Grim College Coronavirus Rules

College ain’t what it used to be. Supposedly because of a virus that for most college students is less of a threat to their lives than riding in a car, students at college campuses this fall will be subjected to dystopian controls from required mask wearing and “social distancing” to surveillance via contact tracing and health monitoring.

Many prospective and set to return students will see this as an undesirable situation. College enrollment in America has been dropping over the last ten or so years. Make college dreary enough and there can be a big additional drop as this year’s fall semester begins.

For an example of the kind of restrictions and surveillance being imposed on students at many university campuses, consider these requirements in the Duke Compact that Duke University is imposing and even wants all students to sign:

To comply with requirements from Duke University, and state and local authorities, I will:

- Wear a mask or face covering in all public spaces.

- Maintain appropriate physical distance.

- Wash my hands often.

- Monitor and report my symptoms through the SymMon app, or approved alternatives, before coming to campus.

- Avoid large gatherings.

- Stay home when I feel ill.

- Know and follow safety plans and additional guidance that are specific to my group, workplace or activity.

- Keep confidential all health information I know or learn about others.

To protect myself and the people around me, I will:

- Participate in required COVID-19 testing, contact tracing and health monitoring.

- If instructed, self-isolate for the required duration.

- Get the flu shot and other required vaccinations by designated deadlines.
Adhere to all travel conditions and restrictions.

- Consent to the use of institutional data to identify others who have been in proximity or close contact.

- Accept the benefits and consequences for the conditions of this compact.

- Speak up to share suggestions or concerns by calling 800.826.8109 or completing an online form.

Yikes.

Making it clear that these requirements are not just advisory or aspirational statements, the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section following the Duke Compact includes these entries:
What are the consequences for violating terms of the Duke Compact?

While some minor violations will result in reminders and educational engagement, other flagrant and repeated violations may result in restricting your access to Duke facilities, employment actions or removal from campus. Consult your student, faculty or staff handbooks for further information.
….

Can I still be enrolled as a student, even if I don’t sign the Duke Compact?

We expect all members of the Duke community to be united in protecting ourselves, each other and the community that depends upon us. A signature is required to have access to the campus, and, based on the expectations and requirements of your academic field, refusal to sign and comply with the provisions may impact your student status.

Further, while one may see ambiguity in portions of the Duke Compact that leaves room for some freedom and privacy, the FAQ shuts much of this down. Here are some examples. The “public spaces” where a mask must be worn is an expansive area including everywhere on campus except where a person is “alone in a confined room such as an office or dorm room,” “alone in a vehicle, if the vehicle is not regularly shared with others,” eating or drinking “while following safety guidance,” or in “open outdoor areas where social distancing is easily maintained and areas where individuals are not likely to pass in close proximity.”

The requirement to report symptoms is a requirement to do so daily; fail to do so and “your access to buildings may be temporarily suspended, or revoked.” The “large gatherings” that must be avoided can include gatherings of as few as 11 people.

The requirement to participate in “required COVID-19 testing” includes being tested “upon arrival” at the Duke campus as well as potentially anytime “based on symptom reporting, contact tracing information or as part of periodic sample testing of our residential population.” Adhering to “all travel conditions and restrictions” means students “living in Duke-provided residences” are not to travel beyond the city of Durham “for the duration of the semester” unless doing so is “necessary” and the student receives permission from Duke University, takes “reasonable precautions,” and follows “Student Health instructions upon return.” “Institutional data” that may be used in contact tracing include “symptom monitoring survey responses, door control access points, wi-fi access points, geofence technologies, housing assignments and class schedules.”

In addition to all the restrictions and surveillance imposed directly on students by Duke University, the FAQ indicates Duke may also go after students for failure to comply, even when the students are not on campus, with whatever coronavirus mandates may be imposed by the state and local governments. From the FAQ: “Duke expects all members of our community to adhere to state/local public health orders both on- and off- campus.”

Other universities are similarly using “compacts” and other sorts of edicts to weigh students down with many new rules in the name of countering coronavirus.

It used to be that going to college was an opportunity to escape from strict rules imposed by parents, gain more privacy, take new risks, and learn the self-responsibility helpful for adulthood. Now, many more students reading college requirements like those in the Duke Compact will see college as more restrictive and stifling than mom and dad.

Since the second half of the last century, attending college after high school has been for a large portion of the American population the default course. The imposing of over-the-top dictates like those in the Duke Compact challenges that situation. Confronted with such dictates, a significant number of potential freshmen, as well as of set to return students, will have a “Why bother?” epiphany.

There are options besides college. Make college grim enough in the name of countering coronavirus and many more people will choose to engage in those other options instead.

Duke University itself may not suffer much in reduced enrollment, though it could see a big change in the makeup of its student body. Duke is one of the selective universities that rejects many applicants. It can, to maintain enrollment numbers, start admitting students it previously would have rejected.

Less selective universities will really face trouble due to fewer people choosing to pursue higher education. Some of these universities can be expected to disappear as they become economically unviable.

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In Empathy's Name, Trump the Disruptor Offers School Choice to #WalkAway Parents

President Donald Trump wasn't elected for his empathy. He was elected to kick the Washington establishment -- the bipartisan courtiers of our modern Versailles on the Potomac -- in their sensitive parts.

Kick them he did, repeatedly. And they fought back, swinging their corporate media hatchets at his head, so he slammed his "Fake News" war club into their guts.

Now, with the election just months away, both sides seem out of breath, like TV wrestlers, exhausted, with folding chairs broken in pieces on the floor of our shabby national political amphitheater.

The Democrats built exhaustion into their strategy after Trump's 2016 election, and Trump has helped them with his brutal Twitter thumbs and commentary. In many ways, Trump is his own worst enemy.

So, this (virtual) Republican National Convention is every bit an infomercial as was the (virtual) Democratic offering days before. But this one is about counterprogramming.

It may be Trump's last chance to reframe himself, to offer something to parents sitting on the fence who seek a reason to walk away from the Democrats.

What Republicans offered those parents on the RNC opening night was this:

School choice, to allow black and brown families a chance to escape the big-city public schools that have failed their kids for decades.

"I don't care if it's a public, private, charter, virtual or a home school," said South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, a Black Republican, in his stirring speech. "When a parent has a choice, a kid has a better chance."

Just then I thought I heard heads exploding among liberal pundits and the bosses of the teachers' unions, the ground troops of the modern Democratic Party. They just hate that social media #WalkAway campaign by Democratic voters who've decided to leave the party.

Trump's critics in the Democratic Media Complex along the Washington Beltway loathe his voters for rejecting their liberal wisdom. This blinds them and causes them to underestimate Trump.

It might surprise them to know that parents may care more about their children's education than political ideology.

Many black parents know they've been taken for granted by the Democrats for decades. They look for a chance to walk away.

Hispanic parents may have resentment toward Trump over the immigration issue, but in Chicago at least, many take advantage of charter schools -- a testament to the fact that traditional public schools don't work for them.

And those swing voters among suburban soccer moms have already identified themselves as somewhat guilty about their status, perhaps one reason for those hate-has-no-home-here signs in front lawns.

They all want a reason to feel good about themselves when they vote. And they all have this in common. They're parents.

Will school choice work as a bridge from Republicans to those parents? I don't know.

The left's cancel culture is indeed powerful. Voters fear being mocked, which may explain the rise of those defining themselves as "undecided."

But optimism, rather than fear, will give them a place to stand as the election draws near. And school choice is all about optimism.

Another school-choice advocate speaking on the RNC opening night was Rebecca Friedrichs, the California public school teacher who fought her union's ability to take dues from teachers who oppose their union's politics.

Friedrichs said teachers' unions continue "trapping so many precious, low-income children in dangerous, corrupt and low-performing schools."

Another was Georgia Democratic state Rep. Vernon Jones, a black man, who lauded school choice as a chance for black voters to walk away.

"The Democratic Party does not want black people to leave the mental plantation they've had us on for decades," Jones said. "But I have news for them: We are free people with free minds."

Trump's Republican Party did not offer a formal platform, but a wish list. School choice is prominent. Yes, states and local school districts run the schools, and I don't like federal mandates from on high.

But it's obvious that Republicans will push school choice in the campaign.

Those of us who've seen the decades of failure of Democratic-run big-city schools -- and the bigotry of low expectations built into those corrupt political systems -- see school choice as a civil rights issue.

Republicans portray Democrats as seeking the end of Western civilization, tearing down statues, burning cities. Democrats paint Republicans as racists, relying on identity politics to organize the hatreds.

But swing voters don't want more fire. They don't seek anger. They seek optimism.

Elections aren't only about feeling good about a candidate. They're about helping voters feel good about themselves.

At their convention, the Democrats slammed Trump for his handling of the coronavirus, and pushed empathy, identifying this as Joe Biden's strength. But they avoided policy specifics and any mention of urban violence energizing their hard-left base. The Democrats hurt themselves by not condemning big city violence.

But if Trump wants to win in November, he'll have to do more than rehash the last campaign.

Few voters, white, black or brown, will mistake Mr. Trump for an empath. They know he's a slugger.

But they want to be optimistic. They love their kids. And if school choice isn't all about empathy, what is?

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A ‘black’ university would take us backwards

We need to transcend racial identity, not institutionalise it.

We are rapidly going backwards. The liberal tradition of anti-racism, embodied by the likes of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr, emphasised our common humanity. It argued that the thread that linked every human being together was far stronger than any superficial racial category. It argued that to support or even permit racial discrimination and racial segregation was to violate our shared humanity – to reduce the boundless potential of each human to the absurd category of race.

It was this principle that vigorously discredited racism and ushered in the progress we have seen over the past century. However, it has become painfully clear that this liberal project is being forcefully undermined by the emergence of an ugly, race-based identity politics.

Few examples of this are as stark as a new campaign which is calling for Britain to have a racially segregated university. The so-called Free Black University (FBU) has raised over £100,000 so far. Its GoFundMe page argues that a university like this is necessary because ‘university is often a site of trauma for far too many black students and so [the FBU] brings wellbeing and the healing of our community to the fore’. The FBU promises to ‘redistribute knowledge and act as a space of incubation for the creation of transformative knowledge in the black community’. It also says that ‘climate justice will run through all of the threads of our work as we centre structural and holistic approaches to preserving the world we all live in’.

Leaving aside the fact that much of that description will be incomprehensible to most people, from the little information that has been shared about this project, it is already clear that it will not be a space for pioneering scholarship, world-class research or challenging intellectual pursuits. Instead, it will be a deeply ideological project that will further reify and institutionalise racial divisions within society.

The organisers appear to have missed the fundamental point of what a university exists to do. University isn’t supposed to limit your horizons, to keep you in your comfort zone or in a racial silo. Nor does it exist to offer therapy or indoctrination. University is supposed to challenge students, to expose them to a wide range of perspectives and ideas, to introduce them to the broad diversity of human thought. Centring university on the invented category of race only furthers the poisonous notion that an individual’s skin colour is the defining feature of his or her life.

The idea that British universities are places of ‘trauma’ for black students is also, frankly, ridiculous. Attending university may well be the safest, most cushioned and care-free period of a person’s life. If someone finds the experience of university traumatising, then I worry about how he or she will be able to cope with the wider world. The real world can be a place of poverty, deprivation and war, as well as a place of wonder and greatness.

What’s more, if you are uncomfortable or traumatised by being in places where the majority of the people have a different skin colour to you, then I’m afraid you are likely to live a narrow, stifled and miserable life. Would such a student turn down a year abroad in Asia because there are ‘too many’ Asian people there? Would he or she turn down a high-flying job in Japan because there aren’t enough ‘black’ people there? How could such a person function in a society like Britain, which is more than 85 per cent white?

A writer in Vogue has compared the FBU to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in America. But HBCUs emerged out of necessity during a period of institutionalised racial segregation and racial terror following the Civil War. Universities barred African-Americans from admission. HBCUs gave them an opportunity to pursue academic excellence.

In the UK, black people have never been officially barred from attending university. Today a fifth of students at Oxford University come from an ethnic-minority background. Indeed, the founder of FBU is a PhD candidate at Cambridge. Far from facing insurmountable barriers, black and Asian school leavers are more than twice as likely to go to university than their white counterparts. There is no justification whatsoever for a black university in modern Britain.

But there are deeper, more philosophical questions that this campaign raises. What does it even mean to ‘decolonise’ a curriculum? How do you create knowledge for people of only certain skin colours? Is there a ‘black’ worldview that is distinct from a ‘white’ worldview? Will there be black science, black mathematics and black medical studies at this new university? How will the organisers determine whether the teachers or students are really ‘black’? The absurdities are limitless. It would be funny if the potential consequences of this type of thinking weren’t so dangerous.

I want young black people to see their potential and know that it is limitless. I want them to be able to exchange, borrow, converse and learn from all people – not just people who share their skin colour. It is sad that this even needs to be said. A black university is a regressive step. Progress means being able to transcend our parochial identities and enter into a common human family. It is the struggle to be treated as equals, as individuals, as human beings, instead of being limited by race.

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White House CANCELS racial sensitivity training for all federal employees because it is 'un-American propaganda': Trump blasts classes on 'critical race theory' and 'white privilege' as a 'sickness in our country'

President Trump is moving to end racial sensitivity training for federal government employees, claiming it is 'divisive, anti-American propaganda'.

The Commander-in-chief took to Twitter on Saturday morning confirming he wants to cancel taxpayer funded seminars on 'critical race theory', describing them as 'a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue'.

His tweet followed the release of a two-page memo sent out by the White House Office of Management and Budget on Friday, which asked federal agencies to identify such programs so that they can be purged.

Critical race theory asserts that 'institutions are inherently racist and that race itself... is a socially constructed concept that is used by white people to further their economic and political interests at the expense of people of color', according to Texas A&M University professor Tommy Curry.

The theory - which asserts that all people are racist and that all social interactions are underpinned by race -  is currently in vogue in academia, and private companies and government agencies have hired specialists to teach their employees how to dismantle 'white privilege' and actively become anti-racist.

At the demand of President Trump, the Office of Management and Budget now wants to stop such 'experts' from having any influence on those working in federal institutions.

OMB Director Russel Vought writes in the memo: 'Employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend training where they are told that "virtually all White people contribute to racism" or where they are required to say that they "benefit from racism"'.

Diversity and inclusion training is often a requirement for employees working for federal and state governments.

The training sessions - which can take the form of open-dialogue workshops or expert-delivered lectures - aim to make workplaces more 'inclusive' by acknowledging and discussing the different racial and ethnic backgrounds of employees.

The training - which is often expensive - is covered by taxpayer dollars.

In recent years, experts in 'critical race theory' have commonly become called upon to host such training sessions.

During lectures or discussions, the experts ask white employees to grapple with their own racism and pledge to become anti-racists.

One such expert, Howard Ross, has allegedly 'billed the feds more than $5 million for training since 2006'.

Meanwhile, critical race theorist Robin DiAngelo has also made thousands of dollars discussing 'white racism' and 'white fragility' in lectures given to state and city employees. 

He continues: 'These types of "trainings" not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce.'

Vought subsequently states: 'The President has directed me to ensure that federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions.'

The memo then asks agencies to 'identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on critical race theory/ "white privilege",  or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil. '

It concludes: 'The President has a proven track record of standing for those whose voice has long been ignored and who have failed to benefit from all our country has to offer, and he intends to continue to support all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or creed.'

The memo comes after a New York Post report in July revealed that 'a private diversity-consulting firm conducted a training titled "Difficult Conversations About Race in Troubling Times" for several federal agencies.'

White employees at the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the National Credit Union Administration and the Office of the Comptroller were allegedly asked 'to pledge "allyship" amid the ­George Floyd Tragedy'.

According to the publication, the training also asserted that 'federal employees must "struggle to own their racism" and allow safe spaces where black employees can be "seen in their pain"'.

The training was created by Howard Ross, who has allegedly 'billed the feds more than $5 million for training since 2006'.

Trump's demands are sure to spark widespread backlash, particularly as they come following months of Black Lives Matter protest.

Protesters have been calling for an end to systemic racism, which has led many Americans to reassess the ways in which racial dynamics play out in their everyday lives

The movement has also sent several books on critical race theory to the top of the bestseller lists.

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo is one such tome that has been flying off the shelves.

 It asserts that 'white people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress.'

While DiAngelo has not given seminars to federal employees, she has made a truckload of cash lecturing to state government workers in Seattle Public Schools, the City of Oakland, and the Metropolitan Council of Minneapolis,.

The writer has also been paid handsomely for training sessions at Amazon, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,  and The Hollywood Writer’s Guild.

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