Who’s to blame for college students’ narcissism?
Generation Y is all grown up, in college and more self-absorbed than ever, according to a new study presented today. Who’s to blame? Everyone, apparently. Parents who smother their children with undue praise and give less authoritarian punishment, elementary schools bent of teaching how special and unique we all are, YouTube confessionals and MySpace profiles that thrive off of exhibition and exposure, blogs (yes, blogs) and the Internet as a whole in giving everyone media access like never before, reality television, Anna Nicole Smith/Britney Spears/any other CrazyCelebWatch 2007, etc. etc.
While narcissism is nothing new, the trend behind is troubling to the study’s lead author, Jean Twenge. With 30 percent of college students surveyed displaying high levels of elevated narcissism, Twenge believes we could be heading to a world where people are too into themselves to be emotionally available and think nothing of treating each other like dirt, even in public places.
As if on cue, Inside Higher Ed looks into the Pit Break Up drama at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The set-up (and it was set up): boy dates girl, girl cheats on boy, boy invites girl to romantic spot on Valentine’s day on campus along with over 1,000 other students via Facebook, a Capella group sings kiss-off song, boy dumps girl with the crowd, cameras out, cheers on. The video is pretty long, and honestly it only gets interesting/scary when the crowd starts chanting “Slut! Slut! Slut!” at her as she tells him off for being a coward. Students ate this drivel up, writing letters to the Daily Tar Heel demanding coverage and joining Facebook groups proving they were there, man.
747,000 hits on YouTube later, the du(m)per comes clean with an explanation for the hoax: the Internet is extremely powerful and amazing and the media doesn’t really get us college kids cause we’re so complex and oh, by the way I’m starting this busine… hey, where’d you go? Come back! (The Facebook group is already sad they’ve been had, LonelyGirl15-style.)
Here’s the solution: follow Warhol’s advice and limit the total amount of video clips to 15 minutes total. With guys like this, that’s plenty more than they deserve, but maybe they’ll value it a bit more. If everyone’s listening, they should say try saying something a little more interesting than “I’m awesome.”
(The whole reason for the post was to justify using that picture of the cat wearing sunglasses. Indulge me, please.)
Roundup: Where there’s smoke, there’s police
Butt out: The University of North Dakota Student Senate has signed on to the president’s plan to ban smoking ? indoors or out ? in the campus. Apparently the 30-foot ban in front of entrances wasn’t enough. The debate has been playing out in the student newspaper, The Dakota Student, since the president announced the idea aimed at helping people kick the habit and the benefit of second-hand sufferers. (For those interested, UND’s mascot, the Fighting Sioux, has been as problematic as Chief Illiniwek.)
Justin Long just got a raise: Wilkes is joining the Cult and making their campus Mac only. It’s not just to give the students a reason to be smug with their shiny iMacs and MacBook Pros; it’s a cost issue. PC stands for problems campus-wide, especially to download-happy college students, leave the network vulnerable and expensive to fix. Scott Byers, the now former vice president for finance and general counsel, says the $1.4 million investment is worth every penny if they can keep the system virus-free. Just wait until a disgruntled Dell user writes a worm for those Apples.
Wait, why am I here? With tuition skyrocketing (Ithaca College just announced one of the largest increases in 15 years), it may be time to put it all in perspective. Namely: why in God’s name would we spend this much money for an English degree? Or for that matter (erk) a journalism one? The most expensive sheepskin money can buy is a signaler, Christopher Caldwell offers in NYT Magazine. It not that you’re necessarily smarter for paying that much money but rather you have the potential to learn and shows that you at least want the returns a degree can get you. Backward as it seems, a liberal degree can be worth more in flexibility than actually feeling qualified for anything come graduation.
Mean girls: She doesn’t look like any sister of mine
With a front-page expos? in the New York Times, 
the DePauw University chapter of Delta Zeta is facing harsh criticism from pretty much everyone. After struggling with an image problem ? a survey found students labeled them ?socially awkward? ? and some disapproving stares from national leaders questioning their commitment to DZ, 23 of the sisters were “granted them alumna status” (code for inactive) and unceremoniously evicted from the chapter house. The problem? All of the them fell into neat, if not imprecise, categories of fat, brainy and/or a minority. The remaining 12 were popular, pretty and white ? perfect for the social mixers. 6 of the dozen remaining DeeZees had the good sense to leave in protest.
Cindy Menges, executive director of Delta Zeta, said the women did it to themselves; they were not committed to recruitment, to the centennial year of the chapter’s founding, to the ?enrichment of student life at DePauw.? Oh, wait. Turns out they were, but the national leaders themselves pulled a wicked-stepmother move and locked the unsavory-est sisters upstairs in their own chapter house:
Robin Lamkin, a junior who is an editor at The DePauw and was one of the 23 women evicted, said many of her sisters bought new outfits and modeled them for each other before the interviews. Many women declared their willingness to recruit diligently, Ms. Lamkin said.
A few days after the interviews, national representatives took over the house to hold a recruiting event. They asked most members to stay upstairs in their rooms. To welcome freshmen downstairs, they assembled a team that included several of the women eventually asked to stay in the sorority, along with some slender women invited from the sorority?s chapter at Indiana University, Ms. Holloway said.
The article has the delicious revenge one of the protesting sisters pulled on them and how they rallied on campus to find out the truth.
Everyone’s backpedaling to soften the blow. DePauw’s press release is quick to point out President Robert G. Bottoms two-page (!) reprimand (PDF) of DZ, which basically says, uh, thanks ladies, we weren’t expecting to house this many homeless ex-sisters. It also tsk-tsks them for sending the letters out a week before finals, which caused many an angry phone call from parents. (Bottoms at least expressed slight disgust at the audacity of the DZ pooh-bahs in the NYT article.)
The National Office of Delta Zeta offers a prim well-I-never response to the article, pointing wildly to their Constitution that bans outright exclusion based on race (ahem) and mischaracterizations about just how diverse they all are. The removal of the sisters seemed to be the lesser of two evils from their perspective: if the house had chosen not to rush as the chapter had voted, the house would have been closed and not guaranteed a spot back in the Row, and since everyone loves anniversaries, it was in the best interest to keep the house open for their 100th pledge class in 2009 and “reorganize.” [Click the t-shirt to get the full effect of what their history seems to suggest.]
Greek life hasn’t been anywhere close to a bastion of fairness and inclusivity on college campuses, but it’s important to not condemn all fraternity brothers and sorority sisters, lock up their column-lined Rows and make them either accept everyone ? or worse, no one. But the idea of image and power getting in the way of their stated objectives outside of the camaraderie of the chapter house is nothing new, as USC freshman Elizabeth Kenigsberg. “[T]he process begins with appearance,” she writes in the Daily Trojan. “Sometimes, though, sorority members get too preoccupied with reputation and forget why they joined a sorority in the first place: for sisterhood.” Brave words, even if she now has to worry about her own possible eviction letter.
But even if the national office made the wrong call, was it for their own personal hate of the non-bubbly, non-white, non-generic sorority stereotype? For one DZ alumna (a real one), the answer is no. It’s all DePauw’s fault; all of the men who played hot-or-not with the new pledges, all of the women who avoided DZ to ensure their place in the popular sororities, and for all the DZ sisters who obsessed about breaking those images, even at the cost of their own personalities. The national office only did what the campus wanted.
At least, unlike a real family, you can choose your sisters.
Roundup: Pay attention to the man behind the curtain
They’re people, too: Applying for college is probably as stressful as high school gets. Daniel Creasy, an employee in the admissions office at Johns Hopkins, is using the internet to do more than just let people check on the status of their application. He’s showing the human side, handing out tips and tricks to calm the (ir)rational fears seniors have and joking about his dog having to help sift the mountain of what-changed-my-life essays on his blog, Hopkins Insider. As someone who was in the maw of the machine four years ago, this is a great use of the technology. Let’s restrain ourselves, however, before we start seeing Facebook pokes from the bursar office. [via Washington Post]
But they’re not perfect people: NPR has an ongoing series, The College Admissions Game, and the second part of seven took on the admissions process’ biggest elephant in the room: national magazine rankings. Every college president hates them but no college can get rid of them (imagine being the first one to jump off that cliff), causing what they call a “growing disconnect between admission practices and educational values.” Some of the observations can be problematic; Christian Brady, the dean of Schreyer Honors College at Penn State, points out in his blog that even though the increase of merit-based scholarships often comes at the decrease of financial aid, being smart and having financial need aren’t mutually exclusive. The rest of the series, especially Friday’s segment about historially black colleges and universities falling out of favor for numerous reasons, is a great listen.
And now, something completely different: While College Ave. may be too straight and narrow of a street for this kind of thing, my blogging brother Andy at The Big Spoon will be liveblogging the Oscars today starting at 7 p.m. Pull up a chair, drink some bubbly (if you’re into that sort of thing) and get ready for the ridiculousness.
From South Hill to Sweden. Plus, broken images!
This blog isn’t about Ithaca College, but it’s been making a few small waves in the blogging world. The Park School of Communications has made a big push to study where traditional media and online innovation intersect. Professor Kim Gregson’s class studying Second Life (read The Ithacan story about it) has been leading the way. Our school has it’s very own island and a sister island for our Independent Media Center (which is coming soon in First Life), and we’ve been getting people to virtually-visit the vector version of school. Thank goodness our school isn’t decorated like that in real life! Gregson has her own blog keeping tabs on the rest of the class’ progress.
But people are noticing. Rasmus Karlsson, a graduate student in Sweden, flew over to the island, got his requisite freebie shirt and posed for a group picture. He seems impressed with the idea ? like a lot of people in academia ? about the idea of introducing an educational aspect to what is essentially the world’s largest virtual chatroom classroom.
Second Life aside, however, it appears like Ithaca hasn’t gotten all the kinks worked out of their online presence. William, a high school student from Queens, has been getting the typical barrage of brochures and emails from colleges trying to woo him to apply. Ithaca, in it’s we’re-so-hip-to-this-internet-thing-attitude, bashed all those other colleges with paper viewbooks (which, um, still work pretty well for them) and bragging about how they offer video and 360 degree views. Then they had a broken gif image in the email. “If this is the cutting edge,” he blogged, “then there must be a better knife out there somewhere.” Ouch.
What part of dead don’t you seem to understand?
Looks like the Illiniwek brou ha-ha isn’t over: The Daily Illini is reporting that a member of the Board of Trustees never voted to remove the Chief. They voted to put him in, so it would make sense to vote to take him out. And the actual announcement came at interesting timing, at least if you buy into conspiracy theories about administration timing the decision to minimize student input.
I’m all for open meetings and fairness, and I hate it just as much as anyone else does when administrations do what’s best in terms of CYA, which it seems pretty clear here that is what’s going on. But have we lost sight of the issue? Of why they should have made this decision swiftly, long ago? People ? an entire people, or more aptly, a gross misrepresentation of said people ? are not mascots. Are we really in business of defending things as ugly as this in 2007 in the name of tradition? Are we honestly willing to wield our power as students, as fans, as alumni to preserve a tradition that insults not only other students but also our intelligence? Enough crying about PC vs. non-PC. We’re past that point. Over. Done. Let’s move forward, without the Chief. Please? Or am I way off here? Let’s hash this out ? without using the word tradition.
That dog won’t hunt
By now, the hunt for some dude wearing a nametag claiming he’s an illegal immigrant is well underway. Media gasping, Facebook groups forming, protests ensuing, blah, blah. NYU’s College Republicans are pulling the same stunt played round the country, but the media are zeroing in on the idea that ? omigosh ? it’s not just people in the South who are affected by this! Can it actually be that people in the enlighten Nor’east think that it’s okay to parade around granting prizes to people who rustle up (fake) border crossers?
The obvious story here is: … Wait, there is no story. This is a stunt. It’s not meant to bring about dialogue. It’s not meant to just “ruffle their feathers” and then get people to reasonably discuss or even read a damn pamphlet. It’s a stunt of the grossest order: The College Republicans are trying to legitimize their own existence and (inflated) oppression by delegitimizing, oppressing and dehumanizing an entire sub-sect of society. Washington Square News sums it up nicely:
Yes, we recognize that most students here are liberals, as are a majority of professors. But that is something different from the liberal tyranny College Republicans think goes on here. It rarely does, yet the College Republicans overcompensate for this imagined oppression by staging excessively bombastic events.
This doesn’t do anything to advance discussion of conservative ideas, but it does make for sexy news stories - stories that unfortunately reflect poorly on NYU as a whole.
The editorial goes on to poke chuckling Democrats and any other finger-wagging groups on campus in the ribs with a don’t-expect-support-if-you-try-somthing-stupid-too (even-though-we-might-agree-with-you).
The price of academic freedom
How much would you pay to have a classroom free of liberal bias indoctrinating our free thinkers in higher education? Free of women’s lib classes that ask men to wear high heels and dresses to understand what women go through? For the Arizona Senate, they’re not asking the students to pay for the, um, freedom from hearing what professors might actually think. They’re fining the professors.
If you are a professor at a public or community college (but it does apply to K-12 teachers as well) and SB 1542 (n?e SB1612) goes through, you could very well be have to pay the Man for doing things like: endorsing or opposing any candidate for any political office; having an opinion on any pending legislation; merely talking about any current decision in any court, unless you talk about them in a non-positive/non-negative way; or, my personal favorite, advocating ?one side of a social, political, or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan controversy.?
If a professor is found spouting off anything perceived as partisan (the Arizona Daily Star suggests things like “evolution, global warming, foreign policy, voting rights, education policy” but really, the list could be twisted to include anything), the proposed legislation states that they could face up to $500 dollars and for higher offenses flat-out termination. The Arizona Republic calls it what it is: unconstitutional.
Sen. Thayer Verschoor, the Republican majority leader, spoke out about why exactly he thinks crumbling our shadow universities with this legislation is necessary. The cross-dressing lesson was “peculiar” to him, but this gem from Inside Higher Ed is too good not to quote:
In another case, he said, his comments offended a professor?s political sensibilities. While Verschoor did not remember the specifics of the political exchange or the class, he said that the professor accused him of being ?a political plant? and then said that ?plants are to be urinated on.?
He reads and hears about the problems all the time ? we can only guess which sources ? and says the bill isn’t designed to create academic freedom ? at least the perversion of the term by the likes of David Horowitz. For the record, Horowitz does not agree with the legislation for higher ed but is cool with it in K-12.
Horowitz is at least half-right here. College students are adults and if they cannot engage in intelligent, civil and reasoned debate about so-called controversial issues with their professors, and fellow students, what are they doing in college? Conservatives shouldn’t be silenced, just like liberals shouldn’t be fired, but this is the wrong way to do it.
The Chief has left the building
The University of Illinois has finally buried their minstrel show mascot symbol, Chief Illiniwek, and people are weighing in on all sides. Letters to the editor are pouring in for both the local and student paper, The Daily Illini.
Students for Chief Illiniwek have their Illini-week all planned out, complete with candlelight vigil. A. Candle. Light. Vigil.
It’s hard to have much compassion for the students on this one, especially when they’re forming groups and posting messages like this on Facebook (I left all the punctuation alone, so sic sic sic etc.):
This is a bunch of crap if you ask me! There are alot of Illini fans that are very upset about the whole thing..If you dont like the way things were I feel people should leave! Tradition is Tradition and should NOT BE CHANGED
i agree with kyle … weve had the chief for over 80 years and now its a huge problem … wat bullshit
im sick of all the people who made such a huge deal about being anti-chief, and now all the sudden we are stupid…
My personal favorite was a group (now deleted) named “If They Get Rid Of The Chief I’m Becoming A Racist.” I wonder how many of these outraged, political-correctness hatin’ students know what their symbol of honor is really about. If this is honor, I don’t think anyone deserves to be honored. The NCAA has made it crystal clear how they feel about the situation. Enough of the slippery slopes; booting a ugly characterture does not mean we live in a sanitized, zero-tolerance world where PETA will get up in arms about bears and bobcats as mascots. The university is making the right decision here, however long overdue. Is there a justification here other than blind tradition? Can we really claim that the Chief is promoting education of all things Native American?
(After the jump is a video of the dance from his second-to-last performance ever. Judge how honorable the shuckin’/jivin’? is for yourself.)
Roundup: Barriers and borders
Troubling: Mexican-American high school students just don’t perceive their barriers to college. They’re real, according to a new study put out by a new study from the University of Oregon. Even though the numbers are up, Latinos have lagged behind in attendance rates at 10 percent compared to blacks (18 percent) and whites (34 percent). The study found that the students themselves found a lot of barriers ? lack of confidence, fear of leaving behind family, parents not understanding things like how to apply for financial aid ? more difficult to overcome. Even if their parents did attend college, the barriers are not any less lack of confidence. [Via The Daily Texan]
Fighting for change: Several hundred Minnesota State College and University students rallied in St. Paul to protest the rising price of tuition. Legislators seemed to take notice: a few bills have already been introduced, including one that would funnel funding down to the state schools to cap the costs. [Via StarTribune]
Religion in question: In a soon-to-be-published study, researchers found that 23.4 percent of professors describe themselves as atheists or agnostics. Digg is, of course, working itself into a frenzy over this. Interesting tidbit: psychology and biology professors had the lowest rate of believers at 61 percent each.
Seriously: Dear Yale, there has to be a better way to get senior class donations. IvyGateBlog declares ________-in-a-box jokes dead, dead, dead.
Feed for College Ave.