January 19, 2006

• *writes down Koko's name*
• They've been wanting to do this for some time. As much as I disapprove of the methods, I think PUBLIC universities should attempt to remain apolitical in their affairs with students, and I'm certain some professors cross the line.... except when its their job to cross the line. And since those classes are not confidential, I'm not sure how you can stop this.
• Are you now, or have you ever been, in Mr. Stevens' 10 a.m. M-W-F Intro to Comparative Literature class?
• Oh, I plan to take the $100 and lie. There are a couple conservative professors that could be secretly promoting the liberal agenda.
• Who had that original thought?! WHO?! We'll stay here all night until one of you steps up if we have to!!
• Really, this is idiocy and can be ignored, I think. It's not against the law to tape a professor's presentation, so far as I know; nor, do I think, can professors be removed for political leanings, however inappropriately the classroom might be for their display; nor, do I think, does the First Amendment disappear when one enters a lecture hall; nor are college students complete blank slates, waiting naively to be inducted into the Red Menace. And hey, this might be a way for kids to earn a little extra cash, which never hurts.
• *reads further* $50 for notes? This dude's going to have a line of "informants" that stretches down the block. Especially near the end of the month, or when some particularly good pot is making the rounds.
• *digs up old notes, waits for check*
• *fills baggie with oregano and law clippings, write "pete" on it in with a Sharpie*
• it's the "law" clippings that *really* get you high, dude!
• sounds like good old-fashioned bullying to me.
• dude, i'm not feeling anything. And I ate like a pound of it.
• You ate it? There's your problem right there, petebest. You have to take it in a high colonic for the best effect.
• This dude's going to have a line of "informants" that stretches down the block. Well, they can use torture to weed out the true confessions from the false ones, right?
• This dude's going to have a line of "informants" that stretches down the block. Well, they can use torture to weed out the true confessions from the false ones, right?
• This dude's going to have a line of "informants" that stretches down the block. Well, they can use torture to weed out the true confessions from the false ones, right?
• Whoa. I've been smoking too many law clippings. I'm seeing triple.
• It's not against the law to tape a professor's presentation, so far as I know There is another, better article on this somewhere else which i dont feel like looking up- but it is a) against UCLA rules to tape classes for non-academic reasons and b) against CA law to tape people without their permission. The other funny part of that article was that they mentioned the group had raised $22,000! if that's the best you can do, especially from a school with some insanely rich alumni, I dont think you need to be taken very seriously.
• 'Bout time we round up all them damn librul biology professors fer refusin to teach Intelligent Design... (I'll note, however, that tactic this has striking similarities to Larry Flint's bounty on conservatives a few years back.)
• ..I'm seeing triple. Triple underpants!! Jackpot!!
• I can't believe these whiny conservatives who can't seem to accept that people in positions of authority don't agree with them. Boo freakin' hoo. I graduated from UCLA in '97, having been there the four years of my life that I was my most rabidly conservative, libertarian, pro-de-regulation, anti-social services and welfare Republican self. I would say I've grown up a fair bit since then, but even when I was there I wasn't being a baby about professors who talked, even then, that communism was a superior form of government and that Marx's ideas of capital were this close to being Holy Writ. Students in universities are nearly all adults, and if they're not smart enough to think for themselves despite whatever attempts at indoctrination are thrown at them (from all 4 quadrants of the political plane), they have no place in an institution of higher learning.
• This is just another in a series of websites and movements that attempt to "prove the readical leftist bias in American universities" (never mind that your idea and my idea of "leftist" may be completely different...) The first one I was aware of was NoIndoctrination. Watching the complains evolve on that site has been facinating. At first, it was mainly, "my teacher implied that white men aren't perfect!" Since 9/11, however, it has turned into "My teacher doesn't like the president!" and/or "My teacher thinks the war in Iraq is wrong!" The other major player in this is David Horowitz and his Students for Academic Freedom. The best part of these complains is that in most cases it asks what the student did, the student generally says they didn't do anything or say anything because they were afraid to speak up. Who knew that being afraid to speak your mind was a reason to post anonymously on a website and complain? Horowitz came to IU last year promoting his Academic Bill of Rights. I went to the talk and basically the guy made no logical sense at all. He started off by saying "the left was responsible for millions of deaths" and never explained what he meant by that. Throughout his speach he constantly conflated "the left" (again whatever that empty signifier means) with communism and even nazi-ism, so I can only assume the millions of deaths was some sort of reference either to the Holocaust or the people killed in the Soviet Union under communist rule. He also gave an example of someone in Pennslyvania showing Farenheit 9/11 in a class and then said, "And that's your tuition money paying for it!" So my tuition at IU -- Indiana University, in Indiana -- pays for a college in Pennsylvania??? If that is true I think higher education has more problems than biased teaching! He kept talking about himself as an outsider and how schools don't pay for him to come because of this blacklist at schools. And then he said that well, yes, the IU events board was sponsoring his talk... Since his whole point in coming there was to convince us that Indiana needs to pass his proposed law, it was odd that he made statements like that, could only find examples of bias from the east or west coast, and said things like, "there were no conservative professors at IU" even though IU is home to the Kelly School of Business who surely has a fair number of conservatives (including a guy who stirred up a lot of trouble by stating some horribly uninformed statements about homosexuality...). During the question and answer period, whenever someone tried to disagree with him he said things like, "Oh, aren't you so smart..." Them's nice debating skills there... I'm not saying that college profs are perfect. However, I've never been afraid to disagree with a prof and I seem to be doing just fine in my phd program. Many college profs have never had a single class on how to teach, so it isn't suprising that some of them suck.
• Well, they can use torture to weed out the true confessions from the false ones, right?
• Looks like the profs have nothing to worry about.
• So you're saying that ratting out your teachers to the New McCarthyist Inquisitors is a complex literary task of which 50-75% of the student body would be incapable?
• I think it's great. No more donating blood for drugs.
• The money would be better spent on the football program.
• Tenacious Pettle, I can anecdotally confirm that article. I used to work in a call center for a bank credit card department near an ivy league college. My favorite phone call with a 19-year old IVY LEAGUE college girl: Her: Uh, I'm calling because my credit card doesn't work. Me: Well, I'm looking at your account here, and it looks like you're over your credit limit. Her: Over my what? Me: Your credit limit. Her: What does that mean. Me: You've spent more with your card than your account allows. Her: What are you telling me? Me: That you have no more credit available on your card. Her: Look, just tell me what my dad has to do so that this card will start working again. I've also been installing an ATM at said Ivy League university, and had students try to use the ATM while it's being wheeled down a ramp from the back of the delivery truck. It's an illiteracy of life skills, and it's kind of scary. As far as ratting out instructors, it seems kind of cheap. But then I don't know that I think instructors should be using a class as a political platform unless that's the actual class material.
• had students try to use the ATM while it's being wheeled down a ramp from the back of the delivery truck. This is the most beautiful example of stupidity I have heard in a very long time. That belongs on Techsupport Comedy and WorkOrSpoon!
• I teach in a couple of fields that are, pretty much by their nature, moderate to left wing politically. People don't go into these fields unless they have an interest in these politics, not because you are required to agree to succeed in them (there is always plenty of disagreement and debate!), but because people who completely oppose the politics don't think they're valid fields of study. I teach at a university with, for the most part, a very conservative student body. Students are required to take classes in at least one of my fields because my university believes in a well-rounded education. Some students believe that having to take these classes is a form of punishment or indoctrination -- they don't think that they're simply being offered different points of view, but think they're being forced into political manipulation. Because of this, teachers in my fields face a lot of resistance, and occasional hostility. I can understand this, and do my best to work with it -- I don't demand that my students agree with me. I just want them to enter into a dialogue with me and with the class materials instead of rejecting them out of hand. As jccalhoun said, lots of college profs stink -- if you've been to school, you've had a lousy teacher. These teachers no doubt use the classroom as a front to push a political agenda. (I've been in classes where left and right wing agendas were pushed, and even though I agree with one more than another both annoyed me equally.) That said, I think that what this group is trying to do is not cool. If students have a problem with how I teach my class, I want them to come to me -- not some outside group. That doesn't help me become a better teacher or help the student understand my motives and methods. The person leading this group is very young, and seems to have little interest in the quality of students' educations beyond political content. /soapbox
• It's an illiteracy of life skills, and it's kind of scary. That's what frightens me the most, too. I weep for US education because of, well, the whole generation of kids who know nothing about irony other than what they learned from that Alanis Morrissette song, for instance. But it's really just the lack of knowledge about basic life stuff like that that really casts a dark cloud on the horizon. Ask any bank teller how many customers he/she has who don't know how to balance a checkbook, never looked at a statement, don't know how to properly fill out a check or deposit slip, or think they've still got money as long as they've got checks. Ask any librarian or book store clerk how many people come asking for a book, "I don't know the title or author, but it had a green cover...." Fundamental reasoning skills and stuff that you just really have to know in order to be a grownup, gone.
• I'm ready to sell my ucla department out--where do I sign up?
• Doesn't look like there's anyone on the BAA "hitlist" from any south campus department, mandyman. I was hoping they'd rat out at least someone in Physics and Astronomy.... perhaps the E&M prof I had who devoted an entire lecture to his weird mystical view on consciousness and spirituality. In E&M. How's that for bringing up a political/religious view that's impertinent to the subject at hand. E&M!
• He even had slides for the overhead projector with weird little semi-stickfigure people with waves of energy coming out of their heads. And I don't mean field lines.
• Heh. I LOVE TEACH!
• jccalhoun, check this out: the Pennsylvania legislators called Horowitz's bluff by holding hearings. Horowitz has said several times that a biology professor at Pennsylvania State University used a class session just before the 2004 election to show the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, but he acknowledged Tuesday that he didn’t have any proof that this took place. In a phone interview, Horowitz said that he had heard about the alleged incident from a legislative staffer and that there was no evidence to back up the claim. I have a feeling this incident might be related to the one we're discussing: an attempt, perhaps, to scare up some concrete, provable examples that the brainy left-wing types are out to getcha.
• Meanwhile, over in the Business School, they're allegedly handing out Richie Rich comic books.
• students try to use the ATM while it's being wheeled down a ramp from the back of the delivery truck. Holy Crap! What th- . . . ???? I now believe that I should be way - way richer than I am.
• Well, that fucker Scrooge McDuck kept screwing up Business Ethics.
• Well, then you guys will love the times where I've had a drive-through ATM in several dozen pieces strewn across a drive-up lane, and had not one but a long succession of customers pull up, get out of the car, walk over, examine the pieces, look at the gaping hole where the ATM front usually is, wave an ATM card around and say "So, is the ATM working?"
• Just reach in and grab me a few twentys, Lara. That's all I need. Ta.
• I've been in classes where left and right wing agendas were pushed, and even though I agree with one more than another both annoyed me equally. So have I. Last Thursday, actually, and with a professor I generally like and respect. It almost makes me want to vote Conservative on Monday just to counter what seems to me to be an arrogant attitude, that is, that preaching political views to a class is somehow valuable or educational. Or that one professor's opinion matters more than the class I paid for.