Louisiana University chieftans have been talking recently about having too many students.
Due to a handshake agreement, I can't name names but recently I heard a brief talk by the head of a local public university who was proudly describing the course of action he took when faced with a surplus of aspirant students.
"We doubled the price."
For him, it was a no-brainer. That is what you do when demand outstrips supply, right? That this policy clearly discriminates against poorer applicants is a consequence of the marketplace.
I wonder if it occurred to him that an alternative choice for an institution of higher learning looking to deal with over-enrollment would be to raise the academic standards for admittance.
I can tell you that this University head honcho was not Chancellor John Lombardi of LSU, though he shares Mr. Lombardi's strategy.
The Chancellor of LSU is already on the record favoring higher tuition for his students instead of the consolidation of university boards populated by people who make enormous six-figure salaries from the money students and their parents often go into debt to pay into the system.
To Chancellor Lombardi and his compatriot from another public institution of higher learning in Louisiana, consolidating university patronage positions and raising academic standards is the bad choice here.
I think they're confused about what their mission is.
I don't know if anyone else noticed this small blurb in Monday's very thin Times-Pic metro section in the regular "Higher Education Notes" segment that begs.
Apparently, ExxonMobil has awarded a grant to the Cowen Institute to develop college prep courses at four New Orleans public schools.
Let me start out by applauding the stated commitment to high level college preparatory classes at our schools. I gleaned some more info from the Tulane press release about the program. They'll be starting AP courses, which is fabulous. Not only did AP level courses prepare me for collegiate academia, but the university credits I received for succeeding in those courses allowed me finish my senior year at Tulane as a part time student, saving my family and I thousands of dollars in tuition costs.
But wait just a minute, y'all.
Before we go ahead and canonize ExxonMobil and the Cowen Institute, there might be some lines to read between. I know, I know. Very unexpected.
John McDonogh High School, L.E. Rabouin Career Magnet School and O. Perry Walker Senior High School already have been selected to participate. A fourth school is expected to be picked this month.
The grant, announced Thursday, will set up an advanced-placement training and incentive program at each school to help students prepare for higher education.
This is a pilot program, which is expected to develop during the next five years.
One minor detail I noticed was that not one of these three high schools survive past Phase II of the school facilities master plan. The buildings are scheduled to be shuttered and "landbanked," with no replacement construction. O.P. Walker is listed in the master plan as closing in 2016 and John McDonough will be 86'd in 2014.
L. E. Rabouin is a Phase I closure. It will be shelved, according to the school facilities master plan, in 2012.
Thus, ExxonMobil and the Cowen Institute will spend over a million bucks implementing pilot programs that won't be given a chance to become permanent since the host schools are being written out of existence. Not only that but even if we were to be most charitable and start the five year implementation timeline at this very moment, Rabouin will be closed in year four of the grant.
What is up with that? Why are we pulling the rug out from under these critical academic efforts by shutting down these schools regardless of the success of the programs hosted within?
My calls to the Tulane PR people and to the Cowen Institute for comment and/or clarification were not returned.
Ray Boudreaux was found guilty today of attempted manslaughter and aggravated battery for several stabbings in a fight on Bourbon Street.
Ray was an honor student at Tulane and a running back on the football team.
He was a friendly acquaintance of mine, a really nice guy. I liked him.
I'm upset about this.
I was thinking about Ray Boudreaux over the weekend and remembered a cringe-inducing story from my freshman year of college.
Ray and I shared an honors-level African Diaspora course that focused on African American political discourse after the Civil War. I enrolled in the course as an honors student and history major whose favorite topic is the history of African American insurgency.
Everyone else in the class was a football player or member of a fraternity or sorority.
Unbeknown to me, either the professor or the class had developed a nice reputation for itself amongst privileged Tulane social circles as an easy 'A.'
This became glaringly apparent on the first day of class. Our professor stood in front of the classroom and asked "Does anyone know who Booker T. Washington is?"
Of course I'd heard of Booker T. Washington, the political philosopher and renaissance man who (roughly) advocated for the acceptance of social marginalization in exchange for African American economic independence. I was taught about Mr. Washington in my Philadelphia public school.
The room fell silent, however.
The professor asked again.
More crickets.
Finally, a light bulb lit inside the mind of one of my sorority girl classmates.
"Oh! Didn't he invent the peanut?"
I died on the inside. I desperately looked around for someone else other than the professor who grasped how pathetic and hilarious that answer was.
I always knew Ray Boudreaux to be a quiet guy, but he had a grin on his face that matched my own.
Let's play a little game. There are two sets of photographs below. All of the buildings pictured are in the city of New Orleans and they all resemble one another architecturally.
Look at these photographs:
Now look at these photographs:
What are the differences between the buildings above and the buildings below?
Well one set of buildings is an original while the other is a replica.
One set was built with cheerful red brick while the other is made from depressing gray.
One building set is of historic and cultural value to the New Orleans community while the other is not.
The structures in one photo set have been demolished while the buildings in the other still stand.
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To me, there is one difference between the two sets of buildings depicted that is more troubling than all the rest. What do you think it is?
When I went to Tulane, there was not a student there that couldn't tell you some despicable story about the PIKE fraternity. Allegations of date rape were rampant, even if they did not always go reported to the authorities. They're not the only fraternity with a bad reputation either.
I once heard that one frat forced pledges raise puppies and then kill them by putting them in pillowcases and slamming them against the wall, like what the Hitler youth were forced to do in Nazi Germany. The punishment was that they were suspended from campus organizations or something.
I've also heard incredible stories about the fraternity scene's role in the drug trade. Maybe it's not obvious, but there's a lot of cocaine and prescription drug use amongst the college students here. (It's a party town.)
The PIKE house on Broadway and Freret should be demolished as an IHT. Was that one of the homes used as a staging ground for criminals that Warren Riley identified for immediate demolition the other day?
Probably not.
A lot of people I meet in town hate Tulane students. I don't blame them.
They benefit from an incredible double standard and don't even realize it.
More than 1,000 Prairie View A&M University students and supporters marched seven miles to the polls on Tuesday to protest the lack of an early voting place on campus for the March 4 election.
Students, local leaders, civil rights activists and elected officials walked from the campus to the Waller County Courthouse in Hempstead carrying "Register to Vote" signs. The majority wore black shirts with the slogan, "It is 2008. We will vote!"
Following After the march, some students stood in a long line to cast their ballots on the first day of early voting, while others filled out new voter registration cards in a building across from the courthouse. Early voting ended at about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, and some waited for five hours to vote.
Freshman Brittney Veasey, who was voting for the first time, said she took the 2 1/2 -hour journey because she believes her vote will make a difference.
I love stories like this. In the face of an obvious ploy to suppress the vote, these young people stood up for their rights and showed that they will not be cowed. Republicans should be worried, because this is a committed electorate.
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This IS a committed electorate.
Damn this talk of a cult, you just thought that Barack Obama was a pop culture trend. You thought he would crash and burn. It's just his personality, young people don't know anything about politics - they don't even vote.
Check it out:
They're voting! They know their rights!
Or enough do. Enough know their rights and follow what's going on.
We know how to use internet tools to organize vast amounts of our peers in a matter of hours. We know how to use internet tools to find alternative media sources. We know hot to use internet tools to become alternative media sources. [Right here! High-five!]
Shoot. Watch out Republicans. Here comes a committed electorate.
During the week of October 22-26, 2007, the nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever – Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses.
The purpose of this protest is as simple as it is crucial: to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat. Nothing could be more politically incorrect than to point this out. But nothing could be more important for American students to hear. In the face of the greatest danger Americans have ever confronted, the academic left has mobilized to create sympathy for the enemy and to fight anyone who rallies Americans to defend themselves. According to the academic left, anyone who links Islamic radicalism to the war on terror is an "Islamophobe." According to the academic left, the Islamo-fascists hate us not because we are tolerant and free, but because we are "oppressors."
The Terrorism Awareness Project is an outgrowth of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. That organization was founded by conservative activists David Horowitz and Peter Collier. Founded in 1988, Horowitz's group sponsors a number of programs as a 501c(3) nonprofit group. Some of those programs include: Students for Academic Freedom - a group created to fight for conservative academia with the motto "education, not indoctrination" Discoverthenetworks.org - a website that provides "a model for understanding how the left operates in our society, and how the networks it has created have penetrated our philanthropic, educational, and religious institutions"
JihadWatch - a website run by Robert Spencer, I'll let him say it himself:
Why Jihad Watch? Because the West is facing a concerted effort by Islamic jihadists, the motives and goals of whom are largely ignored by the Western media, to destroy the West and bring it forcibly into the Islamic world... Wednesday Morning Club - a weekly forum to introduce conservatism to Hollywood. Past speakers have included Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, Dinesh D'Souza, Robert Bork, Trent Lott, George W. Bush (as governor), Bill Kristol, and probably any other famous conservative you care to think of.
The David Horowitz Freedom Center also publishes FrontPage Magazine, whose online store features several interesting titles:
The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America By David Horowitz David Horowitz reveals a shocking and perverse culture of academics who are poisoning the minds of today's college students.
Religion of Peace? Why Chrisianity Is and Islam Isn't by: Robert SpencerChristianity or Islam: which is the real "religion of peace"?
Unholy Alliance by David HorowitzNot all dissent is equal, and Americans whose actions are calculated to give aide and comfort to the butchers who murdered 3,000 innocent people on September 11, 2001 are not patriotic at all... they are, in fact, quite the opposite.
The Hate America Left by David Horowitz and Jamie Glazov This book blows the lid off the network of academics, lawyers, fundraisers and professional agitators providing aid and comfort to the enemy.
Wow, that is a lot of required reading.
I wish that I could laugh off this whole thing as the product of a radical conservative fringe group that doesn't actually hold any sway. They do hold sway. They hold so much sway. The list of past speakers is frightening and upsetting. Their posters (see above image) are posted on Tulane's campus right now. Over 100 universities will be holding awareness events.
Ann Coulter will be speaking at Tulane University as part of Crazy-Crazy-Crazy week on October 22nd. Yes, THE Ann Coulter. Famous person, total hottie, lip gloss user, and jon-benet supporter. She's got it all. Here she is calling John Edwards a bad word.
Here she is getting a pie thrown at her.
Is there a way to protest this without calling more attention to it? Should we ignore all this? Why do so many people want to fight and argue and bomb Iran and call people faggots? Can't we just have some fucking healthcare instead of all that? I just want some healthcare.
I certainly don't think people on Tulane campus or anywhere in New Orleans need to be made more aware of terrorism. Has anyone SEEN New Orleans?
News and commentary on New Orleans and the nation with an unapologetic progressive bias.
This body of work represents part of my journey through New Orleans rebuilding politics starting in 2007. For later work see savecharityhospital.com or thelensnola.org.
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