A series of links:
• The University of Iowa’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is offering money to departments for students who sign up for Friday classes, in an attempt to curb student drinking on Thursday nights (Iowa State Daily). This is an interesting strategy, especially since U of I has long held high status as a party school.
• Oregon State University’s Student Health Advisory Board is proposing a smoke-free campus (Barometer). This is particularly interesting after learning that Oklahoma State is going smoke-free (Eric Stoller’s blog).
• Some students at the University of Virginia are so homophobic that they are concerned that saying “gay” as in “happy” during their fight song at football games will somehow make them gay, so many are adding the chant “Not Gay” during the song (Inside Higher Ed). This is just ridiculous:
“I’m just expressing my religiously informed political views that it’s wrong to act homosexual,†Alex Cortes, a first-year student and the writer of “Not gay and proud of it,†said in an interview Wednesday.
[…]
in fact, a recent Cavalier Daily column quoted one such law student as saying, “I probably wouldn’t do the cheer myself if it wasn’t for the people out there somewhere telling me I shouldn’t be doing the cheer.â€
So, evidently words can’t have multiple meanings. Oh, and if someone says something is offensive and shouldn’t be said, we should dig in our heals and do it. Reminds me of certain behaviors at football games here…
• A pretty good Chronicle of Higher Ed article on class and higher ed. Thomas Benton writes:
As has been said in many other contexts, academe’s admissions, hiring, and promotion practices seem to favor people who look different but mostly think alike, largely because they belong to similar class strata. Celebrating diversity involves many arbitrary choices about who is “diverse” and who isn’t, who should be shown deference and who should be shouted down, who should be “strongly encouraged to apply” and who should be called “overrepresented.” In the end, I think too much of the celebration is about making privileged people feel like they care about inequality without having to really change anything.
I am now one of those privileged people, and I sometimes feel like a class traitor in academe.
• Via Blogora, an interesting essay that won the college essay contest (Question: “What’s the matter with college?”). The essay is titled “The Posteverything Generation” (New York Times).
