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Commencement weekend is hard to plan at the University of California, Los Angeles. The university now has so many separate identity-group graduations that scheduling them not to conflict with one another is a challenge. The women’s studies graduation and the Chicana/Chicano studies graduation are both set for 10 AM Saturday. The broader Hispanic graduation, “Raza,” is in near-conflict with the black graduation, which starts just an hour later.
Planning was easier before a new crop of ethnic groups pushed for inclusion. Students of Asian heritage were once content with the Asian–Pacific Islanders ceremony. But now there are separate Filipino and Vietnamese commencements, and some talk of a Cambodian one in the future. Years ago, UCLA sponsored an Iranian graduation, but the school’s commencement office couldn’t tell me if the event was still around. The entire Middle East may yet be a fertile source for UCLA commencements.
Not all ethnic and racial graduations are well attended. The 2003 figures at UCLA showed that while 300 of 855 Hispanic students attended, only 170 out of 1,874 Asian-Americans did.
Some students are presumably eligible for four or five graduations. A gay student with a Native American father and a Filipino mother could attend the Asian, Filipino, and American Indian ceremonies, plus the mainstream graduation and the Lavender Graduation for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered students.
Graduates usually wear identity-group markers—a Filipino stole or a Vietnamese sash, for instance, or a rainbow tassel at the Lavender event. Promoters of ethnic and racial graduations often talk about the strong sense of community that they favor. But it is a sense of community based on blood, a dubious and historically dangerous organizing principle.
The organizers also sometimes argue that identity-group graduations make sense for practical reasons. They say that about 3,000 graduating seniors show up for UCLA’s “regular” graduation, making it a massive and impersonal event. At the more intimate identity-group events, foreign-born parents and relatives hear much of the ceremony in their native tongues. The Filipino event is so small—about 100 students— that each grad gets to speak for 30 seconds.
But the core reason for separatist graduations is the obvious one: on campus, assimilation is a hostile force, the domestic version of American imperialism. On many campuses, identity-group training begins with separate freshman orientation programs for nonwhites, who arrive earlier and are encouraged to bond before the first Caucasian freshmen arrive. Some schools have separate orientations for gays as well. Administrations tend to foster separatism by arguing that bias is everywhere, justifying double standards that favor identity groups.
Four years ago Ward Connerly, then a regent of the University of California, tried to pass a resolution to stop funding of ethnic graduations and gay freshman orientations. He changed his mind and asked to withdraw his proposal, but the regents wanted to vote on it and defeated it in committee 6–3.
No major objections to ethnic graduations have emerged since. As in so many areas of American life, the preposterous is now normal.
That's a pretty amazing charge since most generally recognize American universities as liberal bastions that dogmatically demand political correctness from faculty and students.
I agree, the dogmatic claims and vociferous demands and general posturing is there
Unfortunately for the unwary and naive and trustful, there are very crafty ways to get around such demands. I attended a class where the professor had Affirmative action awards as part of his resume. However, I found him to be the biggest bigot of all the other bigots at that respected institution. How did he get away with it? I'll sum it up for you--tenure and the cooperation from most of the faculty who felt that tenure grants professors much more than what they should really be entitled to.
You also seem to forget that talk is cheap. Look at all the talking that was going on about democratic ideals and resounding statements about all men being created equal and entitled rights by virtue of being human while a large segment of the USA population was being held in cruel slavery. So please spare me the written claims guarantees action shpiel.
BTW
The article you give to support your view actually contradicts it. First the results are based merely on claims by the faculty members themselves. Second and more importantly, the views of these faculty members were not correlated with how they treat minority members or even on how they teach their courses. So the article is really useless in terms of lending support to your claim of academic fair treatment.
The article even admits that it isn't claiming that such findings are relevant
to student or faculty attitudes. So what we have here essentially is faculty opinion about itself when asked. Anything beyond that is your imagination. Below are excerpts from the article.
Excerpts
The study did not attempt to examine whether the political views of faculty members affect the content of their courses.
When asked about the findings, Jonathan Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors, said, "The question is how this translates into what happens within the academic community on such issues as curriculum, admission of students, evaluation of students, evaluation of faculty for salary and promotion." Knight said he isn't aware of "any good evidence" that personal views are having an impact on campus policies.
"It's hard to see that these liberal views cut very deeply into the education of students. In fact, a number of studies show the core values that students bring into the university are not very much altered by being in college."
It is exactly those core values that are levelled against minorities.
Given enough time I could find hundreds of examples where political correctness and tolerance to a fault is the dogma of the university community .I'll give you a couple .
SUNY -Albany has a S&M student association on campus without any objections at all from the school administration. A university spokeswoman said "As long as they abide by the student guidelines, they have a right to have their club officially recognized by the student association on campus and to be funded by the student association."
Administrators at Johns Hopkins University targeted the lone conservative campus newspaper, the Carrollton Record. The school confiscated copies of the Record when it revealed that university funds were paying for a campus appearance by a porno director. After rounding up the offending newspapers, the school restricted distribution of the paper.
In sharp contrast "The ALF Primer: Your Guide to Economic Sabotage and the Animal Liberation Front." is a terrorists publication funded by student fees by animal rights groups on the campus of the University of Oregon. This paper has not been targeted for restriction.
At San Francisco State, the College Republicans group was hauled up on charges after it sponsored an anti-terrorism rally. The administration accused the Republicans of "attempts to incite violence and create a hostile environment" and "actions of incivility." However, in 2004 when a mob of Arab students swarmed the College Republicans, screaming abuses and threats, campus police and the administration took no action.
College of William & Mary President Gene Nichol ordered a cross removed from the campus chapel. Shortly thereafter, he welcomed to campus a "Sex Workers Art Show" featuring topless women.
Perhaps the biggest example of it is the recent attempted lynching of the Duke Lacross players . Before any evidence was in a 88 members of the faculty wrote letters condemning the students. Clearly their race was the deciding factor to condemn them before the facts were known .Even after the facts were known that did not stop certain members of the faculty to attack the innocent students. Duke biology Professor Sheryl Broverman said :
'Since we haven't gone through a normal legal process, we don't know what really happened. The fact the charges were dropped doesn't mean nothing happened. It just means information wasn't collected appropriately enough to go forward.'
By a normal legal process one would have to conclude that she means someone gets prosecuted based on real evidence and not because of the political ambitions of the DA. That kind of "normal" legal process ?
Last October, Ph.D. student Stuart Ditsler posted a Barry quote on his office door that read, “As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government.” Within days, Philosophy Department Chair James South deemed the quote “patently offensive” and ordered its removal, all the while maintaining in an e-mail to Ditsler that “while I am a strong supporter of academic freedom, I’m afraid that hallways and office doors are not ‘free-speech zones.’”
We used today’s Campus Alert column in the New York Post to point out problems with Columbia University’s Teachers College student evaluation criteria, which includes the use of “dispositions” to evaluate its students. One such “disposition” the school uses is the student’s “Respect for Diversity and Commitment to Social Justice.”
This may sound admirable at first until one considers the subjectivity involved in such an evaluation. As we stated in Campus Alert:
This warps the discussion of whether a student might make a good teacher into whether that student has the “correct” personal, religious or political beliefs. Evaluating students’ aptitude for teaching based on their commitment to “social justice” necessarily means that only one definition of “social justice” counts: Teachers College’s definition, which demands that students recognize how “the legitimacy of the social order [is] flawed.”
No school demonstrated greater contempt for the rights of its students this past school year than Johns Hopkins University. In fact, Johns Hopkins nearly destroyed the academic career of one student this past fall—and all because of the student’s constitutionally protected speech on an outside Web site.
Torch readers undoubtedly remember our case at Johns Hopkins well. In November, junior Justin Park posted an invitation on Facebook.com that some found offensive, so the university suspended him for a year, required him to complete 300 hours of community service, attend a diversity workshop, read 12 books on diversity, and write a reflective paper on each book. The Johns Hopkins administration charged Park with harassment, intimidation, and failing to respect the rights of others. They followed up Park’s sham trial with the institution of a new “civility” code on campus, warning students that “[r]ude, disrespectful behavior is unwelcome and will not be tolerated.”
GLENDALE, Ariz., May 7, 2007—The Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) has placed a professor on forced administrative leave and has recommended that he be terminated for e-mailing a Thanksgiving message to his colleagues last November. On the day before Thanksgiving, Professor Walter Kehowski sent out the text of George Washington’s “Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789” and a link to the webpage where he’d found it—on Pat Buchanan’s web log. After several recipients complained of being offended by the e-mail, MCCCD found Kehowski guilty of violating the district’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policy and technology usage standards. Kehowski then contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.
“It simply boggles the mind that a professor could find himself facing termination simply for e-mailing the Thanksgiving address of our first president,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “This situation is an embarrassment to MCCCD and would be laughable if a professor’s most basic rights and very livelihood weren’t on the line.”
Given enough time I could find hundreds of examples where political correctness and tolerance to a fault is the dogma of the university community .I'll give you a couple .
SUNY -Albany has a S&M student association on campus without any objections at all from the school administration. A university spokeswoman said [i] "As long as they abide by the student guidelines, they have a right to have their club officially recognized by the student association on campus and to be funded by the student association." ]
Sure, all say ad infinitum. Words are cheap.
Quote:
Administrators at Johns Hopkins University targeted the lone conservative campus newspaper, the Carrollton Record. The school confiscated copies of the Record when it revealed that university funds were paying for a campus appearance by a porno director. After rounding up the offending newspapers, the school restricted distribution of the paper.
In sharp contrast "The ALF Primer: Your Guide to Economic Sabotage and the Animal Liberation Front." is a terrorists publication funded by student fees by animal rights groups on the campus of the University of Oregon. This paper has not been targeted for restriction.
What the above shows is inconsistency of policy which seems irresponsible at worse and whimsical at best.
Quote:
At San Francisco State, the College Republicans group was hauled up on charges after it sponsored an anti-terrorism rally. The administration accused the Republicans of "attempts to incite violence and create a hostile environment" and "actions of incivility." However, in 2004 when a mob of Arab students swarmed the College Republicans, screaming abuses and threats, campus police and the administration took no action.
Another irresponsible inconsistent policy which proves nothing other than administrative imbecility.
Quote:
College of William & Mary President Gene Nichol ordered a cross removed from the campus chapel. Shortly thereafter, he welcomed to campus a "Sex Workers Art Show" featuring topless women.
Approval of porno but intolerance of the Christian religion. Beautiful!
Quote:
Perhaps the biggest example of it is the recent attempted lynching of the Duke Lacross players . Before any evidence was in a 88 members of the faculty wrote letters condemning the students. Clearly their race was the deciding factor to condemn them before the facts were known .Even after the facts were known that did not stop certain members of the faculty to attack the innocent students. Duke biology Professor Sheryl Broverman said :
'Since we haven't gone through a normal legal process, we don't know what really happened. The fact the charges were dropped doesn't mean nothing happened. It just means information wasn't collected appropriately enough to go forward.'
By a normal legal process one would have to conclude that she means someone gets prosecuted based on real evidence and not because of the political ambitions of the DA. That kind of "normal" legal process ?
This is the only example which makes sense. Doesn't surprize me at all since overt discrimination isn't the modus operandi employed and I never said it was.
Damn, I could have went to FOUR different graduation ceromonies?!
S.U.N.Y 1986
the college and then Filippino, Chinese, Spanish.
But despite this, my parents, who emigrated here, have always instilled in me you're American first.
Who in there right mind wants to go to more than one?
Sorry, I've been to 3 graduation ceremony[s] this spring and it was torture.
Grace and Peace
The question is why do these colleges or universities feel it their duty to provide these separate ceremonies if the one ceremony in English is suffice for all? Certainly they do have a choice not to. So if they do there has to be a good reason for it. What do you think that reason is? Simply being politically correct in some mysterious but useless way?
BTW
It's "I could have gone...." not "I could have went...."
Commencement weekend is hard to plan at the University of California, Los Angeles. The university now has so many separate identity-group graduations that scheduling them not to conflict with one another is a challenge. The women’s studies graduation and the Chicana/Chicano studies graduation are both set for 10 AM Saturday. The broader Hispanic graduation, “Raza,” is in near-conflict with the black graduation, which starts just an hour later.
Planning was easier before a new crop of ethnic groups pushed for inclusion. Students of Asian heritage were once content with the Asian–Pacific Islanders ceremony. But now there are separate Filipino and Vietnamese commencements, and some talk of a Cambodian one in the future. Years ago, UCLA sponsored an Iranian graduation, but the school’s commencement office couldn’t tell me if the event was still around. The entire Middle East may yet be a fertile source for UCLA commencements.
Not all ethnic and racial graduations are well attended. The 2003 figures at UCLA showed that while 300 of 855 Hispanic students attended, only 170 out of 1,874 Asian-Americans did.
Some students are presumably eligible for four or five graduations. A gay student with a Native American father and a Filipino mother could attend the Asian, Filipino, and American Indian ceremonies, plus the mainstream graduation and the Lavender Graduation for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered students.
Graduates usually wear identity-group markers—a Filipino stole or a Vietnamese sash, for instance, or a rainbow tassel at the Lavender event. Promoters of ethnic and racial graduations often talk about the strong sense of community that they favor. But it is a sense of community based on blood, a dubious and historically dangerous organizing principle.
The organizers also sometimes argue that identity-group graduations make sense for practical reasons. They say that about 3,000 graduating seniors show up for UCLA’s “regular” graduation, making it a massive and impersonal event. At the more intimate identity-group events, foreign-born parents and relatives hear much of the ceremony in their native tongues. The Filipino event is so small—about 100 students— that each grad gets to speak for 30 seconds.
But the core reason for separatist graduations is the obvious one: on campus, assimilation is a hostile force, the domestic version of American imperialism. On many campuses, identity-group training begins with separate freshman orientation programs for nonwhites, who arrive earlier and are encouraged to bond before the first Caucasian freshmen arrive. Some schools have separate orientations for gays as well. Administrations tend to foster separatism by arguing that bias is everywhere, justifying double standards that favor identity groups.
Four years ago Ward Connerly, then a regent of the University of California, tried to pass a resolution to stop funding of ethnic graduations and gay freshman orientations. He changed his mind and asked to withdraw his proposal, but the regents wanted to vote on it and defeated it in committee 6–3.
No major objections to ethnic graduations have emerged since. As in so many areas of American life, the preposterous is now normal.
Interesting article…so many people just can’t bear the idea of being, ‘left-out’- when I couldn’t bear the idea of being included in some controlling, follow the rules organization that saps a person’s individuality.
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