Posted on 08/23/2006 8:37:40 AM PDT by georgiarat
August 23, 2006 Clemson University (S.C.) freshmen must participate in discussion of a controversial book but won't be punished if personal feelings keep them from reading it, Clemson President Barker said in a campus letter.
"If any of our students feel so strongly about the book that they cannot complete it, that is their decision, and we should not respond in a punitive way," Barker said in a letter to faculty and staff Tuesday.
"However, we should expect them to complete the assignment, which includes attending the discussion and submitting an essay to their Electronic Portfolio online explaining their views on the assignment."
The summer reading assignment selected by faculty--"Truth and Beauty: A Friendship" by Ann Patchett--generated controversy because of some sexual content.
Columbia lawyer Ken Wingate, who is on the state Commission of Higher Education, wrote a letter to Barker objecting to the book.
"Over the top graphic sexual discussions" in the book are "inappropriate for shoving down (students') throats," Wingate told The Greenville News last week. He was traveling and unavailable to respond to Barker's letter Wednesday.
Jan Murdoch, dean of undergraduate studies and chair of the reading selection committee, said faculty members thought the book would stimulate insightful discussion.
Im a late bloomer-Im 39 in my third year. This was the first time I had encountered it. Probably because the only other history courses I have taken were US History..
Rat own.
If I were still a student I would do exactly the same thing.
Modification and use of a particular religions system by folks not of that religion should be considered a victory by those professing that religion.
A system with a baseline using something permanently important, relative to Mankind, would make more sense.
A good such baseline would be the Toba Super Volcano near extinction event 75,000 BP.
After going through the leftist re-education camps we call colleges in the 90s, I can say that there are few, if any "insightful discussions". You either go with what your professor states, or you fail and are shouted down (without any consideration for your position). College is a good indicator for conservatives what political life is like under the left.
Freedom of speech and dissent is cherished by socialists so long and they are the only ones allowed to speak or dissent.
This book has 102 reviews on Amazon. Should be easy enough to engage in discussion without actually cracking the pages of the book, which sounded very creepy to me.
An Inconvenient Truth is part of my daughter's required reading for her freshman year in college. I'm going to have some fun with that one by rebutting those "truths" which are in fact not supported by the evidence.
I graduated in 1987, and it was pretty much the same (less the shouting - that was never resorted to) back then. However, I found it vastly entertaining to "play to the crowd", so to speak, and make the most asinine and ridiculous statements/assumptions/conclusions I could think of supporting "their" agenda. They ate it up, never catching on to the sarcasm/irony, it was very funny! And I graduated summa cum laude - guess I was pretty good at it.
The Kyrene School District (Tempe/Phoenix) voted last week to include the "three types of sex" in their sex-ed class for middle school students. Sheesh! As I recall, we had to sign a form to exclude our kids from AIDS education in the third grade. And the public schools wonder why so many people are switching to charter schools and home schooling!
Everyone expects lesbian love stories in college now, don't they? /sarcasm
Who is this...C...you're talking about?
Happy 5766. Remember to reserve your seats for 5767 in a few weeks.
Clemson also had a "Name the Mascot Contest."
The winning name was Spot.
We read Lord of the Flies and that I believe had sex and cursing.
>>>What defines the start of the "Common Era"? Uhhhhhhh......Christ's birth?
The common era defines Jesus' birth. Whether or not he is the Christ/Messiah/Annointed One is not accepted by all, so CE makes more sense than BC. For Jews, we are still BC because Christ has not yet come.
Scholarly pursuit is an international endeavor and not all of those involved in it are Christian. For example, should the Jewish archaeologist working with Israeli andtiquities have to use a dating system that forces him to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ?
Education is too important.
How can you mean anything other than "Jesus' birth defines the common era"? You can call it BC - Before Christ, or BCE - Before the Common Era, or CC - Current Calendar, or FFT - Fred Flintstone Time, but if you still call this year "2006", then you are still referencing Jesus' birth. To call it anything else is petty symantics. Your Jewish archaeoligist can use any dating system he wants, but if he calls this year 2006, he is referencing Jesus, whose only contribution to mankind is that he is the Christ of Christianity.....
I can understand that Jews might be uncomfortable using B.C. and A. D., and I kind of give them a pass on that. But the statement "The common era defines Jesus' birth" is completely bass ackwards. The elephant in the room, like it or not, is that dates are reckoned by the estimation of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Using BCE and CE are like the Soviets airbrushing out the images of purged party members in old photos.
"Over the top graphic sexual discussions" in the book are "inappropriate for shoving down (students') throats," Wingate told.
Thank goodness this good man said something.
Evil exists when good men do nothing.
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