Rocking the Boat

Students have always pushed the envelope in higher education and are free to express themselves within the academic environment.

However, it’s important for every student to know that the selection committee for a graduate program consists of people.

These people have opinions and these people have the power to accept or refuse your admittance. Don’t annoy them!

It’s sad that the young man was eliminated from enrollment because of his opinions but the school obviously has a reputation to uphold.

I’m all for free speech in a large, public university where students have many avenues of expression. However, in smaller, private institutions with strict religious backgrounds, students have to conform to the school’s standards.

Regards, Donnell Duncan, Founder and President, The Cracked Door, “If the Door is Cracked, The Door is Open”

Donnell Duncan, Civil Engineering (Structures) Graduate at Georgia Institute of Technology, at 9:30 am EDT on October 4, 2005

Hard-science v soft-science — there is a difference

Engineering is built on hard science, not on soft science. In the soft sciences, you can get dozens, if not hundreds, of competing theories, many of which conflict on an endless basis.

The soft-sciences fail to clearly explain this to students — one wonders why. It was obviously not clear to the previous poster.

As for the student in the Le Moyne case — one wonders why he just doesn’t enroll in one of the many M.Ed. programs available online. There are dozens to chose from.

B.J.S., Career counselor at Mega State U, at 1:05 pm EDT on October 4, 2005

BJS,

Two points. In many families and cultures it is dishonorable to enroll in an on-line program of any sort because, for better or worse, they are viewed as inferior. For example, I would be extremely disappointed and ashamed if any relative enrolled in an online program.

Secondly, while some people think that “soft” sciences are an excuse to have a drum circle and talk about one’s feelings, if done properly, they utilize the same methods of hypothesis and testing that “hard” sciences do. Likewise, there are often many competing theories in “hard” sciences that have not been “disproved.” Obviously philosophy of science is quite a complex philosophical area, so I don’t see why you are giving it a brush off as if it doesn’t matter.

Larry, at 2:00 pm EDT on October 4, 2005

one never ceases to be amazed...

Yes, I suppose it is disturbing to learn that in 2005 there’s a graduate student with unpleasant opinions about education. But he’s only one individual who, apparently, expressed those opinions in clean language (no epithets, no “fighting words,” etc.), in an academic paper. LeMoyne College is, on the other hand, an institution of higher learning expressing its disapproval of that student’s opinion not by letting it fend for itself against the more enlightened outlooks of his peers, but rather by expelling him. That abrogration of the student’s right to free speech is, to me, far more shocking than the student’s opinions themselves.

Emboldened by the judge’s decision, will the college now expel a graduate education student who opines in a paper that, say, bilingual education is harmful for students who, he thinks, should be learning English as a first priority? Or that one-room, K-12 schoolhouses should be brought back? Or that (LeMoyne being a Catholic college) a pregnant high school girl should be counseled that abortion is an option? Or whatever.

The poster who wrote,..."in education you will find every race, creed and beliefs and they are equal” seems to believe, like the pig in Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” that some beliefs are more equal—that is, more deserving of free-speech protection—than others. He also wrote, “Education is not property of the Vatican.” Well, LeMoyne College seems to be acting very much like the Vatican at its worst: excommunicating (expelling) somebody whose views are at odds with its own.

LeMoyne’s expelling the student is also, in practical terms, pretty stupid. Rather than having to stick around to defend his minority-of-one opinions about corporal punishment and multiculturalism to his professors and graduate peers, the student now goes off, feeling like a martyr, to (I’ll bet) the arms of David Horowitz, “the Academic Bill of Rights,” and other entities convinced that academe is one big, censorious PC cabal. They’ll have yet one more believer and one more injustice to cite. Well done, LeMoyne! And well done, the judge “who simply told the idiot – you made your bed, now sleep in it – do not visit upon the court – you are not welcomed"! (Talk about a throwback to the days of segreation! I can almost see the black sharecropper being escorted, by Bull Connor, from the courtroom in Selma after being told exactly that by a Jim Crow judge.)

Mort Sahl once said that liberals are people who do the right thing for the wrong reason in order to feel good for 15 seconds. No longer true. Nowadays, you have to change “right thing” to “wrong thing” and lengthen the time of feeling self-righteously good to a whole professorial career.

imedajinsokt, Mellon Distinguished Visiting Professor at Midelbury College, at 5:46 pm EDT on October 4, 2005