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thewarden
Minister of the Sacraments of Jabootu
USA
25 Posts |
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Capt. Nemo
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
630 Posts |
 Posted - 12/18/2007 : 09:11:43 AM
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Interesting place, Princeton.
[url="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/12/13/opinion/19708.shtml"]Click Here[/url]
[url="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/03/09/opinion/12306.shtml"]Click Here[/url]
But there is no excuse for something like that. I hurts and not helps your cause.
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"Ward, the Beaver blew up the 7-11 again."
"I'll have a talk with him Dear" |
Edited by - Capt. Nemo on 12/18/2007 09:16:20 AM |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 12/18/2007 : 10:42:19 AM
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That's just university life for you. I remember when I was at grad school we had a bulletin war between the department's "official" Marxist student organization and a trio of more orthodox (I'd say cultish) Marxist masters students. The orthodox trio put up these dense, humorless bulletins full of pretentious jargon and unintentionally funny pomposity. The "official" Marxists were more of your wimpy post-modern type Marxists and usually resorted to humor (like calling the others "Das Kapital thumpers"). The whole thing came to a head when the head of the "official" Marxists caught the orthos using a department copy machine to print out their broadsides and tried to physically prevent them from doing this. This resulted a scuffle that let to a hillarious puffed up bulletin from the orthos declaring class war on the "official" group and providing an in depth Maxist critique of the "official"'s ideology and tactics, calling them "Spontaneous Local Fascists." This is the only one I had saved but I eventually lost it over the years.
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 12/18/2007 : 5:01:27 PM
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Spontaneous Local Fascists. That certainly has a ring to it. If they had been properly Premeditated Local fascists would it have been OK??
"Meeting you makes me want to be a real noodle cook"
--Tampopo |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 12/19/2007 : 04:16:40 AM
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I'd say they were saving that one for the next round.
We had a group of local crackheads in my college too, but their ideology wasn't nowhere near Communism, they were the usual mix of Catalan Nationalists and "okupas" (they're against property of houses). They were known in the campus for spreading leaflets packed with historial (and common sense) inacuracies.
I remember once they were supposed to distribute pro-ETA leaflets, and the person in charge of handing them out to students entering the rear door of the building was so scared he opted for throwing them into the air and running away. Literally.
I mean, it's not that he was risking lynching or anything -we students were rather mild-mannered people- but it looks like the idea of having to argue in favour of what he was distributing was disturbing enough. |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 12/19/2007 : 07:00:51 AM
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quote:
Spontaneous Local Fascists. That certainly has a ring to it
Needless to say that phrase became a running insult/gag among my grad student friends for months afterward.
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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Ken HPoJ
Supreme Potentate
USA
1530 Posts |
Posted - 12/19/2007 : 07:43:07 AM
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The questions are a) when is the press and the various administrations going to become less instantly gullible following initial reports like this, b) when are these students going to find themselves expelled after them, and c) when are the cops going to start prosecuting these hoaxsters for making false police reports?
However, since the stripper in the Duke Fraud case doesn't appear to be in danger of being so prosecuted, and considering the nationally reported damage she committed to a number of innocent men's lives, I guess I'll be waiting a lot longer for those answers.
I also wonder if the school administration will publically aver that, although the incidents were faked, they raised important questions that the school should spend a lot of time and money pursuing in any case. Because we've heard that more than once in the past on faked racial incidents.
That said, again, this guy should be kicked out of school and facing prosecution of some sort.
PEGGY: I don't see how having a girl on the team would ruin it. Did a woman judge ruin the Supreme Court?
HANK: Yes, and that woman's name was Earl Warren.
--King of the Hill |
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 12/19/2007 : 09:18:13 AM
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This doesn't speak 100% to the topic at hand, but it struck me as especially interesting in light of it:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2ExYWVlODQwYWQzZWEwMmFhMzJlYWQ1Yjg1MzUyNDc=
For a lot of reasons both political and non-political, too many people running colleges and universities have given up on being responsibly adult. Every year hundreds of thousands of immature people show up on campus - many alone for the first time - and they need to be encouraged to be respectful and responsible adults, not pampered, flattered or indulged in immature excess. |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 12/19/2007 : 10:02:59 AM
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quote:
Every year hundreds of thousands of immature people show up on campus - many alone for the first time - and they need to be encouraged to be respectful and responsible adults, not pampered, flattered or indulged in immature excess.
Sounds like Washington D.C.
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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thewarden
Minister of the Sacraments of Jabootu
USA
25 Posts |
Posted - 12/19/2007 : 10:19:39 AM
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It is like the challenge with the VA Tech shooter. In retrospect, more should have been done with a case like him. But lay out the criteria. Are you going to expel/lock up every student who is a creepy, anti-social loser?
In many cases, the false reports stuff just takes on a life of its own. Poor judgement from the kids. The problem isn't that administrators are afraid of acting like adults, it is that administrators understand that the kids are going to make stupid mistakes. They are growing up, sometimes slowly, and often awkwardly, and developing a thoughtful zero-tolerance approach that isn't going to sweep up many otherwise decent kids in the process is hard to do.
At the same time, administrators have to respond in some way. It is a very hard problem, and anyone who thinks there is a simple solution needs to spend a few weeks working in a Dean of Student's office. It is an insanely difficult job. |
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Ken HPoJ
Supreme Potentate
USA
1530 Posts |
Posted - 12/19/2007 : 12:38:11 PM
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I'd say if you file a police report on a ginned-up incident, you should be both expelled and prosecuted. These are crimes, after all, and in terms of the campus, you are causing an often huge amount of resources to be wasted for no reason.
I know administrators need to respond to some extent, but they can attempt to hold their powder until the facts come out, given that these fraud cases happen with some regularity. Meanwhile, attempting to justify exposed student fraud after the fact doesn't exactly help the situation.
PEGGY: I don't see how having a girl on the team would ruin it. Did a woman judge ruin the Supreme Court?
HANK: Yes, and that woman's name was Earl Warren.
--King of the Hill |
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thewarden
Minister of the Sacraments of Jabootu
USA
25 Posts |
Posted - 12/19/2007 : 4:29:26 PM
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These are crimes, after all,
So is underage drinking. So is possession of marijuana. So is piracy of software, music, and movies.
If you expel all students who (a) do illegal acts and (b) cost the university resources to police (as is the case in drinking and piracy), you are going to end up with no students.
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 12/19/2007 : 6:10:50 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by thewarden
It is like the challenge with the VA Tech shooter. In retrospect, more should have been done with a case like him. But lay out the criteria. Are you going to expel/lock up every student who is a creepy, anti-social loser?
In many cases, the false reports stuff just takes on a life of its own. Poor judgement from the kids. The problem isn't that administrators are afraid of acting like adults, it is that administrators understand that the kids are going to make stupid mistakes. They are growing up, sometimes slowly, and often awkwardly, and developing a thoughtful zero-tolerance approach that isn't going to sweep up many otherwise decent kids in the process is hard to do.
At the same time, administrators have to respond in some way. It is a very hard problem, and anyone who thinks there is a simple solution needs to spend a few weeks working in a Dean of Student's office. It is an insanely difficult job.
There’s certainly a lot to say about the VA Tech thing, but I think a thought I had at the time is germane to the discussion. There are a whole lot of things that the shooter could have done to get himself in big trouble - if not immediately expelled. If he had gone to some classes once or twice and called the female students hos or cracked a bunch of dirty jokes about homosexuals, I am certain that his time in those classes would have been cut short. I can guarantee you that had he started spouting off about [crude racial or ethnic epithet of your choice]’s, he would have been out on his fanny before the bell rang. AND RIGHTLY SO! Please don’t take me wrong on that score. But apparently when you go into class and your words and demeanor are so creepy and terrifying that fellow students fear for their own safety and stop coming to class and your instructor has to keep security guards informed and aware that you may be coming to her office to harm her, then that’s what? Easily excused poor judgment I guess.
I actually am in complete agreement with you that developing a thoughtful zero-tolerance approach is a very hard problem. In fact unless we’re talking about Ted Bundy or Charles Manson, I’m not in favor of any kind of a zero-tolerance policy. Zero-tolerance is the poison fruit germinated by a whole slew of abysmally bad regulatory and judicial decisions and is a separate topic in its own right. I’ll also admit that hindsight is 20/20, so it would be pompous and presumptuous of me to say that any policy that I could dream up could have prevented this happening. And finally, I’m trying to kick the hyperbole habit (call it Ann Coulter-itis) so let me say that I’m sure that the overwhelming majority of deans are intelligent people trying to make what they feel to be the best decisions possible in a difficult job. But in all my years in and out of college, nothing that I’ve seen or heard has changed my mind about the fact that ideological blinders apparently make it very difficult for them to draw lines in ways that aren’t capricious and/or unserious. There are still far too many institutions that are willing to indulge – even laud – some of the most anti-social, creepy, illegal and/or unhygienic behavior on the part of students. At the same time when some immature, perhaps boorish, student says something dumb that gores one of the heifers in the pantheon of sacred cows, then it’s off to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. (I know, I know! I keeed. Recovery is a long road. But you know what I’m getting at.) |
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Ken HPoJ
Supreme Potentate
USA
1530 Posts |
Posted - 12/20/2007 : 07:49:48 AM
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Warden --
I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer (unless we're talking a pretty lame kitchen), but I see three problems with your comparisons.
1) You will never stop drinking, etc. All you can do is try to keep it be being an overt problem. You *can* stop cases of fraud like this. If you start expelling the students who do them--and these are, per campus, pretty isolated cases, so we're not talking huge numbers here--other students who are tempted to make political points this way are going to give it up. If anything, the students are instead often lionized for "raising the questions." (Assuming the "questions" being raised are the correct, approved ones, that is.)
2) Colleges and the police can turn a blind eye to the isolated, non-problem drinking, etc. Here, the miscreants themselves bring the college and the police directly into the crime. There's no level in which such cases are acts done by individuals in private; by their nature, they are designed to drag the entire community into the situations.
3) Third, and most importantly, these instances strike at the very defination of what a university is and always has been supposed to be; a place where the truth is sought by the fierce competition of ideas. For this to work, strict rules must be in place and enforced.
These frauds cases are attempts to manufacture evidence in support of positions wherein quite a lot of the time, actual evidence can not be readily found. Allowing students (or teachers or whoever) to use lies and fraud in furtherance of their positions (while often attempting at the same time to keep their opponents from even being allowed to speak or get a fair hearing) is antithetical to the very purpose of a college. Thus these instances should be met with genuine outrage and swift, severe punishment.
I'm sure I could have stated all that better, but I think I got my general notions across.
PEGGY: I don't see how having a girl on the team would ruin it. Did a woman judge ruin the Supreme Court?
HANK: Yes, and that woman's name was Earl Warren.
--King of the Hill |
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Gristle McThornbody
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Germany
186 Posts |
Posted - 12/21/2007 : 04:57:39 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by thewarden
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These are crimes, after all,
So is underage drinking. So is possession of marijuana. So is piracy of software, music, and movies.
If you expel all students who (a) do illegal acts and (b) cost the university resources to police (as is the case in drinking and piracy), you are going to end up with no students.
Well, the world needs people to make sure the french fries are hot.
"Hi, I'm Bob Evil!" |
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