Fix Features

Robby Soave - Assistant Editor

Paul Quinn College Institutes Bacon Ban

by Robby Soave - Assistant Editor on August 9, 2012

Now we can add pork to the list of prohibited substances at certain college campuses. From Inside Higher Ed:

You, too, can be O.K. without pork.

That’s the message of Michael J. Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College in Dallas. Well, part of the message at least – after all, Sorrell didn’t ban pork from his campus dining facilities arbitrarily. No – the decision to stop offering any pork products was based in a much broader institutional philosophy, the president says.

“When you come to college, you come to be educated,” Sorrell said. “We thought we could do more in the area of promoting healthy lifestyle choices and healthy eating habits.”

In a brief statement announcing the decision Tuesday, Sorrell put it like this: “Eating pork can lead to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancer, sodium retention and heart problems, not to mention weight gain and obesity. Therefore, as a part of our continued effort to improve the lives and health of our students, Paul Quinn College and its food service partner Perkins Management have collaborated to create a pork-free cafeteria.”

There seems to be some misunderstanding that banning something is akin to teaching people about it. If Sorrell wants to educate people about healthy eating habits, he should teach a class on healthy eating habits, or write a book about healthy eating habits, or go out on the streets of the campus and urge people to adopt healthy eating habits. Needless to say, he does not and should not have the authority to force people to adopt healthier eating habits.

Bans are particularly inappropriate in the university setting, where people are expected to come into contact with new things, and new ideas. They should sample many different kinds of people, philosophies, places, and yes, even foods. It’s college, not kindergarten. University administrators have to stop trying to run students lives and instead let them learn something.

{ 0 comments }

Columbia U Will Practice Discriminatory Hiring

by Robby Soave - Assistant Editor on August 7, 2012

President Lee Bollinger of Columbia University announced a $30 million fund for hiring minority and female faculty. Over at Minding the Campus, Roger Clegg explains why this is manifestly illegal:

You shouldn’t have to be a math whiz to understand that Title VI does not equal Title VII.  President Bollinger of course knows that, in its 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger (“That’s me!”) decision, the Supreme Court said that universities could discriminate – to a limited degree – on the basis of race and ethnicity in student admissions under, among other federal laws, Title VI.  And so it is commonly assumed that it must also be okay for universities to weigh race and ethnicity (and sex) in the same “diversity”-driven way when they hire faculty.

Wrong. The Grutter decision said nothing about Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which covers employment and which has different language and jurisprudence than Title VI.  The federal courts have never recognized a “diversity” exception to Title VII, and are unlikely to. In fact, when that issue was about to be decided by the Supreme Court in the late 1990s, the civil-rights establishment hastily raised enough money to settle the case.

The gist is that student diversity and faculty diversity are separate matters in the Civil Rights Act, and the courts have treated them as such. Bollinger cannot simply mandate that all new hires be minorities.

Of course, even if he were legally able to do, this would still be an odious plan. Universities should foster cultures of equal treatment and respect, where people are valued for their individuality and ability, not for a racial heritage they didn’t choose. A hiring program that essentially says, “Woman? You’re in. Black? You’re in. White male? Maybe later,” is destructive to the very kind of society that a good university should want to create.

{ 0 comments }

Cyberbullying Not On the Rise, According To Study

by Robby Soave - Assistant Editor on August 6, 2012

A new study throws cold water on the idea that “cyberbullying” is growing in prevalence and overtaking traditional bullying. In reality, most bullying still happens verbally or physically–not over the Internet or via text messages. According to the study:

“To be cyberbullied or to cyberbully other students seems to a large extent to be part of a general pattern of bullying where use of the electronic media is only one possible form, and, in addition, a form with a quite low prevalence,” the study says. “These results also suggest that even if most cyberbullying actually occurs outside school hours, as has been documented in several other surveys, many—very likely, most—episodes of cyberbullying originate in the school setting.” …

Olweus writes that because traditional bullying is far more common than cyberbullying and that the great majority of cyberbullied students are also bullied in more typical ways, “it is natural to recommend schools to direct most of their efforts to counteracting traditional bullying,” ideally using an evidence-based approach. His research has found that levels of electronic bullying decline along with traditional bullying in these schools.

While it is important for schools to always work toward safer environments for children, it’s worth recognizing that there is no cyberbullying epidemic, and that many legislative responses to incidents of cyberbullying are overreactions. Rates of suicide among teenagers are always decreasing, and young people face less violence in school and at home than arguably ever before in human history.

{ 0 comments }

U.S. Olympic Athlete Expelled For Consuming Marijuana

by Robby Soave - Assistant Editor on August 6, 2012

Nicholas Delpopolo, a U.S. Olympic athlete in Judoka, was expelled from the games and stripped of his 7th place finish after testing positive for marijuana. From the Huffington Post:

The 23-year-old judoka from Westfield, N.J., said his positive test was “caused by my inadvertent consumption of food that I did not realize had been baked with marijuana” before he left for the Olympics.

“I apologize to U.S. Olympic Committee, to my teammates, and to my fans, and I am embarrassed by this mistake,” he said in a statement released by the USOC. “I look forward to representing my country in the future, and will rededicate myself to being the best judo athlete that I can be.”

USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said in a statement his group is “absolutely committed to clean competition and stringent anti-doping penalties. Any positive test, for any banned substance, comes with the appropriate consequences and we absolutely support the disqualification.”

If anything, one would expect heavy marijuana usage to impair Olympic performance, so this isn’t really akin to taking steroids. As for health risks, even if one accepts the notion that some international gaming committee should serve as the world health police, marijuana isn’t as addictive or deadly as cigarettes or alcohol, the consumption of which does not result in expulsion from the Olympics. Why then marijuana? Is it simply because marijuana ended up on a list of politically disfavored substances?

In any case, this is certainly an unfortunate and disappointing end for an Olympic athlete.

{ 0 comments }

Obama Will Create Federal Office For Black Students

by Robby Soave - Assistant Editor on July 26, 2012

In a blatant move to shore up two vital components of his base–blacks and students–President Obama announced yesterday that he would create a federal office aimed at promoting education for black students. From MSNBC:

Locked in a tough re-election battle with Mitt Romney, President Barack Obama aimed to energize his core supporters – African American voters – by delivering a rousing speech and unveiling a new executive order at the Urban League’s annual convention in New Orleans Wednesday night.

The president told the largely African American crowd of roughly 3,700 people that the executive order will seek to improve educational achievement for African Americans at all levels “so every child has greater access to a complete and competitive education from the time they’re born to the time, all through the time they get a career” the president said to cheers.

An administration official tells NBC News the order will create a new White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African-Americans that will “work across Federal agencies and with partners and communities nationwide to produce a more effective continuum of education programs for African American students.”

Of course nothing solves long-running socioeconomic problems as immediately and totally as an executive order. With a simple wave of President Obama’s hand, education problems in the black community are gone, just like that–and just in time for re-election.

But surely the members of every race deserve greater bureaucratization of the government response to their education problems…

{ 0 comments }

Notre Dame Grad Students Argue Birth Control Mandate Is Good

by Robby Soave - Assistant Editor on July 24, 2012

What a surprise: Philosophy graduate students who don’t know what “coercion” means. From Inside Higher Ed:

At the University of Notre Dame, which sued the Department of Health and Human Services over the mandate in May, three philosophy graduate students have started a petition opposing the lawsuit.

But rather than arguing for birth control on its secular merits — as a letter from the faculty at John Carroll University to its president did in February, calling contraception “central to the health and well-being of women and children” — the petition takes a theological tack, arguing that the mandate might not conflict with Catholic teachings at all.

It goes on to subtly criticize the university for emphasizing the birth control controversy rather than working to develop more family-friendly policies.

The petition relies on a philosophical precept, the doctrine of double effect, which argues that in some cases, it is permissible to cause harm in the process of achieving something good under certain conditions, and suggests that insurance coverage for contraception might not conflict with Catholic teaching under that doctrine. Its writers go on to argue that an exception to the mandate would be coercive for non-Catholic students and employees (or to Catholic students and employees who choose not to follow the church’s position on birth control).

“By requiring its employees to purchase additional insurance or to pay out of pocket, thereby placing a not insignificant financial burden on them, Notre Dame is effectively utilizing indirect coercion and imposing its religious beliefs and practices on its employees,” the petition’s authors wrote.

But the employees are not forced to work for the university, so it’s hardly coercion. The employer determines the conditions of employment, and the employee has the option of rejecting the terms and leaving the job. Coercion comes into play when an entity must comply with a demand or face direct physical or legal harm. Consider two situations:

1). A man offers to pay you to cut his lawn. He is only willing to pay you, however, if you wear a hat.

2). The government passes a law requiring every lawn cutter to wear a hat.

It’s obvious that the first situation is odd, but not coercive. The second, on the other hand, is highly coercive.

But perhaps I’m wrong; after all, I am not a philosophy graduate student.

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries