Universities return to business as usual, fighting racism, sexism, homophobia
A month has past since the attacks on New York and Washington. Although most in the campus community are, like nearly all Americans, horrified by the attacks and wanting some semblance of justice brought to the perpetrators, a very vocal minority on university campuses is intermittently making new proclamations of U.S. culpability in terrorism. (A forum sponsored by the University Scholars Program at North Carolina State University featuring N.C. State professor of plant pathology Bob Bruck was the latest example of the latter.)
Speakers at UNC-Chapel Hill “teach-ins” compare the U.S. with Nazis, terrorists
In response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, members of the “Progressive Faculty Network” at UNC-Chapel Hill have sponsored a series of “teach-ins” to give an alternative view of the attacks.
Prank at UNC-Chapel Hill leads to calls for homosexual student center
Someone used the Campus Calendar section of The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to place a fake announcement of a gay pride rally later in the week. The prank set into motion a ludicrous, only-at-Chapel-Hill chain of events.
A week after the attacks, speakers at UNC-Chapel Hill
There were plenty of comparisons made to Nazis and other totalitarian regimes at the University of North Carolina’s “teach-in” held in response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, but the focus of the comparisons wasn’t Osama bin Laden or terrorists in general, but the United States of America.
No net ground won or lost in the latest Culture War battles
The latest skirmishes in the Culture War have resulted in a wash, according to experts reading the field journal of the decades-long battle, Lingua Franca.
Assessing women’s need for an on-campus masseusse
UNCW has completed its “needs assessment” for a proposed women’s center there.
The trouble with teacher training
Among the successful attacks on President Bush’s education bill, already mauled by the education establishment and its pack of congressional Dobermans, is a provision to dump more federal money into training “certified” teachers. I suggest that a large part of the explanation for the poor student performance, however, is the fact that our teacher-education programs are often worse than useless.
New technologies enable cheaters, detectors in a matter of keystrokes
Rapid changes in technology are providing students with newer, easier, and quicker ways to cheat. They are also making it easier for teachers to detect cheating. Perhaps the most well-known way of cheating in the Digital Age is through what are called “on-line paper mills,” web sites that provide ready-made term papers on thousands of topics for a per-paper fee.
UNC students protest proposed budget cuts
In early May, more than 2,000 college students marched from N.C. State University to and through the State Legislative Building to protest a proposed reduction in state appropriations to schools in the University of North Carolina system.
UNC Benefactor Sues To End Race/Sex Quotas
One of the University of North Carolina’s greatest benefactors on Monday sued the state and the UNC Board of Governors for using “an unnecessary and illegal quota system” to ensure that minorities and women received spots on the UNC Board of Governors.