The recent ruling (now on hold) by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional and therefore not fit for public schools is just one of the bewildering changes taking place in our public schools. At this moment, maybe it’s time to take stock of what is — and what isn’t — allowed nowadays.
When a new Women’s Resource Center was established at my university (UNC-Wilmington), I was concerned that it would serve as more of a resource for feminist professors than for female students. I also suspected that the center would try to advance a “pro-choice” agenda with little tolerance for the views of pro-life advocates.
A freshman newly arrived on campus and inundated with the many college-orientation sessions that mark his first experience in a new situation might wonder, why all the fuss?
UNC-Chapel Hill needs a great deal more courses in “Sexuality Studies,” special theme housing for gay students, domestic-partner benefits for gay faculty and a revision of dependent benefits to include unadopted children in a domestic-partner arrangement, and the creation of a new campus office, complete with directors, staff, and an advisory committee, to consolidate academic and support resources for gay students, faculty, and staff.
The stage is set for the Supreme Court to tackle that thorniest of issues, the legality of racial preferences in college admissions. All that remains is for the Court to decide to review the case.
Just from reading the preamble to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, one would not suspect it was the preamble to 30 years’ of controversy, fights over interpretation, compliance tests, and the noxious slew of bureaucratic miasma that followed: “No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid.”
Universities ostensibly provide students with rigorous training to prepare them for their chosen field. There’s more to it than that, however, because if it were only that, the students could skip the addlepated rigmarole that has become an accepted part of what’s blithely called “the college experience” (which amounts to hazing or coddling, depending upon one’s fealty to the campus’s hair-trigger socialist bent) and go directly to a private provider of vocational training.
Shortly after winning the glorified popularity contest to be next year’s student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Jen Daum announced her plans to develop a course to teach students how to lobby the legislature. As reported by The Daily Tar Heel March 8, “Daum said students’ lack of knowledge about lobbying is a major reason why the university’s governing bodies have not been receptive to students’ concern in matters like the recent tuition proposals.”
Racial and ethnic preferences in admissions and scholarships at Virginia state public universities can no longer be justified on the basis of remedying past discrimination, according to a memorandum from the office of Virginia Attorney General.
Administrators and professors at North Carolina State University have come to the support of embattled Prof. Philip Muñoz. Muñoz’s Political Science 205 class on Law and Justice was the site of an alleged racial attack Feb. 19, when a white female student, angered by the heated comments made about America and its treatment of blacks by a black student, Najja Baptist, told Baptist “go back to Africa.”
