Simply mention the name Glenn Beck on Ithaca College’s campus and watch the snickers and sneers of those around you as if you are an individual of low intelligence for whom they have pity. Many on the campus consider the political commentator Glenn Beck an idiot, a crazy man or a fearmonger.
There’s no doubt offshore drilling for oil is dangerous. The implications for the environment, the people employed by the industry and those inhabiting surrounding areas are all equally disastrous and harmful.
Televisions show the streets of Lower Manhattan packed with passionate Americans both for and against the Muslim community center known as Park51. In one corner, supporters raise signs that read “Defend Muslims” and “Stop Islamophobia.” Opponents chant, “USA, USA!” in another.
Why are 20-year-olds taking longer to grow up? This is what Robin Marantz Henig asked readers of the New York Times Magazine, while citing that we 20-somethings are traveling and avoiding commitments instead of starting careers and having families. We are no longer following the traditional “timetable for adulthood” of “completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child,” all by the time we’re 30 years old.
Ithaca College was recently ranked with five stars for being lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender-friendly. The college was one of 19 universities in the country to receive five stars, but I wasn’t too surprised by the ranking. I have worked with The Office of Residential Life to help establish a learning community on campus for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender students and their allies, known as House of Roy. As an LGBT student and through my work with Residential Life, I have realized how much faculty and Residential Life care about students regardless of whether we identify as LGBT or not.
This past May, I was invited to be part of a team of Yale University interns working in the Negev Desert for a non-profit to more adequately combat gender-specific issues in Bedouin communities. This organization, Amerat Al-Sahara, or Princesses of the Desert, was created by a Bedouin woman nearly 10 years ago to combat cultural practices such as forced marriage, polygamy and “honor killings” that afflict the Bedouin communities in Israel.
For the past 18 years, I have had the privilege of teaching the course “Gender Issues in Sport” to students at Ithaca College. Our unit on Title IX and its impact on federally funded school athletic programs is always a bit of a roller coaster ride, with the end result being a moment when some — sometimes almost all — students realize that they may be far more educated about the requirements of Title IX than college athletics directors, coaches and maybe even presidents. I have become increasingly confident that students are more literate in Title IX’s legislative history and requirements as they pertain to participation and also in the areas of coach compensation and sexual harassment than many working in college and university athletics departments.
