Category: Seen On Campus

Observations from an elderly student

Woke Bollocks

Seen On Campus

Back when I were a callow young student of some fifty-seven summers, I was approached by a professor who wanted to chat with me about the paper I’d just submitted.

He/She* told me that I would have got an A+ for the paper, except that I’d committed the unpardonable offense of using B.C. and A.D. therein instead of (the stupid and unnecessary) B.C.E. and C.E.  All I had to do was re-submit the paper with the terms changed, and I’d get my A+.

“What if I refuse to do that?”  I asked.
“Then you’ll get a C,”  was the response.
“Then give me the C,” was my response.  “And then I’m going to appeal the grade, loudly, especially after you’ve just told me that my work is of A+ standard.”
“You’re refusing to change it?”
“Yes.  And I’m expecting to see an A+ for it, too.”
“Why don’t you just change the terms?”

So I launched into an explanation that was more or less the same as the one that David Marcus published here., stressing, though even an atheist myself, I had to acknowledge the role of the Judeo-Christian influence on our history and culture.  At the end of it, the professor seemed somewhat stunned by what I’d just said.  And I happened to know that this professor, unusually, was actually quite conservative, just by observing the general tenor and terminology used in the lectures.

I ended up getting an A+ for the (unchanged) paper, and for all the rest of the papers** and exams in that professor’s course.

A small victory, perhaps, but for me an important one.

*used not because of their “chosen pronouns”, but because I prefer to keep their identity anonymous.

**For one paper, I got a 100% grade, because my argument was not only irrefutable, but the professor admitted later that it had caused them to rethink their whole position on the topic.  Under those circumstances, clearly, the “BC/BCE” silliness was irrelevant.

Simple Solution

Seen On Campus

Via Insty, this from a college professor:

“I can’t assign papers any more because I’ll just get AI back, and there’s nothing I can do to make it stop.”

Seriously?

Far be it for me to tell credentialed teachers how to do their job [stop that irreverent laughter]  but allow me to propose a novel idea:  instead of assigning papers to be prepared as homework,

  • Create essay-based two-hour examinations in a closed classroom, under the supervision of invigilators who can ensure that the students don’t have access to phones or laptops.
  • All backpacks and such must be left at the side of the room, and the students are allowed only a ballpoint pen at their desk.
  • Keep the essay topics secret until the exam begins.
  • All essays must be handwritten.
  • Make these paper-writing exercises a bi-weekly (fortnightly) activity, and make them count for a substantial proportion of the final grade.
  • Each essay grade should comprise 70% for content and the remainder for literacy.

Here’s the fun part of all this, though.

Even assuming that the papers were legible (a huge assumption), I’ll bet that a substantial number of today’s so-called professors wouldn’t be able to grade the papers properly anyway — in no small part because they wouldn’t be able to use A.I. to grade the handwritten paper content.

Burn the whole rotten edifice down, and start from scratch.

Girls & Boys

Good Stuff, Seen On Campus

…just like they used to be.  From the Department of Common Sense (Title IX Division) comes this news:

Trump’s Dept of Education released a “dear colleague” letter to every school in the country, stating that the social experiment of “trans inclusive” facilities, sports, bathrooms, & scholarships is done. “Sex” under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is back to being interpreted as male & female, as it always was.

The Department relies on a recent federal court ruling vacating the rule & indicating that the rewrite violated civil rights, administrative, & constitutional law.

My favorite part:

Any school, recipient, college that doesn’t comply with the directive could lose federal funding.

Keep rolling back the Leftist lunacy, folks;  we ain’t tired of it yet.

And when you’re done undoing, close the whole fucking department down.

Ah Yes, That Old Evil

Race Hustlers, Seen On Campus, Two-Minute Hate

Predictably, we’re starting to see that old bugbear start to rear its ugly head again:

Just to address Item #2:

She describes “a sense of urgency” as a damaging characteristic, arguing that it discourages inclusivity, long-term thinking, and learning from mistakes.

This “urgency” argument has even been used to criticize white workers who complete projects quickly or work overtime. Some activists also claim deadlines and strict arrival times are unfair because they don’t account for cultural differences—such as “Black time.”

“Black time” (or “Colored People’s Time” / CPT) is a term sometimes used to describe habitual tardiness in Black communities. NPR’s Karen Bates explains that she learned about CPT as meaning “clock-challenged” and used as a self-referential joke within Black culture.

Still, some academics take this idea seriously.

“Unjust experiences of time are the reason that due dates and deadlines are so harmful—they amplify racism, sexism, classism, and ableism that already deprive the most vulnerable in our communities of their basic rights and dignities,” certain professors argue.

We used to call this “Africa Time” back in my old homeland, and it wasn’t very fashionable amongst Blacks during the apartheid era (because they’d get fired for habitual tardiness), but since the Blessed Mandela’s ANC took over, it has become very much a thing (surprise, surprise).

And the other items on the list are equally wrong-headed and utter bullshit — prime examples of “you should have to change the institution to accommodate me”, and not the other way round.

Bloody hell, as if the airlines aren’t already using Black Time.

Not that this Oklin pustule is a solo act, mind you.  Here’s another one:

A University of North Dakota history professor who studies the American West believes monuments depicting the pioneers “reinforce white supremacy.”

In an interview this week with KJZZ Phoenix, Cynthia Prescott (pictured) discussed her research on pioneer monuments, including a book that argues the artwork promotes “white cultural superiority” and “gender stereotypes.”

Much like with Confederate monuments, the professor said America should re-examine artwork honoring American settlers.

“A lot of people have talked about Confederate monuments in particular, as being monuments that were put up in the late 19th, early 20th centuries for the purpose of enshrining a racial hierarchy. And through my work, I argue that Western pioneer monuments were doing very similar cultural work,” she told KJZZ.

Fucking hell;  left to non-Whites, the U.S. would still have the Mississippi River as its western border and not the Pacific.

Yup, it’s just another “deconstruction” of history to change it into something that’s more to the bullshit philosophy of Wokism and “racial justice”.

Just for identification purposes, here are the two above pseudo-academics, just to make recognition easier:

I know;  you never expected them to look like that, did you?

And by the way, the “bugbear” I referred to in the opening is not “White supremacy”, but the continued efforts of academia to undermine the very fabric of our nation.

More Like This, Please

Seen On Campus

We need a great deal more of this:

Entering 2025, community colleges are expanding apprenticeships and other experienced-based learning programs to address America’s labor shortage crisis and meet a growing demand for alternative forms of higher education.

“Community colleges are going beyond their traditional role of instruction, helping to organize, register, and assist companies in running their apprenticeship programs,” John Colborn, executive director of Apprenticeships for America, told The College Fix.

“By expanding these services, they reduce barriers for employers to offer apprenticeships,” he said in a phone interview earlier this month.

A recent report by Colborn’s organization shows the number of community colleges with active apprenticeships has grown from just 30 to over 200 between 2016 and 2023.

I’d be happier if it was two thousand community colleges, but I’ll take what I can get.

Seriously:  considering how colleges’ traditional educational courses have been debased into (essentially) Marxist wokism, there is a profound rationale for colleges, especially community colleges, to start turning some of their classrooms into workshops.

And I don’t even want to hear that government (of any kind) needs to get involved in this initiative, for any reason.  No;  this belongs entirely in the purview of businesses who would benefit from having a ready pool of trained workers in their trades, as opposed to the usual escapees from the grease pit at JiffyLube, no-hoper high school “graduates” or illegal immigrants.

There are not many instances where I’d want to copy the Germans, on anything;  but I’ve always been a huge fan of their clinical observation — that not everyone should go to college, but an awful lot of the people left over would benefit greatly from trade schools — and it deserves comprehensive implementation on this side of The Pond.

Honestly, nobody loses in this operation;  not the workers, nor the companies and especially not the colleges who participate.

Having said that:  so beneficial an opportunity is bound to fail, because OMG every child is special and shouldn’t have to get their precious little hands soiled by working at Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs (or Victor Davis Hanson’s “Muscular Jobs”, if you prefer).

Fach.

So Much For The Ivory Tower

Marxists, Seen On Campus

As universities all over the Western world start to sputter and fail because of funding shortages and bloated, costly bureaucracies, here’s an interesting take:

Universities’ response to the cash crisis reveals their deeper crisis of purpose. Up to 10,000 university jobs are reported to have been cut this year. Yet diversity, equity and inclusion teams seem to have been largely spared the axe. Instead, universities are cutting core academic disciplines. The University of Kent has closed its philosophy department, while Canterbury Christ Church University will no longer teach English literature – a university spokesperson described the course as ‘no longer viable in the current climate’.

Once, it would have been unthinkable for a university not to offer degrees in major branches of learning, such as literature or philosophy. These subjects were taught not because ‘the market’ made them ‘viable’, but because they contributed to our understanding of the word and what it means to be human. That they can now be so readily discarded speaks to an impoverished intellectual climate that universities themselves have helped to create.

Note the emphasized sentence.

What it shows to me is that the so-called intellectual rigor of the ivory tower has faded, if not disappeared altogether.  (I know, I know:  “Wake up, Kim, it’s been going on for decades!” )

As long as universities continue to be regarded as simply an adjunct to the marketplace — i.e. providing certification for careers — then of course the “thoughtful” classes such as philosophy or Shakespeare are going to suffer.  (Of course, certification is probably critical for careers such as engineering, medicine and the hard sciences, less so for law and suchlike.)

Why one would need a B.A. to be a personal assistant or office receptionist, of course, simply underlines the fact that the high school diploma has ceased to be any kind of qualification whatsoever.

And universities are becoming equally useless.  Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of Gramscian Marxists.