Posted on 01/06/2007 10:46:32 AM PST by freespirited
Now the teachers are going at each other. Shortly after members of the Duke University Lacrosse team were accused of rape last March, 88 faculty members signed an open letter which appeared in the student newspaper sympathizing with the accuser. Now, after the case against the students appears to be falling apart, 17 members of the economics department faculty have sent a letter to the student newspaper expressing their support for the players, and stating in part, "We regret that the Duke faculty is now seen as prejudiced against certain of its own students.y´
The latest open letter comes after a lacrosse team member filed a lawsuit against the university alleging the school and his political science professor intentionally failed him after rape case was made public. The student, Kyle Dowd. was not charged in the case but had to take time out from class for meetings with his attorney. His teacher, Kim Curtis, a visiting associate professor who specializes in political and feminist theory, was one of the faculty members who signed the Group of 88 letter.
Until now, no faculty member at Duke had come out to support the players. Roy Weintraub, an economics professor at Duke, drafted this week's letter. "It was something that had been bothering me for a while, that the Duke faculty was being characterized as being hostile to its own students, especially statements by faculty members that have been construed that way," Weintraub told TIME. "I wanted to make sure that there was some expression that students are welcomed in our class, including lacrosse players, students in good standing."
The university this week reinstated in good standing two of the players — Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann — after rape charges were dropped. They are still charged with sexual assault and kidnapping. One player — David Evans — has already graduated.
As for Kyle Dowd's lawsuit, it alleges that Curtis purposely failed the student after the rape case was made public. Curtis told her students they would be graded on three class papers and class participation, with each counting 25% of the final grade. Dowd received a C-plus and C-minus on two papers before the case came to light. He received an F in class participation for missing the last month of class, according to an email Curtis sent to Dowd. Dowd says he had to miss five classes because he was meeting with attorneys in the case. Another lacrosse player in the class also received an F. They were the only two students to fail Curtis's class. Duke University has now accepted credits Dowd had earned at another university and allowed him to graduate; the school also changed his F in Curtis's class to a D, citing a "calculation error." Dowd and his family want the university to change the D to a P, for passed.
Dowd's younger brother Craig was expected to enroll at Duke last fall on a lacrosse scholarship, but he turned it down and will enroll at Georgetown University this spring. "We didn't feel like we could send him to Duke with everything that was going on," Tricia Dowd, his mother, told a local newspaper. "We love Duke ... but we didn't know what the professors would do."
TBS exists when one takes a historical reality such as the marginalization of innocent blacks within a once overtly racist crminal justice syndrome or the past subjagation of women or any number of other offenses and attempts to apply that to a contemporary situation wherein the objective facts don't apply; ala OJ Simpson, Rodney King, Anita Hill etc.
TBS. Good call. The marxists refer to TBS as "social justice" in order to remedy "social disaster".
Keep on standing tall and truth, DMZFrank. There's a lot of us standing right there with you.
The final disclosure, reluctantly, but wisely, included, will completely disarm Curtis.
I can just see her indignation rising as she reads the letter, imagining you to be a typical (to her way of thinking), self-interested, privileged white male, and then WHAM!, you shatter the stereotype by divulging your membership in one of her privileged groups, an "oppressed" (in marxist terms) minority.
Perhaps she'll find her way clear to dismissing you. After all, the left has had to deal for some time now with the likes of Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Clarence Thomas and other black heroes of conservative thought, and they've used the most base epithets to attack them.
Nevertheless, your existence complicates things for the Kim Curtises of the world. It shatters their neat little dialectic. And that's a good thing.
It is obvious that real science supports the consensus that your friend reports. Unfortunately, those university "scientists" who are teaching undergraduates in our universities today do not seem concerned by this "inconvenient truth." Also, grant money is often awarded with consideration to political correctness. In my view, these "scientists" are every bit as dishonest as the humanities professors who routinely attempt to brainwash their students.
Thank you beckett. It is profoundly disturbing to confess to the extent that cultural Marxist theory and liberalism generally have corrupted rational thought in the black community. The resultant state is often a rejection of objective truth and linear thought. The greatest disaster to ever befall the black community outside of Jim Crow and forced segregation was the destruction of the two parent black family mostly wrought by the welfare state of liberalism's Great Society. It impacts or directly causes nearly every negative aspect of life in the black community today. But if you attempt to point this out to those who believe in the chimera of government programs as a cure for what ails us, than you are either scorned or dismissed as "unrealistic" or "Uncle Tomish".
We need to utterly reject these Fabian socialists and cultural Marxists and get back to the sort of solid solutions posited by Booker T washington and his modern day spiritual descendants like the great Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Shelby Steel, John McWhorter and the innumerable kindred soul white thinkers that agree with them.
My opinion as well.
And allows the TA’s and liberal professors to “objectively” grade accordingly. In other words conservatives positions get low grades regardless of the writing and liberal positions get A’s and B’s regardless of the quality of the writing. I would rather not rely on such objective measures.
“In other words conservatives positions get low grades regardless of the writing and liberal positions get A’s and B’s regardless of the quality of the writing. I”
90% of papers don’t turn on political ideology and 95% of Professors are professional enough to not grade on ideology. Most I know like to get different opinions and get bored reading the exact same paper sixty times over. And you learn a lot more getting feedback on an essay than you do with a bubble sheet. In twenty years you won’t remember a single thing you learned in most classes. You will retain the skills you learned. T/F tests and bubble sheets won’t teach you writing or logic.
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