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.
Sorry, I meant to say CE defined by Jesus birth, not defines Jesus birth.
CE/BCE makes perfect sense. If academic work is going to lay any claim at all to objectivity, it can't explicitly divide history into before and after a particular religious figure.
Actually, the college should exist for the people who are actually paying for it, and that is overwhelmingly NOT the students, but rather a combination of parents and taxpayers. Most of the idiocy in academia has arisen because the faculty and administration ARE letting clueless 17-21 year olds call the shots.
Since a huge percentage of students are getting federally subsidized loans and grants, and many parents who are paying all or part of the cost don't have the guts to take charge of the decision as to where to spend tuition money, colleges market themselves to 17 year old high school students, few of whom have earned any significant portion of the money that THEY will decide where to spend on college education. As a result, we have dorms for "gender-neutral" students, endless student-directed indoctrination sessions at freshman orientation, majors in "Queer Studies", and a faculty whose hiring and tenure is largely guided by undergraduates and who accordingly teach stuff that undergraduates find entertaining.
There's a trend all over the country of shoving some book down students throats when they enter a college or university.
Books are often selected by committees that include (in the case of one book that got required at a college in my area)
people who are radical left all the way.
I always ask, "Common era? based on what?"
And, though it seems like it, it didn't 'accidentally' happen. Leftie places like PBS and certain universities started pushing the CE/BCE crap agenda quietly about a decade ago (that I noticed), just slipping it in to conversation or education as though everyone knew it. Like Hitler's theory on a lie, repeat it often enough...
You're quite correct - it was just before the whole "grunge" era took hold, and it was cool to look "prep", thereby making it difficult to "know your own" til they spoke! But it allowed for anonymity (of political stripe!) in the classroom, that was the upside, and allowed me to get away with it. I don't think I'd have gotten away with it after that whole phase passed, because I couldn't have stood to go ungroomed just to play mind games with the pinkos! It must be very difficult now to have your opinions dismissed at first glance, especially when you know that you can run elaborate and intelligent circles around your tragically deluded and ignorant classmates and professors.
"AD and BC. Screw the professors."
Have some fun with them. Ask them what "A.D." stands for.
I should have thought of this when I was in undergrad. I was always offended by calculus.
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