"Conservative” freshmen: the Fox generation

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In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: 40 Years of Changes in the Student Body:

For four decades, the University of California at Los Angeles has administered the Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshmen Survey, recording the values, attitudes and backgrounds of the high school graduates who will become the next batch of American college students. … Today, UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute is releasing a broad overview of trends gleaned from the survey. The report, “The American Freshman: Forty-Year Trends 1966–2006,” highlights some striking changes in the makeup of college freshman classes, many of which confirm widely reported trends — but not without a few surprising findings.

Among the trends reported:

Students are becoming more polarized. Moderates are in decline, and more are labeling themselves as either liberal or conservative. Another interesting finding (which might surprise David Horowitz) concerns campus speakers’ freedom to express themselves: “Over half (55.1 percent) of conservative (and far right) students believe that colleges have the right to ban extreme speakers compared to only 28.5 percent of liberal (and far left) students. Thus, not only may some polarizing issues divide students, but the method by which they engage each other in dialogue concerning these issues may also be a point of disagreement.”

Gilchrist detects an “anarchist mentality” at universities

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William Godwin…, the founder of philosophical anarchism…, argued that government is a corrupting force in society, perpetuating dependence and ignorance….

—The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

LIKE BILL O'REILLY, Jim Gilchrist is fond of straw men. Or maybe he's just incredibly clueless. Dunno.

From today’s San Bernardino Sun: Minuteman co-founder cancels visit to college

Jim Gilchrist believes Pomona College has an "anarchist mentality."

The Minuteman Project co-founder abruptly canceled an appearance at the school for that reason, citing his fear that the event could lead to someone being stabbed or killed.

…The characterization of the school as a violent, anarchist institution by the anti-illegal-immigration group's founder has left students and administrators stunned.

…A weeks-long private battle between Gilchrist, the Pomona Student Union and the college's newspaper… culminated with Gilchrist's appearance March 30 on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," where he first announced publicly his decision to cancel his participation in an immigration debate at the school.

…Gilchrist and host Bill O'Reilly talked for a few minutes about the punishment handed down to students at Columbia University in New York, where an October appearance by Gilchrist was disrupted by students who rushed the stage in protest….

"I've canceled here at Pomona College," Gilchrist said. "... I have canceled that presentation for the same reason that I should have canceled Columbia, because of an anarchist mentality on the universities, and it's a shame."

…"We've been very impressed by the students (who attend on-campus debates and speeches)," said Nick Eubank, a senior at the college and vice president of the Student Union. "They're all very respectful and are interested in challenging the speakers through questions."

Eubank cited a recent debate at the school that featured UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo, a controversial figure best known for writing legal memos while working for the Department of Justice that appeared to justify interrogation techniques that have been characterized as torture.

"We had some people protesting. They weren't students," Eubank said. "The students in the audience yelled at them and told them to go away, so they left."

Patchy drizzle, persistent peevitude

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Been grading most of the day. The ground was wet this morning. Fog and low clouds. The sun hardly shone.


Sunny Girl was peevish. Took her outside, but it was no good.


Sometimes, there’s nothing to do but wait, eh Sunny Girl?


P.S. :


Came across this old bottle, a small one. As I recall, my family and I found it, along with lots of other things, in an old abandoned mine in upper Trabuco Canyon, circa 1964. Inside the cave, our dog, Prince, fell into a deep hole that was filled with water. We shone our flashlight down, and we could see old timber coming up from the black deep.

Prince was a great dog. We brought him down with us from British Columbia in 1959. I remember that he was nuts about oranges. In those days, orange groves were everywhere, and the smell of orange blossoms was often intense. That was wonderful—for Prince and me, too.

When we first arrived in Orange County, we did a lot of driving—in our pink '55 Ford station wagon. Prince would go nuts when he smelled those oranges, so we'd let him out, and he'd run out to those groves, biting orange after orange that he found on the ground, just to get the juice. Annie and I laughed. My dad would just shake his head and say, "Heimat Land."

I remember: in that cave, I was awfully worried about Prince. After much effort, we got him out. We almost had to jump in there with him. I think maybe my dad did exactly that. It didn't seem possible that Prince got out, but he did. My dad, too.

The bottle made me remember that episode, and the oranges too. Decided to take some pics.


Sunny Girl says "hey."

—9:00 p.m., Trabuco Canyon

Dissent's Friday forum!

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GO AHEAD, make our day. (I.e., post something; try to be clever....—or something).

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: Spring and All

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REBEL GIRL HAS LEARNED much this week including that fact that a student soliciting another student for sex does indeed violate the student code of conduct. She's not sure whether or not a student menacing another student with a large frightened domestic rabbit violates the code but it did violate Reb's sense of decorum so she put a stop to it. "Make that rabbit disappear," she instructed the slightly embarrassed student.

What can we chalk these incidents up to? Well, poor decision making, yes. But Spring is in the air here and certainly the bunny incident had all the overtones of that season: a white rabbit, sheepish males, alarmed but charmed females—all involved except the rabbit seemed pleased with themselves.

Even the presence of the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust with their gory photos as big as doors seem to herald Spring somehow.

Spring has come to the valley of Irvine: root, grip, awaken. There's six weeks left to learn something this semester.

~

Today's poem is from William Carlos Williams, a poet I first read in high school because he had that Carlos sitting there between his Williams.

Spring and All

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast—a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines—

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches—

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind—

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken

[1923]

Grisly Tuesday

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1. GRISLY IMAGES. There was some unplanned excitement at Irvine Valley College today. An anti-abortion group—calling itself the “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust”—set up two large displays and handed out literature in front of IVC’s Student Services Center.

One of the displays featured a very large and extremely grisly picture of an alleged aborted fetus. It was horribly mangled, with a single eye situated amongst the torn flesh. For those who exited the Student Services Center, the image was impossible to miss. Other pictures on display were also grisly or otherwise disturbing, though they were smaller.

From a distance, I noticed some commotion over there early in the afternoon, but then I had to go to class. After class, at about 2:00, I wandered over to SSC. Two young people stood by the displays, but, by then, almost no one was around.

I spoke with the pleasant girl who stood by the large grisly photo of the shredded fetus. She handed me some literature—a tabloid-style publication called "Stop the Madness." I asked her about the commotion. She didn’t think it amounted to “commotion,” she said. True, she acknowledged, at least one student felt the need to yell or scream her displeasure with the displays.

"What did she say?"

"You know. —Choice.'"

“Did lots of students look at the displays?”

“Yeah, lots.”

Evidently, our students survived the encounter with the images. Everything seemed utterly normal.

Normaller, even.

2. RAGHU MATHUR, SCHEDULER OF COURSES. I’m told—by several people who oughta know—that Chancellor Mathur is now personally determining the course offerings for ATEP in the Fall.

In the long run, ATEP will likely house some fancy Voc-Ed Whizzbangery—perhaps some video studios, and various high-tech manufacturing facilities or whatnot. In the meantime, though, a small portion of the campus has temporary buildings in which a range of classes will be offered. Essentially, it’s a “satellite campus.”

Some draft of the Fall course offerings had already been produced by various schools and departments. Or at least I think Schools and departments came up with it. The Chancellor wouldn’t write it, would he?

Well, whatever the draft’s origins, Raghu now feels that he can change it.

I kept asking, “Isn’t that kinda, um, micromanagy?

“Well, yeah,” said everybody. “So what else is new?”

The Alberto Gonzales "Car and Country" Odorizer

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