Financial Aid: The Opus
If you haven’t already, go ahead and read Munzer?s article in The Ithacan, and the editorial written today about the financial aid situation. Pay close attention to how tricky it is for a school like Ithaca. We?ll come back to this in a little.
We’ve seen a major financial aid overhaul get through Congress, and get signed by the President. It’s a nice idea, but it’s flawed. And it’s already a little too late, based on some recent announcements from big-name colleges. Its merits are good, no doubt. It attempts to add to the value of Pell Grant. (Although here?s an interesting question: Why are the funds authorized for 2013 only $105 million? By the by, over the 10 years there?s an average of $2.87 billion additional appropriated each year.) And it brings up this TEACH grant to help out current and prospective teachers.
Curiously, there?s nothing in there overhauling financial aid that will take care of the long (and largely unnecessary) process that is the FAFSA. In fact, the only time it?s even mentioned in the mile-long bill is under the College Access Challenge Grant Program, where help with the application is covered as a payment with the grant. Hm.
Oh yeah, those administrator searches
Things have been relatively quiet on the search front in the past couple of weeks. We got our presidential search committee in the beginning of the month, including an “excited” student representative, senior Monica Marcenko, who’s (in her own words) “always looking for feedback and input.” In the interest of student involvement and information freedom, go ahead and give her a buzz. The committee met before break, but it very well may have been overshadowed by that guy who visited the same week.
They posted the ad copy today for the presidential search (it’s going to be in the Chronicle of Higher Education!) and it’s a doozy. We’re looking for “a dynamic, visionary leader to serve as [our] eighth president.” I haven’t seen the Chronicle to see the ad running in the paper, but I suppose it’ll look similar to the other wall-of-type ads like this sweet one for Cal Lutheran.
It makes a reference to an under construction position profile and says we will conclude the capital campaign successfully next year (they must know something the rest of us don’t). We also encourage “[m]embers of underrepresented groups” to apply, which would be good ? a minority president might raise our student numbers north of 10 percent. It’d also continue the tradition of firsts Peggy started by being the first woman president of the college.
Something tells me access to this search will be limited at best for us; with the candidate review starting the day after the last day of classes (good timing since we publish our last issue of the semester Dec. 13), coverage will be online for us over the break if we get anything at all. (That’s what I want to worry about over winter break.)
In other search news, there is no new search news? Nothing from the music dean search, even though we still don’t have a student representative on that search committee, and since the Park dean search is being delayed, we only have to focus on three major searches right now. Oh, nothing more from H&S after the committee announcement. (There’s also that AES director search, and the Park School’s Center for Independent Media search, et cetera et cetera… but let’s keep this simple.)
Semi-related to the president search and our capital campaign comes this post from the Chronicle: The president at Furman University in South Carolina is donating $1 million to their $400 million fundraising campaign, Because Furman Matters. President David E. Shi (also a 1973 graduate of the university) pledged it at their announcement last Friday, and so far they’ve raised more than half their goal. I’ll have more at some point about all the fundraising craziness in the coming weeks, since Munzer has already started that one.
A new view on doing something about racism
It’s nothing new: Columbia University’s been dealing with the repercussions of several instances of racism in the past weeks on its NYC campus. Racist graffiti, comments, abuse and attitudes seem to be a perpetual problem at institutions of higher learning across the country, including Ithaca College.
The Columbia Spectator’s columnist J.D. Porter has written an excellent piece about why most responses to racist events don’t ever end up changing anything. Although he seems to believe that chanting, protesting and making your voice heard won’t help, what he’s really doing is lampooning the current way in which college students attempt to enact change.
Outraged, I looked to my student leaders, whoever they may be, and quickly learned that I had no choice but to start a dialogue. ?How do you feel about racism in campus bathrooms?? I asked, and long conversations ensued. I felt that I was really opening channels of communication, forcing the administration to engage with student voices, and creating an atmosphere of open exchange where everyone could feel safe.
Which is to say, we generally give it the old College Try. After protests, outrage and anti-racist events that students tend to organize, the racists dig into their foxholes and hide away, and the world is a place of harmony again. For awhile.
But without institutionalizing equality initiatives that actually work, he argues, students can “create dialogues” and “instinctively congregate … to create [unified diversity]” forever without making a dent in the real problem.
Here’s the core problem: how do you eliminate racism effectively? You can’t beat it out of people, you can only educate it out of them. And some people don’t listen. Especially people who don’t consider themselves racist, but are, just a tiny bit. We all know who we are, and we’re all a little bit ashamed, so we act astonished and pretend that we’re enlightened folks to whom an education in racism would almost be insulting, because we’re so incredibly race-blind. Or race conscious. Same thing.
But race, ethnicity and stereotypes are how we understand and interact with other people and the world we live in. So a little prejudice is normal.
It’s not letting that prejudice influence our actions in a negative way and also working to eliminate it that is so abnormal. Our institutions can help with that, as Porter points out:
“[Add] a Columbia-run school for community children, maybe…” or “better financial aid for the poorest students…”
Kudos, Mr. Porter. Well put. Now let’s stop writing about this and actually do something.
Race protests in Ithaca and around the country
The Chronicle of Higher Ed is reporting that students at more than 100 colleges across the country staged walk outs and protests in support of the six black students charged with racial crimes in Jena, La. The case has been all over the news recently, but essentially, six black high school students have been charged with attempted murder for beating a white student after they were repeatedly harassed in December of 2006. On sept. 20, more than 10,000 people marched in protest of their imprisonment, but now the momentum has spread to campuses, apparently.
I say: Bravo, college students. Let’s kick start this whole protesting thing again and make the 60s protests of our dirty hippie parents look like a 3-year-old’s birthday party.
In more local news, Ithaca College students were doing some protesting of their own (with many others) on Monday. Their protest, however, was targeting the Ithaca City School District, which is being criticized for how it is handling a high school student’s case of racial discrimination. Watch the video accompanying my article, it’s a pretty harsh condemnation of the school district.
Ithaca High school student Thandi Farley speaks about racism in her school. here.
Stoking the fires of free speech
Faithful reader Nic points to a recent column at the New York Times about the WHAM brouhaha at the University of Rhode Island. WHAM, the White Heterosexual Male Scholarship, was clearly designed to stir some controversy, just like it did at Roger Williams, right down to their “As a White Heterosexual American Male, what adversities have you had to deal with and overcome?” essay prompt.
The College Republicans got what the wanted, of course, with the Student Senate falling over itself to be outraged. Even after Robert Carothers, the university president, said, uh, guys, you can’t do that, they tried to sanction them. Cooler heads prevailed, and WHAM stays.
But FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, is at the center of this storm, something that seems to happen any time there’s a conservative publication under attack. (They do champion some liberal speech, too, but with less consistency.) I’ve followed their work for a while, and this week their champion cause is Tufts University’s conservative newspaper, The Primary Source. Back in December 2006, the paper ran an (unsigned) Christmas carol parody, like they do every year. This year’s: “O Come All Ye Black Folk.” Some of the more choice lines: “O Come All Ye Black Folk/Boisterous yet Desirable” and “All come! Blacks, we need you/Born into the ghetto/O Jesus! We need you now to fill our racial quotas.” Just a little light-hearted humor satirizing affirmative action policies, right?
Faster than you can say Don Imus, the paper apologizes (poorly) and retracts the carol. Now the firestorm is over a parody of the Muslim student organization’s ad ? during Islamic Awareness Week, no less ? highlighting Muslims’, ahem, contributions to militant terrorism. But instead of being just rightfully upset, the group took the conservative newspaper to court. Campus court, that is. The MSAT is claiming, along with another student citing the un-jolly carol, that The Primary Source creates a “hostile environment.”
In a meeting that took nearly 5 hours, both sides defended their position, with more people coming to rally for sanctions against the Source. While this isn’t grounds to call Tufts the boot camp for “totalitarian secret police to try to shutter the opposition newspapers,” nothing is gained by a Tufts student saying she didn’t like the discussion sparked by the carol about ? tadow! ? affirmative action.
Should we silence people? No, definitely not. Should we understand that with great power (the First Amendment) comes great responsibility (i.e. don’t be patently offensive under the guise of bad parody. See also: Don Imus)? Obviously. Should this be a great moment on campus to open talk about “inclusivity” and diversity and what free speech and really have a meeting of the minds? Guh. I think TPS is content to run its unsigned gutter humor in a lame attempt to be biting, and as student you can hold them accountable for their actions or promptly ignore them.
My critical race theory professor today put it best today: sometimes we’ve had enough Teaching Moments?.
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.
Wrong incorrect
Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., is investigating a “politically incorrect” party off-campus on Jan. 16 in which people dressed up as the their favorite offensive character. Of course, someone had to show up in KKK garb with a blackfaced-up friend in tow in a noose. The Black Liberation Affairs Committee (BLAC = best acronym ever) is, naturally, a little upset. The party-goers say it wasn’t racism but rather satire and, like most satire on racism (see The Princetonian), it was done poorly and seen as actual racism.
But what makes this different is the dialogue happening now as a result. Everything is on the table, and the MC Student Government is using this as a springboard to talk about things like “white trash” parties and “pimps & hos” get-ups. But Mac Weekly writer Hasim Aqeel thinks that’s missing the point, too: political correctness is bad, but political incorrectness is not the solution. People, according to his piece, seemed genuinely shocked that anyone might have a problem with the satire, and thought that the letter from the President denouncing the party was the real culprit of “souring … the ‘lighthearted’ affair:
Was it this belief, that anything goes as long as it is intended to be politically incorrect, that prevented more students from telling the administration? Or was it the pervasive ? and very politically correct?current that causes many Mac students to shy away from ?multicultural? issues just because they are not students of color?
At least this coverage might encourage people to think twice before throwing a party with some dumb theme. But then does it become a white-people-are-terrified situation? Is the terror deserved? Let me know what you think.
An ominous beginning
This wasn’t how this was supposed to begin.
I had promised myself ? don’t let your first post be about diversity. Don’t mention racism, and by God, don’t write anything that will label you as a minority. But this is just too much to pass up.
University after university after university have found themselves hosting a different type of celebrating for Martin Luther King, Jr. Each, ahem, alternative observances had its own brand of offensiveness. At Tarleton, the photos (originally uploaded to Facebook, naturally) had women dressed up like Aunt Jemima, wearing shirts that proclaiming “I love chicken” while housing 40s wrapped in brown paper bags. “Bullets and Bubbly” was a less straight-up-racist and more let’s-throw-one-back-for-ghetto-culture-wink-wink, but definitely had it’s winners for the prize of quickest untagging of photos. At Clemson: gold-tipped grills, bandanas wrapped around fake dreads, TuPac t-shirts, butts stuffed with whoknowswhat to Sir Mix-A-Lot proportions and even a good ol’ fashioned blackface. Wait, is it still blackface if you paint your whole body?
Is there really anything to be said for all of this? Offensive as these pictures are ? and don’t get me wrong, they are offensive ? the behaviors exhibited in these get defended in a number of typical ways. They didn’t mean “any racial harm,” no one was excluded, and really, their black friend(s) started the tradition, so they thought they could be in on the joke. You know, like Chappelle?
The cycle at the end of this too predictabe. Racism (or insert any illegal/terrible activity that commonly takes place in college) is celebrated, goes unnoticed by any in attendance. Dolt uploads photos to Facebook, community backlash, stern letter from president of college saying we-don’t-know-if-it’s-racist-but-we’d-better-not-see-it-again, ‘divided’ or ‘tense’ meetings with black student groups and other (minority) allies having to justify their outrage over something so patently offensive I could just spit.
The part that gets the most play is the So What? So What if these kids were having a little fun at the expense of non-party-attending member of a particular race? So What if no one got hurt. Hazing (another dangerous word to toss out on the first blog post) and binge drinkers claim more lives yearly than white-on-black crime, and getting upset about this every time someone gets offended is silly. Racism will always exist.
Right. It will. Just not here. Colleges and universities are privileged communities, and anyone who says they are not must not have ever been denied by one. You choose to wear that orange and purple ? and with those colors, that’s commitment ? you also choose to abide by those rules. We don’t play this game. This is not high school. These are not the streets. You don’t run here. But regardless of how many blind eyes an administration turns, college is a community where all should feel safe. And safe means I don’t have to be concerned that you guys think it’s real funny to snicker about what border I crossed or whether you should be making a phone-call to Homeland Security. And please note: I said safe. I didn’t say welcome. You can invite me over for buckets of KFC and some Old E all you want, but I’ll pass. I prefer Popeye’s.
Feed for College Ave.