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University presidents fight English-only initiative
AP via KnoxNews ^ | 12/29/8

Posted on 12/29/2008 11:20:39 AM PST by SmithL

NASHVILLE - The presidents of eight Nashville universities call the possible adoption of an English-only ballot initiative "a distressing prospect."

The proposed charter amendment would prevent the city from translating written materials into other languages or using interpreters to communicate with people who don't speak English well.

(Excerpt) Read more at knoxnews.com ...


TOPICS: Government; Politics/Elections; US: Tennessee
KEYWORDS: english; englishonly; highereducation

1 posted on 12/29/2008 11:20:39 AM PST by SmithL
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To: SmithL
...the university heads said passage of the initiative would have a literal and symbolic impact on the schools' mission of teaching, learning, curing and discovering.

Well, duh! :)

2 posted on 12/29/2008 11:23:24 AM PST by MarineBrat (The New York Times is a Communist Kamikaze.)
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To: SmithL
The proposed charter amendment would prevent the city from translating written materials into other languages or using interpreters to communicate with people who don't speak English well.

Thus, saving the Tennessee tax payers HOW many millions per year?

3 posted on 12/29/2008 11:23:50 AM PST by Puppage (You may disagree with what I have to say, but I shall defend to your death my right to say it)
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To: SmithL

If they don’t speak English well, then

** it ... LEARN TO SPEAK IT WELL!


4 posted on 12/29/2008 11:24:38 AM PST by nmh (Intelligent people recognize Intelligent Design (God).)
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To: Puppage

Thus, saving the Tennessee tax payers HOW many millions per year?

YUP!


5 posted on 12/29/2008 11:25:11 AM PST by nmh (Intelligent people recognize Intelligent Design (God).)
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To: SmithL

I consider the federally subsidized, abysmally non-productive, tenure-protected academic world a “distressing prospect”.


6 posted on 12/29/2008 11:25:11 AM PST by EyeGuy
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To: SmithL

Great idea! Then put the millions into Spanish to English classes.


7 posted on 12/29/2008 11:26:32 AM PST by kitkat (THE DAY WE LOSE OUR WILL TO FIGHT WILL BE THE DAY WE LOSE OUR FREEDOM.)
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To: Puppage

At last count, there were 150 different languages spoken by the kids in our school system. We actually have some teachers who speak no Engish. If there are no students who speak the language they were hired to teach, guess what? They’re useless.


8 posted on 12/29/2008 11:26:39 AM PST by massgopguy (I owe everything to George Bailey)
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To: Puppage

The logic here...which I might be able to understand having a translation of Spanish only...but then some folks show up from the University program and demand Italian, French, Chinese, Russian and German. Where exactly do you draw a line? Do we go out and hire a bunch of liberal arts students whose job for the state of Tenn is to translate hundreds of regulations per year and act as translators at various country court-houses?

I don’t buy this argument. There is some point where you just say...you learn English here because we Americans aren’t going to get special favors in Russia, France, or China.


9 posted on 12/29/2008 11:27:13 AM PST by pepsionice
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To: nmh
C'mon!! Almost everybody in the the state hails from SOUTH of the Mason-Dixon line.

Don't nobody speak good English down theah.*

(*) Native Texas spelling.

10 posted on 12/29/2008 11:29:07 AM PST by willgolfforfood
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To: SmithL

A few years ago I requested some forms from the Commonwealth of PA. The forms in question were one page forms, however I received this huge manila folder that contained multiple pages of forms - they were all duplicates of the single page form in different languages.

I bet there were a dozen pages of each form and if I remember right there were 3 forms. Cost them a couple bucks just to mail them!

There were forms in languages I never heard of. To think that I was just ONE person getting these forms (I think they were related to taxes) - multiply by a couple million and the printing costs alone are staggering.


11 posted on 12/29/2008 11:35:52 AM PST by msrngtp2002 (Just my opinion.)
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To: pepsionice
Do we go out and hire a bunch of liberal arts students whose job for the state of Tenn is to translate hundreds of regulations per year and act as translators at various country court-houses?

From a university president's perspective, heck yeah! Not only does the university have to train these loads, they have to hire them back when they graduate, which requires money, money, and mo' money!!

It's all about the benjamins; always has, always will be.

12 posted on 12/29/2008 11:49:27 AM PST by randog (Hope is a bad business plan.)
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To: SmithL

here’s my question: how does nashville have EIGHT universities in the immediate area?


13 posted on 12/29/2008 11:51:10 AM PST by thefactor (yes, as a matter of fact, i DID only read the excerpt)
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To: SmithL

These “learned” men wish to hasten the “Tower of Babel”....


14 posted on 12/29/2008 11:52:42 AM PST by river rat (Semper Fi - You may turn the other cheek, but I prefer to look into my enemy's vacant dead eyes.)
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To: thefactor

Locals are quick to remind folks that Nashville is the “Athens of the South”


15 posted on 12/29/2008 11:58:00 AM PST by SmithL (Drill Dammit!)
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To: thefactor

Nashville is cursed with Il-Liberal Universities. Vandy is the fundementalist Il-Liberal, a pox on that vile administration...the others are varying degrees of ‘a waste of time’.


16 posted on 12/29/2008 12:01:28 PM PST by iopscusa (El Vaquero. (SC Lowcountry Cowboy))
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To: thefactor
You'd be amazed as what passes for a “University” these days.....

I've interviewed hundreds of “University Graduates” who couldn't express a cogent thought even if they had one.

Today's average college graduate doesn't have the functional education or common/practical sense of a child raised on a farm 100 years ago - or that of a High School graduate of just 50 years ago.

It appears today's Colleges/Universities are staffed PREDOMINATELY with leftists and losers (redundant) who couldn't support themselves outside of academia -- dedicated to turning out clones of themselves.

17 posted on 12/29/2008 12:13:53 PM PST by river rat (Semper Fi - You may turn the other cheek, but I prefer to look into my enemy's vacant dead eyes.)
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To: SmithL

Does anyone really care what eight leftist university presidents believe?


18 posted on 12/29/2008 12:14:44 PM PST by MBB1984
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To: SmithL
The eight:

"The letter opposing the proposal was signed by the heads of Aquinas College, Belmont University, Fisk University, Lipscomb University, Meharry Medical College, Tennessee State University, Trevecca University and Vanderbilt University."

19 posted on 12/29/2008 12:17:17 PM PST by Colonel Kangaroo
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To: SmithL

Do we have a state by state map with english amendments?

I know FL has one (yes realy!).

It actually helps with the people who try and scam out of contracts by saying “no speak english”.


20 posted on 12/29/2008 12:17:42 PM PST by longtermmemmory (VOTE! http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov)
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To: MBB1984

Probably not.

But I doubt that they are the only ones. In fact, I would say they are in the majority. Just look at California. I thought this was everywhere already. It will be only a matter of time until actual learning will be only available OUTSIDE of the ivory towers. The second dark age is coming, thanks to the leftist march on academia.


21 posted on 12/29/2008 12:24:47 PM PST by TruthConquers (Delendae sunt publici scholae)
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To: river rat

language unifies a people.

Just look at the ancient Greeks.

Greek language and greek culture unified the entire hellenic world. from the Cretans, Macedonians, and the thousands of Greek Islands they were united by a common thread.

Now we have ecconomic interests of public airwave foreign language broadcasts which are trying to keep the division in order to keep their own skins.


22 posted on 12/29/2008 12:25:12 PM PST by longtermmemmory (VOTE! http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov)
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To: longtermmemmory

Those in favor of “multi-culturalism”, “Bilingual Education”, interpretors in court, amesty for illegal immigrants, eight language versions of a ballot and oppposed to “ENGLISH ONLY” laws or English as the Offical and ONLY Language in education and government are simply enemies of the Republic as founded....

That is “change” I won’t support or tolerate.


23 posted on 12/29/2008 12:32:23 PM PST by river rat (Semper Fi - You may turn the other cheek, but I prefer to look into my enemy's vacant dead eyes.)
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To: SmithL

Why how dare the American people believe that English should be spoken in an English speaking country. They should be more than willing to fork over countless millions for translation services to those too lazy or too stupid to learn the language of the nation in which they are illegally living.


24 posted on 12/29/2008 12:35:45 PM PST by Oldpuppymax (AGENDA OF THE LEFT EXPOSED)
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To: SmithL

Name for me any other country, other than perhaps Canada, that provides multilingual official documents to people in their country illegally.


25 posted on 12/29/2008 12:41:27 PM PST by LiteKeeper (Beware the secularization of America; the Islamization of Eurabia)
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To: EyeGuy

I think it should be that people in AMERICA should have to speak english as a first language. Why should our country CHANGE to the language or aspects of life of a foreigner or whatever. English should be spoken by everybody in this country. You know if you went to another country and try to change it to allow something you like, they would stand up and say NO!!!!...Americans are becoming to soft-hearted to some topics.


26 posted on 12/29/2008 12:59:37 PM PST by peace_comes_with-war08
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To: Colonel Kangaroo

Good Grief...David Libscomb???...even the Campbellites have gone PC??!! ...and Trevecca Nazarene too??!!

It sure would be fun to be a part of a group of a half dozen hardcore activist rightwing students at a place like Vanderbilt. One could give the lib profs and the admin hell.


27 posted on 12/29/2008 1:18:34 PM PST by Monterrosa-24 (...even more American than a French bikini and a Russian AK-47.)
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To: SmithL; wardaddy; NewRomeTacitus
I'm glad to see they signed this. If these illiberal educators indoctrinators supported it, I'd know it was wrong. Now I know it's absolutely 100% right. I'm looking forward to seeing its implementation in our fair city... before it's too late.
28 posted on 12/29/2008 1:55:10 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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To: willgolfforfood
C'mon!! Almost everybody in the the state hails from SOUTH of the Mason-Dixon line.

LOL...middle Tennessee where I live is probably less than half southern born now.

which is why Nashville proper voted 70% for Obama...a higher percentage than did Austin Texas, another liberal town on a river with too many schools and musicians

29 posted on 12/29/2008 9:35:19 PM PST by wardaddy (Monarchists for Palin 2012)
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To: Monterrosa-24; fieldmarshaldj
My daughter goes to Lipscomb undergrad. Ain't cheap.

They are rather rigid on smoking,Bible class, church attendance, mission work, sex, dancing and drinking but oh so PC about race which is really what drives this issue.

Most spanish speakers here are brown and squatty.

My daughter has to take a black experience sensitivity course to get her degree....they have some other crap like that too....they have World Lit instead of pure Western Lit for required course, comparative religions....and so forth.

I tell ya, they are all fubar these days, so rare is a pure classical liberal academic much less a conservative administrator.

It sucks.

30 posted on 12/29/2008 9:40:53 PM PST by wardaddy (Monarchists for Palin 2012)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

Holly was concerned about this as well. A few calls here and a few letters there would assure victory. Apathy will assure the status quo.


31 posted on 12/29/2008 10:09:14 PM PST by NewRomeTacitus
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