My University, UNC-Wilmington, needs to change its name to The University of No Competition Whatsoever. We could still use the UNCW logo but our full name would more accurately reflect our educational priorities. We already undermine economic competition by promoting Marxism. But now we are considering cutting athletic competition in order to preserve diversity spending in the midst of state budget cuts.
The local Wilmington (North Carolina) McTimes recently reported on a proposal floating through the ranks of the university administration. The following sentence summarizes the gist of the spending cuts, which are expected to save $800,000 annually:
"UNCW would no longer field teams in men's indoor track; men's cross country; men's and women's swimming and diving and softball if the university's Board of Trustees approves the Intercollegiate Athletics Review Committee's recommendations."
Many people are upset at the proposal due to the fact that the men's swimming and diving team has won 12 consecutive CAA titles. They wonder why we would cut the most successful program on campus (athletic or otherwise) while leaving failed programs intact. Their concerns are merited but they miss two other repercussions of the cuts, which will overshadow the loss of our swimming and diving team. I discuss each below:
Blacks and track. We can't cut the men's track programs because most of the black male students at UNCW are on the track team. Maybe there are more black male students than I am aware of - perhaps several more are hiding in the African American Center in order to escape the racial oppression they learn about in African American Studies classes. But most black guys I see at UNCW are running around the track. We need to retain these high visibility black guys. The only other place you usually see black males is on the UNCW website - and I think some of those black guys were imported for PR purposes.
Lesbians and softball. Cutting the women's softball team will kill our efforts to promote homosexual diversity. Our women's softball games attract more lesbians than an Indigo Girls concert. If we get rid of the softball program we will lose over half of our real lesbians. We'll still have a few thousand temporary lesbians but those don't count. They are only lesbians for a few years in college because of the two-to-one campus girl-to-guy ratio.
Since a campus full of white temporary lesbians does little to promote diversity, we need to keep the track and softball teams. But where will the $800,000 in spending cuts come from? Naturally, I have all the answers.
My proposed cuts are listed below in no particular order of importance:
Close the Upperman African American Center. Most of the dozen or so black people we have on campus are too well-hidden. Instead of hiding from white people in a "blacks only" lounge, they should be circulating on campus with everyone else. Closing the Upperman Center will save a couple of hundred thousand a year. Plus, when our black students start to integrate with others we can take pictures of them and post them on the website. No more importing black people for PR purposes.
Close the LGBTQIA Center. These guys spent way too much money last year trying to defeat Amendment One. Now that they have lost, we should shut down this office, which is really nothing more than a lobbying center for gay politics – one that occasionally sponsors a few masturbation seminars to relieve the pressure of high-stress political lobbying. The closure will save us another hundred thousand or so and help us keep the swimming and diving program afloat. After all, we should be rewarding athletic winners instead of rewarding political losers.
Fire Coach Peterson immediately. Finally, we should fire our basketball coach, Buzz Peterson. He can't seem to coach basketball and stay on top of the academic performance of his players. Cutting him would get us halfway to the goal of saving $800,000 per year on our educational budget. Plus, we really don't need a coach named "Buzz" at a school that is notorious for partying.
Many would say that my savings plan has a flaw because we would need to hire another basketball coach to replace Buzz Peterson. But I disagree with that assessment. Under my plan, we would just let the basketball players coach themselves. They couldn't do much worse than they are doing right now. Plus, we'd be able to experiment with utopian society by declaring everyone on the team to be equals.
I'm sure everyone would share the ball equally under my new athletic budget reduction plan. But when your only goal is diversity and inclusion who cares about winning games anyway?
Not all liberals are created equal. Some make an occasional stupid remark. Others have the capacity to make a lot of stupid remarks without reloading. An example of the latter is my boss, UNC Chancellor Thomas Ross. As a former Professor of Public Law and Government, he cannot be accused of mere bias when he makes demonstrably false statements about matters of public policy. Instead, the public must recognize that he is not just biased but also grossly incompetent. Because his incompetence threatens the safety of all people who come to UNC campuses, including small children, he should be replaced immediately.
Ross recently made a public statement in response to new NC House legislation that would ease restrictions on concealed carry (CCW) permits on our college campuses. One change in the CCW law would allow the permit holder to keep a weapon in the trunk of his car while on university property. Although the bill does not fully remove all campus restrictions on permit holders, Ross had the audacity to say the following:
“We have an obligation to provide a safe environment for our students and employees, and every UNC campus has a trained police force charged with promoting the safety of all people who come onto our campuses. All UNC Chancellors and Chiefs of Police believe allowing guns on campus would increase the risk to public safety and hamper our ability to protect not only our students, staff ,and faculty, but also campus visitors, including parents, siblings of students, and summer camp participants. Vehicle break-ins are one of the leading crimes on college campuses, and even guns brought lawfully onto campus, as contemplated by this bill, could fall into the wrong hands and result in serious injury or death."
We do indeed have an obligation to provide a safe environment for students and employees. That is why we need to relax totalitarian policies that selectively violate the Second Amendment by stripping the rights of law abiding adult students to protect themselves and others by carrying a concealed weapon. They should not be sitting ducks just because they chose to further their education on campuses made dangerous by progressive ideology.
Sixteen refereed publications show that CCW laws reduce violence. Zero refereed publications show that they increase violence. In other words, the laws are good for the public. Shouldn't Tom Ross, a former Professor of Public Law, know what laws are good for the public? Of course, Ross probably does know the research but refuses to share it with the public. In other words, he does not want others to conceal weapons while he conceals the truth. It elevates hypocrisy to a Zen art when a university system president decides to lead by feigning ignorance and suppressing his knowledge of academic research.
Students should not be made vulnerable to rape in order to preserve the ideological purity of overpaid public servants. Of course, the self-serving propagandist has no real interest in serving the public.
While we are on the subject of rape, all university Police Chiefs believe that most campus rape accusations are false. But they won't say that because college campuses are the most politically charged workplaces in America. Put simply, a university police chief will lose his job if he speaks his mind. And that is relevant to the present debate. Many UNC law enforcement officers support the right to carry on campus. I spoke to one last night and he was simply aghast at Ross' statement. But he knows that anyone who opposes Ross will lose his job. Clearly, Ross knows he does not have the unanimous support of the campus law enforcement community. He is simply misleading the public that pays his salary.
I'm glad Ross brought children into the debate. Summer camp participants need protection, too. If the data show that CCW laws reduce crime then we must take the data seriously. Other than having homosexual camp leaders in the Boy Scouts, I can't imagine a better way to protect young campers than having capable guardians with CCW permits. When Ross plays the summer camp card, he is begging the question. He simply assumes CCW laws increase crime or, more accurately, assumes we are ignorant of the fact that they decrease crime.
Now is a good time to recall that a few years ago our campus hosted the rapper Ludicris who sang about shooting b*tches and hoes with his 9mm. In fact, he was paid $130,000 to sing about killing b*tches and hoes. Surely, we can let CCW permit holders on campus for free. Research shows that they seldom shoot their b*tches.
I am also glad Ross brought up burglary. Break-ins do occur on campus. But that is no reason to ban guns from campus. Burglary is one of the crimes reduced by having CCW laws. It cannot be used as an excuse to negate CCW laws on campus. That would be like killing both your parents and asking the court to show you mercy because you are an orphan. If we allowed CCW laws to be fully operative on campus, those burglars would be far more likely to be apprehended, convicted, and imprisoned. Then crime would go down and Ross would probably issue a statement lamenting the fact that "so many people are in prison despite the fact that crime is down."
But Ross continues his mendacity – and I'll respond, after you read the following:
“In addition, a number of UNC campuses house early college high schools, middle schools, or summer camps for younger children. The presence of these young people further heightens our concerns about the safety risks that come with guns getting into the wrong hands. Moreover, when responding to an armed robbery or active shooter incident, our officers would often be hard pressed to distinguish between a criminal suspect and well-intentioned bystanders with weapons drawn, particularly in the heat of the moment. The potential for tragedy far outweighs any potential benefit or convenience to concealed-carry permit holders. We encourage the General Assembly to remove the provision that would allow guns to be brought onto UNC and other college and university campuses.”
Children should not be used as human political shields unless the cause is liberal. I mean, liberals have always cared more about children. That's why they abort them by the millions. They don't want them to be born into a world where they could get shot at a UNC summer camp because some Tea Bagger forgot to lock his Glock in the glove box of his Ford F150. Seriously, Tom Ross, if you cared about children, you would shut down all the UNC Women's Centers that “center” on pro-abortion politics. And, while you’re at it, get your anti-gun laws off my body!
Shoot outs last a really long time. In fact, the average shootout takes about an hour, which is long enough for most UNC police officers to finish eating their donuts, flirting with coeds, and finally arrive at the scene of the crime. And then its mayhem! Barney Fife can't tell the good guy from the bad guy. He's shaking like a suspected Christian in a UNC student conduct hearing! (Sarcasm = off. Now back to reality).
As a professor who teaches criminal law, I use hypotheticals all the time. But they need to be at least somewhat realistic in order to be persuasive. When the police are not around and a permit holder encounters a shooter the incident is typically over in seconds and long before the UNC officer finishes writing a traffic ticket in order to raise money for the new Gay and Lesbian Resource Center.
But Ross is right when he says that the current controversy involves an important trade off. He is willing to trade the safety of students in exchange for preserving the dreams of children. Of course, I'm talking about the children who teach at universities and refuse to grow up and face the reality that we live in a fallen world where utopia is impossible and guns are necessary.
Some say the third time is a charm. So I've tried to be a little more charming in my third book than I was in my first two. Make no mistake about it, though: I'm glad to have written two hard-hitting books on life in the academy. The first was needed to expose the intellectual shallowness of the campus diversity movement. Another book was needed to chronicle the absurdity of campus feminism. But my latest book is written from the heart.
I see kids going off to college and losing their faith every year. I also see them adopting radical political positions soon after enrolling in college. I understand what they are going through because I went through the same thing thirty years ago. I abandoned my faith my very first semester in college. Later on, I embraced left wing politics that only made sense in conjunction with a secular worldview. But circumstances and, ultimately, Providence turned that all around.
In 1993, an unarmed fraternity brother of mine was shot and killed execution-style by the side of a highway near Starkville, Mississippi. I immediately abandoned my support for a full federal ban on handguns. In fact, I went out and bought my first revolver.
In 1994, I sat on my first university hiring committee and learned how race-based affirmative action really worked. I immediately abandoned my support of affirmative action.
In 1996, I abandoned atheism in a prison near Quito, Ecuador. I saw some human rights abuses in that prison but had no moral standard by which to judge them. I learned that day that there was a Moral Law that transcended cultural norms. I realized that it meant there must be a moral lawgiver.
I eventually made my way back into the church. It was largely an intellectual journey and it served me well when I got the call to enter the campus cultural wars shortly after 911. The details on how I got drawn into those wars are less important than the lessons I learned fighting them. First and foremost, I learned that the main problem in higher education is not that we don't teach religion at the university. The problem is that we teach false religion.
We teach kids that they may define the unborn as property if it will facilitate their sexual lifestyle or their economic well-being.
We teach kids that both their conduct and idea of right and wrong are determine by society and culture respectively.
We teach kids that man has the capacity to construct a utopian society so long as he is freed from the constraining idea that he is broken by sin and separation from God.
All of this is dangerous because it amounts to self-worship. That is dangerous because it requires a rejection of God, not just a rejection of tradition. Somewhere in the process, the idea of inalienable rights gets lost. Rights suddenly come from man. And that means man can take them away. These ideas have consequences.
Because the secular progressive worldview is so pervasive and because I was once led astray by it, I decided to write Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don’t Understand. It all began when a young man had an angry outburst in one of my classes. He was angry over something he learned in college that simply wasn't true. After I wrote to him asking him to consider a different point of view, I realized it was wrong to only write to him. So I started writing to an entire generation. I published the final collection of thirty five letters as a book. Today is the official release date. (You can pick it up in any major book store, or just order here.)
I could have called it Letters from a Former Progressive. Because that's what my third book really is. I hope you read it and enjoy it. But I also hope you share it with a young progressive who is inclined to protest things he really doesn't understand.
Author’s Note: I firmly believe that most Americans are not Swift enough to appreciate social satire. I also believe that the best satire is based on real-life events. If you agree, would you prayerfully consider joining my support team? Being a wise acre is a full-time job.
Welcome back students! My name is Biff Latane and I am the campus director of Jesus Crew (or J. Cru for short) here at Denton State University (or DSU for short). Before I tell you more about J. Cru at DSU, I want to take a few minutes to apologize for an episode that occurred during our last meeting at the end of the last quarter.
Abortion is a sensitive issue and I want to assure everyone that it is an issue none of us will have to hear about again during our time together in J. Cru. Regrettably, there was a miscommunication that resulted in a pro-life speaker coming to address us last quarter. One of our officers made the decision to bring the speaker into our meeting. I was not aware abortion was to be discussed until I arrived late for the meeting approximately halfway through the speaker's presentation.
At first, I had no problem with what I heard. The speaker talked for a few minutes about the sanctity of life and the idea that life begins at conception. But then he crossed a line. He stated that RU-486 - even if used early in a pregnancy - results in the killing of an innocent human being. He also suggested that it is the moral equivalent of poisoning an infant. That crossed the line, in my opinion. It was graphic and offensive language that simply will not be tolerated in our meetings. We need to promote tolerance instead. Whether something is true is not as important as preserving an atmosphere of respect as far as I am concerned. I really believe that. And I'm sorry if anyone was offended by the speaker.
Some may have thought it was rude for me to interrupt the meeting and ask our speaker to leave in the middle of his speech. But I used my best judgment in aborting the speech and I have no regrets whatsoever. I can assure you nothing of the sort will ever happen again.
So enough of what we will not be doing this quarter. Let's talk about what we will be doing. First off, we will be distributing copies of Dan Muller's book Pink like Blues on campus. I love Dan's biographies. I've read all five of them. My favorite quote is the one where he says "If I ever leave Christianity, it will not be for intellectual reasons. Who knows anything anyway? I mean, like, whatever man." Dan is deep and I can't wait to share his work with students all over our campus. We need to make Christianity accessible by responding to the culture in which we live.
Ok, so that's our first big event on campus. In fact, our book distribution project is our only big event this quarter – aside from my periodic pleas for people to join my support team. So let’s make sure to do a lot of sidewalk chalking to promote it. In fact, that will give us another opportunity to get together again later and clean the sidewalks. There is a time to chalk and a time to de-chalk, I suppose.
As far as the rest of the quarter is concerned, we will be having our weekly meetings all quarter long. But instead of having them on Wednesday they will be moved to Monday. Apparently, the Abstinence Club had to have their meetings moved to Wednesday because they wanted to call it "no hump day." For the reasons I specified earlier, I have no additional comment. The best way to prevent unwanted discussions of abortion is to abstain from having discussions about sex. So let’s move on.
Monday meetings will take the form of pizza parties. We want to avoid Chick-fil-A (for obvious reasons). Clearly, everyone seems to like pizza and no one is offended by it. This brings me to the primary issue I need to discuss with you this evening.
It seems our national headquarters has received a letter from the corporate attorneys at J. Crew. We have been threatened with copyright infringement for printing "Jesus Crew" tee shirts and selling them at some of our campus events. So, for the second time in a few short years, we are forced to change our name in order to avoid conflict.
After much prayer and contemplation, Jesus Crew is changing its name to "The Campus Crusade for Crust." We decided to leave out the name of Jesus, which some consider to be offensive. Besides that, it's really about the pizza anyway. So thanks for coming everyone. Don’t forget to leave your pizza orders on the table before you go. Oh, and before I forget, let me leave you with one more question:
Does anyone feel led to join my support team? Organizing pizza parties is a full-time job
"'Whites Only' was written above a water fountain, 'N*gger Oven' was written inside the elevator, and 'No N*ggers' was written on a bathroom door" at one dormitory, according to the publication Oberlin Review (a student newspaper I once wrote for).
Swastikas and epithets were drawn on posters around the school. Activists implied the incidents were tied to Black History Month. The final straw? A menacing presence on campus who allegedly donned a "KKK hood" and robe near the segregated black dormitory known as "Afrikan Heritage House."
Oberlin President Marvin Krislov and three college deans ostentatiously published an "open letter" announcing the administration's decision to "suspend formal classes and non-essential activities." The campus body immediately jumped to conclusions and indulged in collective grievance-mongering. The New York Times, Black Entertainment Television and The Associated Press all piled on with angst-ridden coverage of the puzzling crimes at one of the first U.S. colleges to admit blacks and women.
Oberlin alumna Lena Dunham, a cable TV celebrity who starred in a pro-Obama ad likening her vote for him to losing her virginity, took to Twitter to rally her fellow "Obies." The Associated Press dutifully reported Dunham's plea as news: "Hey, Obies, remember the beautiful, inclusive and downright revolutionary history of the place you call home. Protect each other."
Michelle Malkin
Many of my friends and readers are disheartened by recent cultural and political trends. Many blame our universities and wonder whether we can ever restore sanity in our nation, given that the enemy seems to control the modern university. They see no chance to win in the war of ideas as long as they are forced to support the public university and, therefore, forced to fund a war against their own cherished values.
But I know something they don't know. The public university that has declined so steadily in recent years will cease to exist in just a few short decades. The moral bankruptcy we have seen over the last twenty years is about to be followed by another sort of bankruptcy. Before long, many of the universities that have betrayed taxpayers and alumni will be forced out of business. It will happen for the following reasons:
Federal funding reductions. LBJ got us deeply entrenched in the business of federal funding for institutions of higher education. When he did, tuition began to skyrocket. More recently, the federal government has gotten us deeply entrenched in the business of individual student loans. This has had the same effect. When a lot of people are able to borrow a lot of money to purchase goods or services, the effect on the price of those goods and services is dramatic. Supply and demand is not a rule; it is a law.
State university administrators seized upon the increased demand for higher education by raising tuition. This was done for three reasons: a) because they could, b) because they wanted to give themselves raises, and c) because they /wanted to hire associate and assistant administrators to do their work for them.
Now, the federal deficit is spinning out of control. As a result, the federal government will soon have to cut aid to state universities. This will confront administrators with this important decision: will they a) cut administrative spending, or b) raise tuition? The answer will be "b."
Student loan bubble. People are easily enticed into taking the bait when offered unlimited funds to pursue education. This applies to those who are not qualified to attend college at all. (Think about the housing bubble for just a moment). As tuition continues to rise, many more students who enroll will figure out that they have been duped long before they graduate. The universities have lied to them during recruitment. Departments in the social sciences and other disciplines have betrayed them by exaggerating the pay scale and availability of jobs they could likely expect upon graduation. These realizations will result in a massive upswing in the dropout rate over the next few years. These dropouts are many times more likely to default on their college loans than students who graduate.
When the whole college loan industry collapses, people will actually have to pay for school as they go. That will result in many empty seats in many college classrooms. Universities will have to make up the difference by turning to alumni donors.
Declining donations. Consider the following scenario: just two weeks ago, a fraternity of 80 men was ejected from a public university campus. They were investigated for hazing but then exonerated. They were also investigated for an alcohol violation that was so minor that police declined to arrest anyone. They were found to be guilty of only one offense, which was dubbed "failure to cooperate with the investigation." This was another way of saying the university thought but could not prove they were guilty because they refused to confess. At the end of the day, the 80-man fraternity was banned from campus for three years.
This real life incident will have two real life repercussions: a) the administrator who led the investigation will be promoted for expelling a politically incorrect fraternity (one of their flags has a Confederate symbol embedded within it). b) 80 future alumni will respond to the administrative overreach by refusing to donate for the rest of their adult lives.
This issue is serious. As the university administration has grown, it has assumed more control over the lives of students. In recent years, students have been prosecuted with increasing frequency for increasingly petty offenses with drastically decreasing respect for their due process rights. This includes petty prosecutions for speech code violations that amount to stripping students of the right to participate in the free exchange of ideas - the very reason many came to college in the first place. Is anyone foolish enough to believe this will have no effect on their willingness to donate?
The army of administrators that grew in the 1990s as a result of generous federal funding and the explosion in student loans will soon have to beg in order to retain their positions. Alumni will wisely apply the norm of reciprocity by exercising their power over these overpaid and underworked administrators who once practiced authoritarianism on them. They will wisely withhold donations and instead focus on paying their entirely-too-high student loan payments.
For all of these reasons, the public universities will eventually go bankrupt. And that is good news for a nation that is going morally bankrupt in the shadow of the ivory tower. They had a good thing going but the party is close to being over. The hangover will soon begin.
My University, UNC-Wilmington, needs to change its name to The University of No Competition Whatsoever. We could still use the UNCW logo but our full name would more accurately reflect our educational priorities. We already undermine economic competition by promoting Marxism. But now we are considering cutting athletic competition in order to preserve diversity spending in the midst of state budget cuts.
