is from an excerpt on Facebook written by a dad attending parts of his son’s orientation.  He thought it couldn’t get worse, but it did . . .

They had a ceremony with speakers, singing by the glee club, etc. The kids received an inspirational coin, etc. I looked on the program. "Oh good. An invocation." Being the apparently naive person that I am, I was not prepared for what I heard. A "moment for prayer and meditation" turned into a cross between a confession and admonition about how selfish we are, how we've taken more from the earth than we give, and how we hope to heal the planet. it ended with "in your many names we pray." I opened my eyes, looked at my wife and rolled my eyes.

Afterward I reminded my son that he's in the midst of severe liberals. He smiled and agreed. It will be interesting to follow this over the next several years.

Egg shell plaintiffs and non-victims on college campuses

The whole article, Microaggression Farce by Heather MacDonald is worth reading, however, since most won’t take the time, I just site her final 2 paragraphs, because it touches on some serious issues beyond academe:

“The universities’ encouragement of victimology has wider implications beyond the campus. The same imperative to repress any acknowledgment of black academic underachievement as the cause of black underrepresentation in higher education is more fatefully at work in repressing awareness of disproportionate black criminality as the cause of black overrepresentation in the criminal-justice system. When a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot an unarmed black teen in August 2014, for example, the media suppressed any information about the incident that complicated its favored narrative about police brutality, all the while pumping out strained stories about racism in law enforcement and public life more generally. The result was days of violence, looting, and arson, from a populace that had been told at every opportunity that it is the target of ubiquitous discrimination.

Colleges today are determined to preserve in many of their students the thin skin and solipsism of adolescence, rather than turning them into dispassionate adults. They build ever more monumental bureaucracies to indulge those traits. By now, of course, many of the adults running colleges are indistinguishable from their eggshell plaintiff students. The rest of us bear the costs, in the maintenance of public policies founded on an equally spurious victimology.”

Korean American describes life for a Christian on college campus

Ellice Young Eun Park: "I went to a school in the Bay Area where the dominant belief was atheism, agnosticism, and Buddhist - and Hindu-informed culture. The hatred towards Christianity and Christians was pretty hot, I have no problem saying this to anyone. They're not radical militants, but they're cool, interesting, and academically super intelligent people. Some are very sweet, and funny. Hatred towards Christians comes wrapped in many faces.

My first week there! I was told, "This school knocks the Christian beliefs out of you. Most people here who start out Christian become atheists or agnostics by the time they graduate." I stared that person square in the eye and asked, "oh yeah? That isn't happening to me, not by anyone here." They looked at me and said, "I guess we will see, but my bet is it will get to you too." Sure enough, I sat in a biology class where the teachers main knock off joke was to mock Jesus, mock the existence of a Christian deity, and mock Christians. They didn't knock my faith out, but they fired me up after being in the comforts of the lca bubble. Maybe I should thank them, huh.

Interfaith dialogue is a joke if the main aim is to mock and try to shame someone out of their beliefs, or scare it out of them, or rule it against them. What, so are the Muslims going to fight for America for Americas protection and interests, and be patriotic to the USA after kicking the Christians out of the military--making it a hostile environment for Christian soldiers?

Pray for the Christian friends and family you have. Write a letter, use your voice, stand for your beliefs because nobody else will do it for you. I think we buy into this idea that Christianity is a dominant religion and sit back to see what others do. But the reality is that popular culture loves bashing on Christians, academics celebrate slashing at Christians, millennials are mostly uninterested in Christian belief, and devout Christians are a real minority. Jesus did say that many would call him Lord And did so much for him, but that he would not recognize them. Let's at least stand for those we love! even if we won't stand for ourselves.

Conservatives complain too much about welfare—except where it counts

Welfare comes to many, not just the poor. Princeton University is highly invested in the success of capitalism with an endowment of $17 billion, or about $2 million per student. Even so, it received approximately $54,000 per student in 2011 from the federal government--you and me. Richard Vedder, Bloomberg.com, Mar. 18, 2012.

‎"In 2002, Meg Whitman, now the chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co. and a former CEO of EBay Inc., made a $30 million gift for what is essentially a luxury dorm (Whitman College) at Princeton that probably netted her a tax break of $10 million or so. Less opulent residences at the College of New Jersey lack such rich private funding. One could argue that this is the equivalent of building public housing for the rich. "

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-18/princeton-reaps-tax-breaks-as-state-colleges-beg.html

“It's unlikely that more money has ever been lavished on the education of so few. Even as Ivy Plus budgets have spiraled upward, the schools' enrollments have barely budged. From the 1997-98 academic year through 2006-07, graduate enrollment at the 10 institutions inched up by 10%, to 55,708, while the number of undergraduates actually fell by 1.4%, to 68,492.

Meanwhile [2007], the wealth gap between the Ivies and everyone else has never been wider. The $5.7 billion in investment gains generated by Harvard's endowment for the year that ended June 30 exceeded the total endowment assets of all but six U.S. universities, five of which were Ivy Plus: Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, and Columbia. Ivy dominance extends to fund-raising. A mere 10 schools accounted for half the growth in donations to all U.S. colleges and universities last year. All of the top five on the list were Ivies, led by Stanford, which set a record for higher education in 2006, collecting $911 million in gifts.”

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_50/b4062038784589.htm

Sinclair Community College and Cops stomp on religious freedom at religious freedom rally

In Ohio, home of the Northwest Ordinance, where it states that, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged and established in the Northwest Territory,” a religious gathering at Sinclair Community College in Dayton were told they'd have to put their signs on the ground. This group, "Stand up for Religious Freedom", had all the proper permits, there is no prohibition on signs or posters or banners, but apparently the tax supported school has a right to decide what is freedom of speech AND freedom of religion.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/06/put-your-sign-on-the-ground-and-step-away/

Bryan Kemper, Priests for Life youth outreach director, told WND police officers with the Sinclair Community College Public Safety Department in Dayton, Ohio, informed the organizers of the local Stand Up For Religious Freedom event that no signs of any kind could be held by individual members of the public attending the Sinclair campus rally, which was just getting under way.

All signs were ordered by police to be laid down on the ground.

“As the rally was starting, the campus police informed us that all the signs and banners people were holding must be put on the ground after a complaint from a homosexual advocacy group leader,” Kemper told WND. “The police walked around the crowd telling people to put their signs down, that they could not hold them in their hands.”

According to organizers of the rally, police offered the Sinclair Community College Campus Access Policy as the reason no signs could be held in the hands of citizens, yet the policy can be found online and says nothing about signs.

3577

It's naughty to be not nice

DePauw University (Greencastle, IN) has pulled its approval from the Delta Zeta sorority. It seems that 23 of the sisters were asked to take "alumna status" and leave the house because they failed to meet recruiting goals. DZ National's story. The sisters claimed it was because they weren't pretty enough. The photo in the USAToday shows some not unattractive, 20-something ladies with too much mascara and some extra poundage.

Sororities, cliques or social clubs for women (or men) whether in high school, college, or real life aren't designed to include everyone. Their very existence says, "we are somebody," and you aren't. Why is it worse to exclude a woman because she is not attractive than because she isn't a good athlete or a good student? Will black sororities be required to include whites? Will Jewish sororities have to rush Bahai's? Do engineering fraternities have to include thespians?

All 23 of those women when they went through "rush" knew they got in because someone else didn't. They knew that with the next class, they'd be the ones excluding another young woman whose grades would bring the average down, or she drank too much and embarrassed them, or her table manners were poor, or . . . she was homely. Is prettiness more superficial than bad manners or poor grades? I disliked the Greek system from the get-go, and never participated when I was in college. I lived in an independent dorm and loved it. It was the judging and exclusion stuff I disliked. But this is childish! Talk about "in loco parentis!"

Ladies, it's a big bad world out there. Deal with it. Don't be a victim. Don't join the Greek system and then whine about exclusionary behavior like this is all new to you and you just had no idea what was going on.

3555

Bluffton University Tragedy

Last night I watched CBS News (Couric) which I rarely do (please, someone have a heart and move her back to her comfort zone) because I wanted to see an update on the bus tragedy that killed and injured so many Ohio young people. I wasn't terribly familiar with this school near Toledo, and knew little about it. Then I switched to Fox News and saw a totally different report. Yes, they talked about the tragedy, the family, had interviews, etc., but featured the information that Bluffton was a school affiliated with the Mennonite Church. Fox even had footage of the prayer vigil, held BEFORE the team left. Then I realized that often when I request books of a religious nature (not available at my public library because they don't collect in that area, or Ohio State University) they usually come from either Bluffton or Ashland, a Brethren college and seminary.

Almost all colleges in the U.S. founded in the 18th and 19th century were established by Christians. Some long ago left their roots and rootedness, like Harvard and Yale, and some keep the flavor and tone of the denomination with trustee appointments, faculty statements, contributions from churches, but only enroll about 20% of the faithful among their students. This includes Bluffton, Ashland, Wittenburg and Capital(Lutheran). The Columbus Dispatch reported that after the accident phone trees for the 75 Mennonite churches that make of the 11,000 membership of the Ohio Conference of Mennonite Church USA went into action for a prayer line.

I'm not sure why CBS skipped it (or possibly I was out of the room), or why Fox included it. Sure sounds like one was a bit more fair and balanced than the other.