ANTI-SEMITISM IS SO RAMPANT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE THAT JEWISH STUDENTS SHOULD AVOID ENROLLING, A NEW REPORT SAYS

An unaffiliated task force made up of Jewish residents of Irvine conducted 80 hours of interviews with students, faculty and residents and determined that anti-Semitic acts are "real and well documented" on campus, according to an article in the local Daily Pilot.

"Jewish students have been harassed. Hate speech has been unrelenting," the report alleges. The report takes faculty to task for "political correctness" that prevents them from speaking out against anti-Israel events and speakers sponsored by the school's very active Muslim Student Union.

The report comes two months after the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights completed its own report, which states the university does not discriminate against Jewish students.

Chacellor Michael Drake declined to participate in the task force's investigation, the Pilot reports. Pilot reporters did not speak to anyone from the Muslim Student Union.

The task force was created by the Hillel Foundation of Orange County in February 2007 to investigate anti-Semitism at the university following a series of clashes between Jewish and Muslim student groups. Hillel dropped the investigation last summer, but the task force continued working on its own.

The task force report supports the Muslim Student Union's right to free speech, but demands that the university take stronger action against "hateful" speech, and speech calling for the destruction of Israel. It also takes Jewish groups, including the federation, the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel to task for not supporting Jewish students more vigorously.

Jeffrey Rips, executive director of Hillel at UC Irvine, told JTA that Jewish life on campus is thriving. He says there are nearly 1,000 Jewish students, a strong Jewish fraternity and sorority life, and between 50 and 120 students each Friday night at Hillel's Shabbat meals.

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National dumbing down has followed government control of education

By Vin Suprynowicz

Men such as Washington, Franklin and Jefferson went to school for only a few years, yet somehow without benefit of instruction by any credentialed graduates of our fine modern teacher colleges managed to outmaneuver and defeat the greatest army and power in the world, build and run a new nation and lay out entire new cities with little more than their rudimentary mastery of geometry, trigonometry, French, Latin, philosophy, world history, and so forth.

Today, on the other hand, it takes 12 years to bring our high school scholars to a level of learning far beyond that achieved by those pathetic yokels of yesteryear, a point from which they're ready to open up bold new frontiers in biochemistry, electrical engineering and so on. In recent days, several of those scholars -- on whose schooling the taxpayers have lavished $8,707 per year (construction included) for at least nine years -- have written in to respond to the wave of incidents in which Clark County schoolkids have lately been shooting each other on the way home from school. The letters arrived via e-mail in groups of 20 or so, in waves lasting about half an hour, during late weekday mornings or early afternoons. Almost certainly, these young folk were urged to write their letters as part of a classroom project. They appear here precisely as received.

"The article I read in the Review Journal is called SECOND TEEN CHARGED IN FATAL SHOOTING, and the article has deeply demented me.

"I personally think that the the young shooters of this crime should get jail time, but I don't think they should get any more than a couple of months to pay for the crime they committed. Im pretty positive that the teens in this crime understand what they did was wrong even if it was attentionally or an accident.

"I personally believe that they only reason the kids actually shot the weapon was to scare their peers, but ended up bieng fatal. My response to this article isnt because I believe that the young teens arent wrong for what they did, but no kid diserves to go through everything that Ezekiel Williams, and Gerald Q. Davison are going through. Their just kids, and I also believe that if the places were switched, and the boy who died was black, and the teens were white that their wouldn't be this much contraversy going on.

"I'm not a racist or anything like that but if that was the case than they probly wouldn't even be in a real jail right about now."

End of first letter.

"This letter is in respnse to the Leter Erine Mathews," begins our second lad, obviously stealing a few valuable minutes away from mastering physics, calculus and quantum theory, the better to work on his "ability to communicate effectively."

"I myself attend Palo Verde and am a freshman.At my attendnce here i have seen very little racism at this school. If the Situation was reversed i do not belive that there would be a much differnt outcome. I belive it was more gang related. From what i hear around the school is that his cousin Zeak is what made him do it. Zeak and the kid wereing througing up gang signs. Then later in the day the shooter was gonna be abducted into the gang that his cousin Ziek is in. So for him to be allowed they said he had to shoot this kid and if he didnt they would kill him. So he did as he was told. That is why i feel it has nothing to do with raceism but more gang related."

A third young technologist presumably takes time away from mastering the manufacture of gallium arsenide chips in chemistry lab to write:

"I am a Palo Verde Freshmen and this shooting is really affecting us all in a lot of different ways. Expically the football team. ..."

One of the young ladies asks,

"Where are the parents? In todays invorment kids don't have that special bond with their parents because all these students worry about is being with their friends going to get high and what pary they should hit up next. ... Parents obviosly are not watching who there child is hanging out with. ..."

Another young lady offers:

"There has been even more shooting since the insadent. I really cannot believe that teenagers have not 'woken up' and realized that this is life. Ending a life over drama, etc. is absolutely rediculas. ..."

Although it's the spelling and punctuation that first leap off the page, it's also worth noting the striking lack of sophistication, development, and rebuttal here in both idea and argument.

Today's notion that 15-year-olds must of necessity be overgrown infants with ethical notions about as sophisticated as the nearest video game is a dangerous myth manufactured by the purposeful extension of infanthood through imposed intellectual entropy and isolation from the real world in the government schooling institution, the better to convince us these incompetent dweebs need three more years of being locked up and carefully herded around -- at $8,000 per year per butt in seat.

The current schooling institution is not preparing a quick-witted generation with the well-rounded education and critical thinking skills necessary to adapt quickly to a fast-changing 21st century -- as the letters above hint, though giving these kids a real test closed-book in history, literature or algebra would probably be even more sobering -- but rather for the kind of automaton-like behavior that was judged necessary for the subservient "worker class" in the 19th century.

Which is one very large reason so many of our science and medical grad students now come from overseas, why such a curiously large number of our successful entrepreneurs these days turn out to be escapees ("drop-outs") from the propaganda camps, why our currency and our economy are now collapsing before our eyes.

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Credit Crisis May Make College Loans More Costly

Many college students across the nation will begin to see higher costs for loans this spring, while others will be turned away by banks altogether as the credit crisis roiling the U.S. economy spreads into yet another sector, student lenders and Wall Street firms say. Students seeking federally guaranteed loans, which are popular because they offer fixed, below-market rates, could be required to pay higher fees to borrow money, according to university finance directors and lenders.

An even greater burden may fall on those taking out private loans, which have become increasingly common as students look for new sources to finance the soaring costs of college. These loans often have variable rates, and they are projected to jump this year. And at community and for-profit colleges, some students may be denied private loans entirely because the financial industry considers them riskier investments than their peers at other educational institutions.

"It's a little bit of a crunch. The money will be there; it's just going to be more expensive," said Yvonne Hubbard, director of student financial services at the University of Virginia. "The federally guaranteed loan program is always going to be available . . . but the good deals are harder to find. On the private side, loans are getting more and more expensive."

Many lenders are scaling back their activities because of turmoil in the credit markets, initially caused by the subprime-mortgage meltdown last year, and cuts in federal subsidies, firms said. Others have moved out of the business. Last week, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, one of the nation's largest student loan organizations, announced that it will temporarily stop making federally guaranteed loans this month. The College Loan Corp., the nation's eighth-largest student lender, also is leaving the federal loan program. At least a dozen firms have stopped issuing private loans, citing problems in the debt markets. Sallie Mae, the largest student loan provider in the country, said it is tightening credit requirements for borrowers and pulling out of offering loans to students attending some for-profit career schools and community colleges.

The growing exodus has some college administrators worried. Georgetown University, for one, has devised an emergency plan to become a direct lender, like hundreds of other colleges and universities, in case more firms close shop. Other colleges are calling lenders to see whether they'll be in business next school year.

Members of Congress last week asked for assurances from the Bush administration that the federal program providing loan money directly to colleges will be able to handle increased demand. They also asked the Department of Education to gear up its "lender of last resort" program, which provides a safety net should many student loan firms fail.

If firms decide to stop lending late in the summer, "there will be a lot of people scrambling to find another lender in the fall," said Guy Gibbs, interim director of financial aid at Northern Virginia Community College, the largest higher education institution in the region, with 40,000 students. The student loan troubles are being felt unevenly. Those attending institutions with high graduation rates and low default rates among their alumni may still be able to get low-cost private loans. Students at lower-ranked schools with higher defaults among graduates are likely to get hit with stiffer fees and rates.

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