Monday, July 04, 2005

ROTC garners student support at Dartmount -- admin. split

While most Dartmouth students disagree with the United States Army's "don't ask don't tell" policy, they still overwhelmingly support the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Dartmouth, according to a recently published Student Assembly poll. The poll, which was primarily conducted by David Zubricki '07 and Welton Chang '05, was designed to gauge support among Dartmouth undergraduates for ROTC.

The issue behind the survey was the possibility of awarding a $128,000 full scholarship through the ROTC program. Currently, the Army allocates money to both the nearby Norwich Academy and Dartmouth, forcing the ROTC participants from the two colleges compete for the $20,000-a-year scholarship. Yet because Dartmouth's ROTC program lacks the full support of College President James Wright, the military has been unwilling to increase scholarships. At other schools including Harvard, Notre Dame, Cornell, Boston and Stanford Universities, ROTC participants currently receive full scholarships.

Chang said that he believes Wright is conflicted over the direction the president wishes to go with ROTC. "It's a big issue for President Wright. He's afraid of the faculty," Chang said. "He supports us in private, but doesn't want to offend them." Wright was unavailable to comment on this particular issue.

Zubricki said he believes the point of contention with some faculty members is the Army's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Students, contrarily, support the ROTC while being split on their views towards the policy, he added.

Noting sentiment against the organization, Zubricki cited faculty members in the Arabic language department who asked ROTC recruiters to leave when they came to solicit students. Following the faculty reaction, Zubricki was interested to see if the students who object to "don't ask, don't tell" still support ROTC at Dartmouth. "I think there are a lot of students out there that don't support 'don't ask don't tell' but still support their classmates in ROTC," Zubricki said.

The significant findings of the survey showed that a majority of the students thought the administration should do more to help students in ROTC, despite the fact that the majority does not support the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Wright recently met with Army Gen. Alan Thrasher, the national commander of ROTC. Despite the joint meeting, any scholarship changes are still entirely at Thrasher's discretion, who Chang said will only provide more funding if the College administration shows greater support for ROTC. "Those kind of guys can do whatever they want basically. I myself am not entirely optimistic about it," Chang said. "I hope [Thrasher] sees that it's worth the time and effort to build it up again."

Although apprehensive about students' responses, Chang was generally pleased with the results of the poll. "The results were very favorable. Despite the liberal campus -- and I'm a very liberal person myself -- its good to see people were able to discern between the war and the army," Chang said. Nearly a quarter of the students polled by the Assembly said that camouflage uniforms made them uncomfortable. Members of the ROTC are sometimes asked if they are patrolling or standing guard, according to Chang. "The camo uniforms make people somewhat uncomfortable. It makes people stand out. They ask why we're wearing the uniform. They want to know if there's some sort of threat."

With Chang's recent graduation, ROTC at Dartmouth is left with only five members. Nevertheless, the program is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. Chang's involvement with the Dartmouth ROTC program was most publicly demonstrated at the town hall meeting sponsored by the Student Assembly in February. At that meeting, Chang directed pointed questions to both Wright and Dean of the College James Larimore. He continued his crusade up until his graduation earlier this month.

Source






MORE ON THE STALINIST UNIVERSITY OF OREGON AND "CULTURAL COMPETENCY"

The controversy surrounding the University's Five Year Diversity Plan shows no signs of dissipating, as professors threaten to leave the University if the current draft is approved, while the American Association of University Professors wrote a letter criticizing the administration for allegedly bypassing the standard set of faculty committees while drafting the plan. The AAUP letter came at approximately the same time that 25 faculty members drafted their own "Open Letter to President Frohnmayer," in which they called the Diversity Plan "Orwellian" and "frightening."

The AAUP letter, dated May 10 and addressed to former University of Oregon Senate President Andrew Marcus, states that the charter for the University places the governance in the hands of the faculty and that the AAUP principles emphasize faculty involvement for proposals relevant to professors. Jean Stockard, a Planning, Public Policy Management professor, said she shared the AAUP's concerns and was upset that faculty had "virtually no involvement" in drafting the plan. "Members of the committee listed at the front of the document were only shown the document after it was printed," said Stockard, referring to the 80 names listed as active participants. Some professors have threatened to leave if the current draft becomes a reality.

"As for faculty thinking of leaving: I am," said N. Chris Phillips, a math professor and co-signer of the open letter.

Mathematics Associate Professor Alexander Kleshchev said he has heard of other professors who might leave but says it is too early to tell. "I did consider leaving, and if anything like this plan will be implemented I will continue to think very hard about this," Kleshchev said. Kleshchev, a Russian immigrant, says the plan conjures up memories of his former homeland. "Look, I am personally not going to be interrogated about my thoughts, and I am not going to go to reeducation camps either," said Kleshchev, alluding to the Five Year Diversity Plan's requirement that faculty participate in a summer diversity seminar. "I've had enough of that in my previous life in the Soviet Union, and I just will not have this again. I tried freedom now; I liked it, and I am not about to give it up," Kleshchev said.

For the most part, criticism of the diversity plan has come from professors in the sciences. Twenty of the 25 co-signers of the open letter are in the sciences; 14 of those are math professors. Phillips said the Five Year Diversity Plan is a "terrible idea" because it "calls for us to judge new faculty hires first and foremost by the color of their skin." More than that, Phillips believes the Diversity Plan would create a bureaucracy the University cannot afford. The Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity already costs approximately $1.5 million per year. "This plan calls for millions per year in extra spending. What will happen to faculty salaries then?" said Phillips.

Of primary concern for the AAUP and some faculty members is the plan's use of the term "cultural competency," which is not defined within the plan's text. John Shuford, the interim associate director for the Center on Diversity and Community (CoDaC) said that cultural competency was not defined for two reasons: It would not be appropriate for the drafters of the blueprint to impose a definition because that might have led to adverse responses by some. Secondly, the working definition would have become the focal point of debate, preventing a deeper discussion of the ideas presented. As such, the diversity work group, led by former Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity Greg Vincent, decided not to include a definition. Shuford said that various definitions of cultural competency could be found because it is a popular concept.

Byron Kunisawa, a lecturer and academic who specializes in analyzing the relationship between people and institutions, helped popularize the term cultural competency. He first used it in his seminal work "Designs of Omission," in which he concluded that "bias and discrimination are endemic to the structure and methodology of every system and institution in America." Although he had no direct role in the drafting of the Five Year Diversity Plan, he said he was thrilled that another institution was taking steps to rectify racial biases. "I'm glad the University is trying to do something measurable," said Kunisawa. Kunisawa said cultural competency is a generic term that describes the importance of utilizing the elements of culture to assess and interact with diverse populations. He said it has been most helpful in the medical field. "Bottom line, it forces one to acknowledge that culture is an important factor to consider whenever a multicultural situation presents itself," Kunisawa said.

Currently, President Frohnmayer said he is taking the AAUP's suggestion and creating an executive council of faculty members to review the Five Year Diversity Plan in order to define key terms, assuage faculty concerns and iron out the wrinkles.

Source




TEACHERS AS TRAINEE TYRANTS

Another excerpt about the far-Left Brooklyn College. For another article on the same, see here (excerpted previously on this blog on 3nd June)

Traditionally, prospective teachers needed to demonstrate knowledge of their subject field and mastery of essential educational skills. In recent years, however, an amorphous third criterion called "dispositions" has emerged. As one conference devoted to the concept explained, using this standard would produce "teachers who possess knowledge and discernment of what is good or virtuous." Advocates leave ideologically one-sided education departments to determine "what is good or virtuous" in the world.

In 2002, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education explicitly linked dispositions theory to ensuring ideological conformity among education students. Rather than asking why teachers' political beliefs are in any way relevant to their ability to perform well in the classroom, NCATE issued new guidelines requiring education departments that listed social justice as a goal to "include some measure of a candidate's commitment to social justice" when evaluating the "dispositions" of their students. As neither traditional morality nor social justice commitment in any way guarantee high-quality teachers, this strategy only deflects attention away from the all-important goal of training educators who have command of content and the ability to instruct.

The program at my own institution, Brooklyn College, exemplifies how application of NCATE's new approach can easily be used to screen out potential public school teachers who hold undesirable political beliefs. Brooklyn's education faculty, which assumes as fact that "an education centered on social justice prepares the highest quality of future teachers," recently launched a pilot initiative to assess all education students on whether they are "knowledgeable about, sensitive to and responsive to issues of diversity and social justice as these influence curriculum and pedagogy, school culture, relationships with colleagues and members of the school community, and candidates' analysis of student work and behavior."

At the undergraduate level, these high-sounding principles have been translated into practice through a required class called "Language and Literacy Development in Secondary Education." According to numerous students, the course's instructor demanded that they recognize "white English" as the "oppressors' language." Without explanation, the class spent its session before Election Day screening Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. When several students complained to the professor about the course's politicized content, they were informed that their previous education had left them "brainwashed" on matters relating to race and social justice.

Troubled by this response, at least five students filed written complaints with the department chair last December. They received no formal reply, but soon discovered that their coming forward had negative consequences. One senior was told to leave Brooklyn and take an equivalent course at a community college. Two other students were accused of violating the college's "academic integrity" policy and refused permission to bring a witness, a tape recorder, or an attorney to a meeting with the dean of undergraduate studies to discuss the allegation. Despite the unseemly nature of retaliating against student whistleblowers, Brooklyn's overall manner of assessing commitment to "social justice" conforms to NCATE's recommendations, previewing what we can expect as other education programs more aggressively scrutinize their students' "dispositions" on the matter.

Must prospective public school teachers accept a professor's argument that "white English" is the "oppressors' language" in order to enter the profession? In our ideologically imbalanced academic climate, the combination of dispositions theory and the new NCATE guidelines risk producing a new generation of educators certified not because they mastered their subject but because they expressed fealty to the professoriate's conception of "social justice."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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