I’m embarrassed to report that Kansas universities are going
the way of Missouri’s mega campus. No they’re not ramping up meth production,
but Kansas public universities are taking a page from the social justice-y
types. Shudder. Full stop.
Obviously, the most egregious of examples come from Rock
Chalk University where a professor tweets
that he hopes the sons and daughters of NRA members are murdered and keeps his
job. He enjoyed the support of faculty, journalists, students. (As in the University
of Missouri
case where a professor was revealed to be an absolute lemming, the KU professor
was, of course, a journalism professor. So yes, totally keep giving the
journalists coming from Kansas schools complete access
to the Statehouse and the Governor’s Office. They’ve been trained so well!)
Over at Wheat Waving U, the faculty defended the professor who wanted to murder
the children of people with whom he disagrees, but the faculty senate actually
filed briefs suggesting that an economics professor not be given the same rights
as other faculty. Art
Hall, they said, shouldn’t have any rights to academic privacy—like all of
the other liberal professors on campus—because Hall once worked for Koch
Industries. I kid you not. The faculty went after the guy.
The Wheat Wavers most recently demanded that one of their own be
fired. Andrea Quenette was canned
last month for using the n-word in class. It’s important to note, she was using
the word to admit her own shortcomings where race was concerned. The white
woman was literally checking her privilege, but some of the special little
snowflakes in her class felt micro-aggressed, so Quenette was placed on
administrative leave and summarily fired at the end of the year. Quenette was a
communications professor. (I’m seeing a pattern here. Maybe it’s time to close
the communications schools at our state universities? I kid. Kind of.)
Partially in response to Quenette’s micro-aggressions and
protests on campus in the fall of 2015, the University of Kansas issued a
report from the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advisory Group. Prepare to
weep. I’ll hit a few of the highlights, but feel free to vomit on the entire
29-page report, here.
Here are just a few of the things KU plans to do to make the
special little snowflakes feel warm and fuzzy:
- Recognize Indigenous People’s Day (I’ll have to check my calendar. Is this a thing?)
- Enhance efforts to provide general-neutral or all-gender restroom options campus wide
- Recognize and support the effort to create the Multicultural Student Government (Because separate but equal has a glorious past in Kansas.)
- Place Student Senate under immediate review, and restructure student governance so that it functions in a more participatory, inclusive and representative manner.
- Actively include courses related to social justice, inclusion, equity, and diversity
- Foster opportunities for mid-career faculty of color in the areas of professional skills building, advancement, pathways to promotion, and opportunities for leadership and the department, school/college, and University levels (This suggestion so grieves me. It’s breathtakingly offensive. You see, faculty of color, you can’t advance unless the nice white people on campus give you a hand up.)
- Provide immediate cultural competency training for all staff and administrators with responsibility for official University social media accounts
- Constitute the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advisory Council as an ongoing body, independent from, but directly advising the Chancellor and Provost.
- Develop and disseminate a comprehensive, and accessible, guide for where faculty, staff, and students can go with formal and informal grievances related to issues of inclusion in our University community.
- Establish a comprehensive policy to manage firearms and gun safety on campus, and adopt a campus safety plan for students and personnel in the event of an active shooter.
- As part of campus protocols regarding guns on campus, monitor and record Public Safety Office contact with visitors, students and personnel of color stemming from emergency calls.
And finally, there’s this:
·
- Provide financial support for the Asian and Asian-American Faculty Staff Council, Black Faculty and Staff Council, Latino Faculty and Staff Council, Native Faculty and Staff Council and the Sexuality and Gender Diversity Consortium.
Of course, the insane irony of all of this nonsense is that
KU is a very diverse campus, where it appears minorities aren’t just welcomed
but elevated to the highest positions of power and influence.
Um. The school’s chancellor, Bernadette Gray-Little, is a black woman. The incoming Student Body President, Stephonn Alcorn, is black. If the highest positions on staff and in the student body of the University are held by minorities, how much more inclusive can the school get? I don’t even…
Um. The school’s chancellor, Bernadette Gray-Little, is a black woman. The incoming Student Body President, Stephonn Alcorn, is black. If the highest positions on staff and in the student body of the University are held by minorities, how much more inclusive can the school get? I don’t even…
The whole thing is a train wreck, rolling down the tracks to
exciting destinations like Lower Enrollment, Dumber College Students, and Shame
on Our State! These are places I have no interest in visiting. They’re also
places I have no desire to fund at levels above existing ones.
So, into this embarrassment of a public education
institution, we come to cries from the Whining Whiners Who Whine about tuition increases and supposed state
funding cuts. After the embarrassing year the state’s most vaunted higher
learning institution just completed, I think Jayhawk U should count itself
fortunate that the state provides a single cent of taxpayer money. I’m grieved
that the Governor’s revised budget—which cut the amount of money the state PLANNED
to give to state universities—increases funding by $1.5 million to
public institutions. Only 2 of the 6 public universities received an actual cut over the previous
year’s funding. Sadly, KU is getting about 1 percent more than it did last
year, while K-State and Wichita State are facing actual cuts.
In the face of these so-called cuts, the universities are
seeking tuition hikes. I’ll be honest: I’d probably tie tuition rates to areas
of study. If you want to study something useless and stupid like women’s
studies, the science of puppetry, or gender binary codes of justice or
whatever, I’d probably charge more. A lot more. How does the state of Kansas
benefit by having more puppetry experts in its ranks? And then I’d charge
less for degrees that actually benefit the state. I keep hearing we’re short on
computer scientists, all the STEM professions, the other majors of Star Trek fans. If taxpayers are going to
subsidize public universities, we should get our money’s worth.
I’m an absolute advocate of public subsidized higher educational pursuits,
but the educations being pursued at KU at this moment seem like a giant waste
of my money. The university's constant demands for more cash, despite the fact that its faculty, staff, and students, should probably be in rubber rooms makes me feel so micro-agressed.
The truth is the point of no return is the infiltration into academia the gospel of unmitigated divorce of reason. The leadership is devoid of the recognition of meaning these illfated policy changes will wrought. Sad. Humanity without reason and insight is vividly inhuman.
ReplyDeleteThe truth is the point of no return is the infiltration into academia the gospel of unmitigated divorce of reason. The leadership is devoid of the recognition of meaning these illfated policy changes will wrought. Sad. Humanity without reason and insight is vividly inhuman.
ReplyDelete