Kansas GOP Insider (wannabe): Rock Chalk Head Scratch

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Rock Chalk Head Scratch

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.


And then these two gems related to guns. I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out what guns on campus has to do with diversity, inclusion, social justice, or the gender binary. Guns are a great equalizer, especially if you take the time to learn how to shoot one. But just for good measure, the privilegers at KU want your gun to feel excluded, I guess.

  • 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…



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.

2 comments:

  1. 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.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 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.

    ReplyDelete