Critical Mass

Via Power Line:
For those who are concerned about the brainwashing effects of many colleges, documentary filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney has a film for you, called Indoctrinate U.  It's about "academics who use classrooms as political soapboxes, students who must parrot their professors' politics to get good grades, and administrators who censor diversity of thought and opinion," and "[giving] voice to those whose stories of harassment, intimidation, and censorship make our nation's universities, supposed bastions of impartiality and free inquiry, seem mere mainstays of groupthink and indoctrination."

You may have seen Maloney's work before with his piece Protesting the Protesters, in which he attended a New York City anti-war rally to ask the protesters some questions.  Maloney takes the same approach in Indoctrinate U, though from what I can tell in the trailer, professors are far less willing to talk than the run-of-the-mill anti-war protester.

Check out the trailer on the website to see if you are interested.  Sign a petition to get the film shown in your area if you are really interested.  If you're lucky, there may already be a showing somewhere nearby.

[Edit] For a little more about the film, check out Maloney's visit to Fox News recently.   

This morning I engaged in a discussion with my peers and a professor regarding the nature of law, among other things.  The specific context of the debate concerned toilet-papering a person's house, and whether such an action should be undertaken with a youth group if a parent protested the activity.  The discussion soon turned to whether or not it would be a legitimate complaint of a parent to say that a youth leader who headed up such an activity was knowingly encouraging youth to violate the law.  (This was operating on the assumption that TPing was illegal in the town because it is considered vandalism, but that the laws concerning TPing were never enforced.)  My professor argued that it was not; I argued that it was.

The rationale behind my prof's and many of my peers' argument was that context is everything; an unenforced law is no law at all.  For example, my prof noted that in many cities spitting on a sidewalk is illegal based on arcane law, but since the law is never enforced the law ceases to exist.  At the same time, this is not to say that any law which goes unenforced is no longer law; for example, though one of my classmates argued that a vandalism law concerning TPing would only be valid if the recipient of the action pressed charges, my prof countered by noting that a rape which went without charges being pressed would be rape nonetheless, and therefore illegal.  It all depends on context.

The rationale behind my argument is that law is law whether it is enforced or not; there are a few caveats, however.  I would assert that law is law not if it is enforced, but if it is enforceable.  For example, I would assume that if a case were brought before a judge concerning spitting on a sidewalk, the judge would throw the case out, saying that the law is no longer applicable.  If this were true, and the consequences of the law could no longer be enforced, then I would argue the law is no longer law at all.  If, however, laws simply go unenforced under general circumstances but can still be enforced if so desired, then I would argue the law still exists.  For example, if students are not regularly prosecuted for vandalizing by throwing toilet paper on people's houses, but an individual could still press charges if so desired, then the law is still law.

I would further argue that existing law falls into one of two categories: valid law and invalid law.  Valid law includes those laws which are known and enforced; speeding would be a classic example.  This is not to say that every violation of the law is prosecuted, but that under most circumstances an effort is made to enforce the law.  Invalid law includes those laws still on the books which are still enforceable, but which are not enforced.  These are laws which, due to their arcane and/or unenforced nature, should largely be removed from the books.  Until they are, however, they remain as existing law, whether followed or not.

To me, the point of recognizing even an unenforced but enforceable law as law is to maintain a consistent philosophical view of law.  I do not believe that one should argue that simply because a law is no longer culturally applicable that the law should therefore be ignored; rather, I would assert that said laws should be declared null and void and removed from the books.  The obvious argument against my view is that it would take too much time to search out all the "invalid" laws, as I so describe them, and that the search for and removal of said laws would be a waste of our legislators' time - an argument to which there is some merit.  One could argue that judges often do this work through our common law system, declaring some laws are simply no longer enforceable (like my spitting example above).  However, this does not resolve the issue of many laws which are simply not brought before the court, as is often the case with TPing.  There is also the question of whether it is socially acceptable and/or morally right to violate unenforced laws.

So what do you think?  Are laws law only if they are enforced?  Does it depend on the context of the law?  Should one attempt to maintain a consistent philosophy of law, holding that all laws are equal and should be considered law until they are repealed?  I would love to hear your thoughts. 

I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with the Internet as a medium for discussion, particularly when it comes to touchy matters like religion and politics. This is troubling for me because I see the great potential of international communications forums allowing intelligent and diverse discussions of many-faceted issues that touch home with each of us – particularly when the statistics to back up arguments are so easily accessible. Unfortunately, it seems that whenever people enter a conversation about which they feel passionately, emotions overwhelm reason and people resort to ad hominem attacks of a type unknown to most personal debates.

Or perhaps I am wrong on this point as well. Media stories abound of political activists and speakers who are harangued and attacked by those who do not agree with them. The Columbia Minutemen debacle comes to mind, as do a number of other similar incidents from both sides of the political aisle. Civil discourse is no longer encouraged, but has been replaced with the concept of one side trying to shout down the other. Free speech has been killed in its own name, for rather than allowing a balanced and reasonable argument in which all sides are equally presented we resort instead to protests attempting to eliminate the voice of the opposition.

Though the American people often complain of the personal attacks in political advertisements, the blogosphere often seems little less than a mental wrestling match – and by this I do not mean great minds grappling with one another to try to emerge victorious, but more like something from WWE, where the insults and the flash replace any type of substance, or for that matter, real wrestling. Online discussion forums and comments sections of blogs turn into bickering messes of misunderstanding, name-calling, and abuse, in which the original intent of a post is often lost or obscured.

This is not to say that intelligent debate cannot or does not take place, because in certain limited cases it does. On the whole, however, our opinions fall into two categories: my view, or the wrong view. We develop mutual admiration societies for those with whom we agree, and mutual hate societies for those with whom we do not agree. Rather than carefully weighing arguments and considering the possibilities, we denounce and slander any dissenters, whether real or believed. (Often, it seems, the dissension is not so great as we may originally believe, for with further clarification of comments the real meaning of a poorly worded sentence or misinterpreted phrase is revealed.)

I find this shift – or perhaps only this realization of mine – towards ugly crassness so disconcerting that I find little inspiration to take part in the conversation – not because I might find my beliefs challenged, for I have no problem with that, but because I doubt the effectiveness of the conversation in the first place. Those who advocate some modicum of morality are denounced as “preaching” or “on their high horse;” those asking for restraint are considered repressed. Those holding Christian beliefs are sidelined as the ignorant “Religious Right,” while those supporting the country are deemed shortsighted “patriots” or “nationalists” – practically slurs in this “globalized” world. Meanwhile, anyone who argues against the traditional conservative ideas is designated a loony, Commie moonbat, or that worst of all invectives, a capital L Liberal.

I want civil discussion. I want well reasoned, statistic and theory backed arguments. I want logical debates, passionate debates, political and religious debates, personal debates that are not personal attacks. I want conversation rather than accusation. I think I may be left wanting for a while.

PS: Before the comments start flying, I want to note that this post is not really concerned with Mr. Gelernter 's or Mr. Hutchins' posts, but rather helps explain my own lack of posting of late. Disinclination to write and a wedding to plan tend to discourage much creative output.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that an a capella singing group from Yale was attacked after singing the National Anthem at a New Year's Eve party in San Francisco:

The 16 singers showed up late to the party wearing preppy sport jackets and ties, and launched into "The Star-Spangled Banner."

A couple of uninvited guests started mocking them, and allegedly the words "faggot" and "homo" were tossed -- and so were a couple of punches. [. . .]

But witnesses said one of the uninvited guests -- who happens to be the son of a prominent Pacific Heights family -- pulled out his cell phone and said, "I'm 20 deep. My boys are coming."

According to Rapagnani and others, the Yale kids barely made it around the corner when they were intercepted by a van full of young men.

"They were surrounded, then tripped -- and when they were on the ground, they were kicked," Rapagnani said.

According to police reports, the cops arrived about 12:40 a.m. to find 20 people fighting in the street.

There's got to be more to the story than this, but we'll just have to see how Anthemgate plays out to figure it all out.  Why Anthemgate, you ask?  I say, if the Chronicle can use the term Fajitagate, why not?

The Christian Science Monitor had an interesting piece today entitled Roads Scholars about a group of students from Whitman College who spend three months on the road touring the American West to better understand its dynamics and history.  The students receive credit in "politics, environmental studies, biology, and writing & rhetoric" for their efforts. 

"Semester in the West is all about rocking students off balance a bit with their preconceived notions of what the West is," [lead professor Phil Brick] says, during a stopover in dusty Wells, Nev. "So often the cast of characters out here is divided into two groups: heroes and villains, friends and foes."

Although Whitman is a small liberal arts college, Mr. Brick and colleagues were careful to not devise a curriculum that might be mistaken as a boot camp for aspiring environmentalists. Issues were examined through the lens of many different characters - ranchers, miners, native Americans, tourism promoters. "If anything, we went in the opposite direction," Brick says.

In fact, though most of the students "grew up in liberal urban communities," by "venturing into some of the most politically conservative terrain in the country," "They ended up being rocked."  Shockingly enough, when removed from the urban landscape which, though home to millions in America, certainly does not reflect the lives of most ordinary Americans, one's views on reality and pragmatism versus idealism can be dramatically altered.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education's news blog:

Protesters of a University of California at Berkeley plan to cut down 43 oak trees to make way for a student athletics center took to the trees this weekend. According to today’s Daily Californian, three activists, including one Berkeley student, climbed into the trees over the weekend in order to draw attention to the plan as the university’s Board of Regents is about to make a final vote on the project, which also includes renovations to the football stadium. One of the protesters vowed to stay in his tree “until they guarantee that the trees will be preserved or until I am forcibly removed.” University officials said they were primarily concerned that the activists would hurt themselves falling out of the trees.

Seriously, that's what they're most worried about?  Not missed classes or missed work?  Not the insanity of protecting a renewable resource (I'm assuming these oak trees aren't thousands of years old or anything.)  Nope; falling out of trees it is.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education's news blog:

About a dozen students at Purdue University are staging a hunger strike to pressure the Indiana university to stop allowing apparel companies to use what the strikers call “sweatshop” labor to manufacture garments bearing the Purdue logo and colors. According to The Indianapolis Star, one student has not eaten since November 20 and another has not eaten solid food since November 17. Purdue is already a member of the Worker Rights Consortium and the Fair Labor Association, two groups that claim to monitor working conditions at factories where university-licensed apparel is made. The protesters want Purdue to adopt higher standards for its licensees.

Wikipedia has a lengthy entry on the subject of hunger strikes.  When I was in Northern Ireland in the summer of 2005, an Irish political activist spoke to my international relations group about the strike led by Bobby Sands, who died before any changes could be made.  Somehow I doubt American college students have the same level of commitment.

The ability to converse with those with whom you do not agree is an important skill to learn; this is especially true in the realm of education, where one is often presented with new and challenging ideas, forcing one to more clearly define one's own belief system.  Students at Liberty University seem to understand that, for as the Chronicle of Higher Education's news blog notes, many students from Liberty recently attended a speech Richard Dawkins at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia, where they heard Mr. Dawkins read from his book The God Delusion and engaged him in what the Chronicle calls "a lively back-and-forth, with most of the audience cheering on Mr. Dawkins as he respond[ed] to questions about the origin of morality, the beginning of the universe, and so on."  Whatever your opinions about Liberty University or Richard Dawkins, it is encouraging to see such discussion in an educational setting, though I'm sure it was quite heated at times.

Not all students are so open to discussion, however.  The US News and World Report's Paper Trail reported today that "Students at the University of St. Thomas law school are signing a petition to protest the school's choice of a constitutional law professor for next semester," as the proposed professor, Robert Delahunty, helped write a memo concerning the military's treatment of detained terrorist suspects.  The Minnesota Daily News has some of the content of the memo:

The memo stated, "because of the novel nature of this conflict, moreover, we do not believe that al Qaeda would be included in the non-international forms of armed conflict to which some provisions of the Geneva Conventions might apply."

Delahunty and his co-author went on to address specific concerns from the president's administration.

"Only by causing great suffering or serious bodily injury to POWs, killing or torturing them, depriving them of access to a fair trial, or forcing them to serve in the Armed Forces, could the United States actually commit a grave breach," the memo stated.

Students are protesting Delahunty's ideology and alleged ethical misconduct, not his teaching ability or knowledge.  As University first-year law student Jon Taylor said, "It doesn't have anything to do with academics; we hear he's a fine teacher [. . . .] It has more to do with ideology."  In essence, students are protesting a Bush official who rightly acknowledged that terrorists do not fall under the same purview as uniformed members of a national army, yet who still denounced the injury, torture, denial of fair trial, impressment or killing of said terrorists by the United States.  The Daily News reports "Taylor said students and staff were uninformed about the decision, and those active in human rights immediately recognized the name because 'amongst human rights violators, he's a pretty prominent leader,'" yet officials at the school support Delahunty's hiring.  Says the Daily News:

Others at the University support and are even excited about the decision, like law professor Michael Paulsen.

"Robert Delahunty is one of the nation's leading constitutional and international law scholars," Paulsen said. "He's an outstanding teacher."

Some of the controversy comes from a misunderstanding of the facts, Paulsen said. Most likely, many students are not familiar with Delahunty's memo.

Paulsen also said the protests are coming from a few extreme individuals in the Law School.

"That's a gross violation of academic ethics and academic freedom," he said.

Paulsen attributes the uproar to one professor in particular he said has an ideological problem with those who disagree with his legal point of view. Paulsen declined to name the professor.

"It sometimes happens that even professors are not respecters of academic freedom and get their facts wrong, too," he said.

When so many who are responsible for adding to the conversation flee from any opposition, it is easy to see why students would likewise run from discussion with any disagreeing persons.  From the Daily News' story, it seems like Delahunty is not only in the clear concerning his memo but also that he could be a valuable addition to the University's faculty.

A couple of weeks ago I posted on the differences between CNN's and Reuters' reporting on the decision by Orange Coast College's student trustees to drop the recital of the Pledge of Allegiance from their meetings.  At that time I said that based on Reuters' story, it seemed the reason for the ban might be "to spark up a new debate on the propriety of saying the Pledge in schools, and possibly to get it eliminated."  Critical Mass readers Stars N. Stripes, Old Glory, and Art MacArthur have since pointed me to news follow-ups on the story that I had not seen, including Costa Mesa's local paper the Daily Pilot, which reported a week ago that "the [student trustees] board opted to reinstate the pledge as an 'opportunity' for any attendees who wish to recite it and promised to hold a forum or take an opinion poll in the near future to determine students' feelings on the matter," and that Jason Ball, mentioned in my post, had said "the trustees' decision had been based only partially on an objection to the words 'under God,' and more on the relevance of the pledge to other business at the meetings."  Our readers also focused on this comment by one trustee:

Trustee Coyotl Tezcatlipoca, who voted along with Ball against the final decision, said he had a personal contention with the American flag but believed that others should be allowed to salute it during the public comment session.

"That represents genocide to me, and I'm not going to pledge allegiance," he said, in a statement that drew a number of angry retorts from the audience. "But I respect anyone who wants to stand up and do it." [emphasis added]

The Daily Pilot ran stories in the days following the incident noting that student Vice President Christine Zoldos "said Monday [November 13] that she will order the Pledge of Allegiance to be recited at all upcoming meetings," and questioning local religious leaders about their opinions on the ban and the Pledge.  Daily Pilot readers fell on all sides of the issue in their responses, many of which are linked from here.

Apparently there was a lot more to the story than I originally thought.  Thanks to our readers, we can see how the situation plays out.

Diversity in education seems to be the big news story these last couple of days as articles tackle the issue from all sides of the political spectrum.  For example, Cathy Young of the Boston Globe had a column today recognizing what she call the marginalization of conservative ideas, though she has a slightly different spin on America's left-leaning academia than I have heard before:

Numerous studies confirm that most college faculty lean left, especially in the more prestigious institutions. At a time when political discourse in American society in general has shifted noticeably to the right, some people wonder why an academy that tilts left is a problem: The universities, they argue, are islands in a sea of conservatism. But no academic institution can thrive on uniformity; liberalism itself can turn illiberal when isolated from different ideas. What's more, the marginalization of right-of-center ideas in the academy may have a lot to do modern conservatism's transformation into a caricature of itself.

I was unaware we were living in a "sea of conservatism;" granted, I have heard on numerous occasions that American citizens tend to lean more right than left, but one certainly could not tell from our most public figures.  What's more, Ms. Young argues, the preponderance of hostile right-wing activists is a reaction to this liberal educational bias:

When stifled on campuses, right-of-center ideas don't just go away. These days, they are expressed -- in pungent manner -- on talk radio, and in overtly political journalism and publishing. Such outlets have increased in prominence, and universities have lost influence over American politics. When intellectual life is seen as a bastion of the left, conservatism devolves from intellectual giants like the late Milton Friedman to intellectual thugs like Ann Coulter -- with dangerous consequences for the political climate.

Then there's Richard Paddock's story in the LA Times about Ward Connerly, the self-proclaimed "anti-establishment libertarian fighting for racial equality" (whom the Times refers to as a "conservative activist" - Bill Redpath might have a problem with this) whose anti-racial preference measure in Michigan passed in the last election.  Apparently Connerly has declared the "end is at hand for affirmative action as we know it."

Australia's The Age reports that in Britain, student unions at three universities have voted to ban Christian societies on the grounds that "they discriminate against non-believers, particularly gay people."  Religious organizations are protesting the decisions.

And finally, Bill Schackner writes in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Penn State's Dr. Michael Berube "seems too genial to be one of America's 101 most-dangerous academics," as David Horowitz has described him, but Dr. Berube's new book doesn't hold back:

In his book, Dr. Berube doesn't dispute that liberals far outnumber conservatives in academia -- by almost three to one -- or that a few fringe professors on the left damage themselves by espousing extreme views. But he says liberal professors are increasingly under siege from a well-organized and politically connected movement that distorts figures, fabricates classroom injustices against conservative students and encourages the dissemination of their stories to sympathetic politicians and the news media.

He asks why conservative elites who decry "leftist" universities nevertheless send their own children to the Ivy League, Berkeley and Duke.

"Even culturally conservative pundits -- the kind who spend a good deal of ink decrying the state of American campuses -- know better than to ship their offspring off to Bob Jones University," he said.

Because heaven knows there are no universities that fall anywhere in the range between Berkeley and Bob Jones. 

Jonah Goldberg has an article on Townhall.com entitled "Racism by any other name," in which he asserts that "It's time to admit that 'diversity' is code for racism."  Says Mr. Goldberg:

If it makes you feel better, we can call it "nice" racism or "well-intentioned" racism or "racism that's good for you." Except that's the rub: It's racism that may be good for you if "you" are a diversity guru, a rich white liberal, a college administrator or one of sundry other types. But the question of whether diversity is good for "them" is a different question altogether, and much more difficult to answer.

If by "them" you mean minorities such as Jews, Chinese-Americans, Indian-Americans and other people of Asian descent, then the ongoing national obsession with diversity probably isn't good. Indeed, that's why Jian Li, a freshman at Yale, filed a civil rights complaint against Princeton University for rejecting him. Li had nigh-upon perfect test scores and grades, yet Princeton turned him down. He'll probably get nowhere with his complaint - he did get into Yale after all - but it shines a light on an uncomfortable reality.

The rest of the article is a good read, and shines the light of common sense on the various racial arguments in higher education around the country.  Mr. Goldberg's conclusion is one I suspect many in America agree with, even if they are too afraid to say it:

There was a time when condescension, discrimination, arrogant social engineering along racial lines and the like were dubbed racism. And, to paraphrase Shakespeare, racism by any other name still stinks.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not racist by any measure.  I think people of every "race," ie skin color and self/socially imposed subculture, should have access to higher education.  (Race is a flawed notion when applied to people.)  I think scholarships should fund just about any group or cause they want, based on their own motivations; but when the schools themselves start picking and choosing based on skin color rather than on merit, that is racism, benevolent or not. 

This is the argument of William Harman, of Texas Tech's Daily Toreador.  Last week Harman published an article titled "Hypocrisy taints U.S. past, present," in which he asserted the U.S. has carried on state sponsored terrorist activities for some time, and said:

I don't really believe it's fair for the U.S. to condemn terrorists from a moral stand point when it has been, and in all likelihood still is, highly involved in terrorist activities.

The fact is that when someone commits violence that isn't in our interest, they are considered terrorists. However, when their acts are in our interest, they are either not mentioned in the news or are portrayed as freedom fighters. If you look at the American Revolution, who were American rebels but terrorists? Our forefathers openly fought against their government and committed acts of sabotage to British interests like in the Boston Tea Party.

Moreover, Harman argues, "the stereotyped Islamic radicals in the Middle East have their own perspective. It would be a good idea for Americans to try and see it from their side in order to make better decisions when dealing with the 'terrorists' there. [. . .] it takes more than just religion to rally people to a cause."

Harman ends his column by saying:

The U.S. doesn't have any sovereignty over those states [Saudi Arabia and Iran], and we have no right to get involved in the Middle East. What would you do if the United States was occupied or subverted by foreign power? Would you rise up against that power or just sit complacently?

I think Harman may be missing the point of the U.S.'s involvement in the Middle East, which is precisely to keep it from becoming occupied or subverted by a foreign power, whether state or radically religious in nature.

Elizabeth Redden of InsideHigherEd.com today had a story on Swarthmore College, where on "the first day of Coming Out Week [the week of October 30] each fall," students catch sight of "sexually explicit messages chalked on campus sidewalks by gay student groups the night before."  Says Ms. Redden, "It is a tradition, organizers say, meant to facilitate free expression among gay students and encourage all students to question the reigning 'heteronormative' culture."  However, in the past few years questions have arisen about the appropriateness of the chalkings, as they have become increasingly explicit, ranging from combative language to graphic cartoonish depictions of sexual activities.  The pro-gay chalkings have also inspired counter-chalkings in protest, as well as ("More ominously to some") what Redden calls "localized showers" - that is, students washing the chalk off the sidewalks.

One pro-gay student, Tatiana Cozzarelli, said "many gay students were disappointed with the counter-chalking, feeling that they had one week per year to express their voices, 'not to create a dialogue of voices of people who aren’t normally silenced on top of the chalkings of people who are silenced.'"

Students who disagree cite six main reasons why, according to Redden, summed up by one student's posting on Facebook: 

that the postings assume the students reading them hold positions they do not in fact support, that the chalkings reinforce stereotypes that gay people are obsessed with sex, that the discussion surrounding Coming Out Week ignores debate about social action in favor of more intimate details, that “a sex-positive agenda” is taking precedence over discussion of gay history, identity or rights, that thinking about genitalia in public is a matter of poor taste and that it’s “shocking to see little kids” visiting campus “playing on pictures of masturbating women.”

Finally, there's this quote, I guess from Elliot Ratzman, a visiting religion professor who managed an on-campus discussion about the chalkings (the quote wasn't cited well): "Heteronormativity is on the wane here."  Somehow, I kind of doubt that, regardless of what some would like us to believe.

In honor of today's celebration of Veteran's Day, there's this story from the Associated Press: Governor Jeb Bush presented Florida's only living World War I veteran with a medal he earned 90 years ago, but never received.  Ernest Charles Pusey, 111 years old, fought in the war aboard the USS Wyoming from 1917-1919.  Mr. Pusey never received his Victory Medal, "awarded to all persons in the naval service who served on active duty between 6 April 1917 and 11 November 1918."  Never, that is, until now.

If you are proud of our country, or grateful for our freedoms, thank a veteran today.

Student trustees at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California, voted Wednesday to drop the recital of the Pledge of Allegiance from their meetings.  Why, you ask?  Well, that depends on who you read.  According to CNN, "Board member Jason Ball argued that the pledge inspires nationalism, violates the separation between church and state with the phrase "under God," and is irrelevant to the business of student government."  The CNN version also focuses on "one flag-waving pledge supporter [who] berated [the trustees] as anti-American radicals."

However, the Reuters version of the story tells a slightly different tale, saying the student trustees voted as they did because they "see no reason to publicly swear loyalty to God and the U.S. government."  From the article:

The move was lead by three recently elected student trustees, who ran for office wearing revolutionary-style berets and said they do not believe in publicly swearing an oath to the American flag and government at their school. One student trustee voted against the measure, which does not apply to other student groups or campus meetings. [. . .]

"That ('under God') part is sort of offensive to me," student trustee Jason Bell, who proposed the ban, told Reuters. "I am an atheist and a socialist, and if you know your history, you know that 'under God' was inserted during the McCarthy era and was directly designed to destroy my ideology."

Bell said the ban largely came about because the trustees didn't want to publicly vow loyalty to the American government before their meetings. "Loyalty ought to be something the government earns through performance, not through reciting a pledge," he said.

First off, it was apparently too difficult for the reporters to get the student's last name, unless there is both a Jason Ball and a Jason Bell on the board.  Secondly, though both versions of the story are attention grabbing, the information from the latter seems to point to perhaps the real reason for the ban: to spark up a new debate on the propriety of saying the Pledge in schools, and possibly to get it eliminated.  As the CNN story notes, Ball/Bell "cited a 2002 San Francisco federal appeals court ruling -- later dismissed by the Supreme Court on a technicality -- that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools."  This story seems to be more about a second shot at that case than about the students' actual desire to be freed from the bonds of pledged government allegiance.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the Reuters story too had its kooky America-loving student protestor.  According to the story, the ban "has infuriated some of [the trustees'] classmates -- prompting one young woman to loudly recite the pledge in front of the board on Wednesday night in defiance of the rule."

"America is the one thing I'm passionate about and I can't let them take that away from me," 18-year-old political science major Christine Zoldos told Reuters.

"The fact that they have enough power to ban one of the most valued traditions in America is just horrible," Zoldos said, adding she would attend every board meeting to salute the flag.

Gotta hate those college students who still support their country, rather than claiming to be Canadian or some such nonsense.

Dan Lips of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation has a piece over on EdNews.org looking at the facts regarding federal spending on education.  According to Mr. Lips, despite Democratic claims to the opposite federal spending on both lower and upper level education has increased tremendously under the current Republican administration.  "Annual U.S. Department of Education spending on elementary and secondary education has increased from $27.3 billion in 2001 to $38 billion in 2006, up by nearly 40 percent," says Lips, and spending on special education will have increased by 59% percent between 2001 and 2007, yet "student performance has not markedly improved,"  in that time period or from 1970 to now.  Higher level education spending grew even more, as "annual Department of Education spending on federal Pell Grants grew from $8.7 billion in 2001 to $13 billion in 2006, nearly 50 percent growth," and "federal funding for higher education in 2004-2005 totaled $90 billion, a real increase of 103 percent over ten years."  Despite this fact, student improvement is minimal, and "college tuition costs increased by 295 percent between 1982 and 2003, a growth rate higher than health care costs (195 percent), housing (84 percent), and all items (83 percent)."  Says Mr. Lips:

These are important lessons that policymakers and taxpayers should keep in mind during the 110th Congress. Calls for more funding for public schools and subsidies for college tuition may be popular on the campaign trail, but simply increasing federal funding for education is not the answer. If it were, we should have seen better results by now.

College newspapers are all a-twitter following Tuesday's election.  Our own Daniel Gelernter has a piece on the Phi Beta Cons website in reaction to the Yale Daily News' response Wednesday; the same newspaper today lauds the number of Yale alumni who entered office this election, as well as mourns the losses of those who didn't.  The University of San Franciso's Foghorn questions four students about whether they voted and if it is important to do so; perhaps the best quote in response was from Zoey Jones, a senior Politics major, who said "Yes. It’s important. Most of the problems in our political system are rooted in the fact that people don’t participate and just complain. Even if you don’t agree with the structure or system, you should still vote."  Good call.  UCLA's Daily Bruin polled students who voted to compare their demographics against those of the state; not surprisingly, 55% of UCLA students consider themselves Democrats, compared to 42.48% of Californians as a whole, while only 11% consider themselves Republicans, compared to 34.33% of registered Californians.  Despite the 61% of UCLA students who voted for gubernatorial candidate Democrat Phil Angelides, Republican incumbent Arnold Schwarzenegger won "by a landslide."

And for those of you in need of a smile following Republicans' defeat in the election, there's this: one Columbia student blames strange growths on the campus's trees on President Bush, reports the Spectator.  

Theresa Swink, who works in the Columbia greenhouse, accounts for the growths' presence with an all-purpose explanation: "With George Bush as president, it comes as no surprise to me that our trees are cancerous."

Granted, tree experts who have inspected the trees say that the growths are disease free, but I doubt that really matters to Ms. Swink.

In reaction to a group of students who "wore blackface" to a party mimicking this season's cast of "Survivor," who were originally broken into racial tribes, officials at Whitman College in Washington cancelled classes today "so students and faculty could attend a diversity symposium," reports the Associated Press.  From the article:

"This is a day that is dedicated to a campus-wide discussion of issues that are important to our Whitman community," the 1,450-student private school in Walla Walla said in an e-mail to students. [. . .]

An agenda for the symposium includes sessions on the biology of race, a history of race and civil rights, a curriculum discussion and a film discussion.

I'm predicting that at the end of the night, votes will break down as follows:

In the Senate, Republicans will hold on to a tight lead, holding 51 seats to Democrats' 49.

In the House, Democrats will take a slight majority, holding 223 seats to Republicans' 212.

In Gubernatorial races, Democrats will take a majority, holding 27 states to Republicans' 23.  (Granted, only 36 governorships are up for grabs, but this is the final breakdown.)

These predictions are nothing but conjecture, so feel free to leave your guesstimates in the comments section.

They did it.  Have you?

 (Image taken from the Economist)