The Bob Marvin of the 2030s?

A novel version of “What I did on my summer vacation” — college kid with no woodworking experience builds a contrabass recorder.

Nice stat

The library distributed a questionnaire to faculty about journals.

Number returned:

Music: 9 (near 100%)

Chemistry: 4

And there are a lot more chemistry profs, and their journals cost more. I guess when you see faculty every day, they start taking “their” library seriously.

White African-American faces discrimination

Here’s a good example of the sort of poison that “diversity training” causes: a Mozambiquean immigrant of Portuguese ethnicity  was forced to define himself in such a class, and he did so as “a white African American”, which brought a veritable shitstorm on his head. While I’m sympathetic to the guy’s argument (he IS a “white African-American”), you have to pick your battles.  By tenaciously holding onto that definer (when “Mozambiquean-American” is more precise), he caused himself unnecessary pain. People don’t like to be reminded that “African-American” is just a euphemism for “black”. And I have to wonder about the “black European-Americans” out there (or the white ones; does anyone definite themselves that way?) Of course, I’m the guy who marks “human” in the racial identification slot; anything more than that is an invitation to racism. Or if I’m feeling perverse, then “Confederate-American”, which isn’t a racial definition either.

TX to legalize guns on campus?

AUSTIN — A bill to allow college students and employees to carry their concealed handguns on campus won final passage today on a 19-12 vote in the Senate.

Not yet law, but maybe soon.

How about it ,Ohio? Or are you thinking like this chucklehead?

“When there is an alcohol-related tragedy on campus, you don’t hear claims that giving students a 12-pack is the solution,” [Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston] said.

Academia is lost

…or at least the concept of property is lost in academia. Yesterday we had somebody turn in half a dozen miniature scores upon which every library ID marking (including the barcodes we use to check them in) had been covered over with permanent white labels. This included in one case an old embossed stamp which was in the content of the score (thus the label covered up the notes). I have no idea why, unless it had to do with a competition. He’s being charged for the items. Then last night in the book drop, a grad student left another half-dozen books full of underlinings and markings in pencil. He might have gotten away with it had he not left a paper tab in a marked page, with writing on it that matched the annotations. I checked the items back out to him and “invited” him to erase the markings before I would take them off his record (unless he wanted to take the other option, which would be to pay the University-default $115 per item.)  He sent me a polite email accepting my invitation, but defending himself:

I was unaware of how much this practice bothered the library …. I used to always erase my markings. The reason I leave underlinings and comments is due to some advice from a Medieval Studies professor. He once said that we should all perform glosses in modern texts by leaving our notes in their pages, just as medieval scholars did, because it gives other current and future readers insights into what others thought about the text. In fact, one of the books I was underlining in spends several pages discussing marginalia written in modern books…

Gloss away, in your own books. I’m cool with that. But tell me…when you buy used textbooks, do you prefer the clean copies, or the “value added” copies? What do your fellow students prefer?

A library is not a commons. These are not “the students’ books”.  They belong to the University, which in exchange for a bundle of bucks allows you to read them.  That bundle of bucks does not buy personal copies of commonly used books, for you to treat as your own property. If we had to do that, our purchases of real scholarly works would be minimal. You could forget things like the Margaret Bent commentary/facsimile of Bologna Q15 that’s sitting in my office waiting for a shelf label. And we wouldn’t be buying so much popular music studies and “gender studies” crap either, unless required for a course, in which case we’d be buying the umpteen copies to mark up.

There’s a missing concept here: “property”. And it’s being anti-taught by some Medieval Studies prof somewhere.

Affirm queerness in Ypsitucky, or quit

At my sister’s alma mater, Eastern Michigan University:

The ADF said EMU “requires students in its program to affirm or validate homosexual behavior within the context of a counseling relationship and prohibits students from advising clients that they can change their homosexual behavior.”

The public interest law firm said Ward never has addressed homosexual behavior in any form during counseling sessions.

“Julea did the responsible thing and followed her supervising professor’s advice to have the client referred to a counselor who did not have a conscience issue with the very matter to be discussed in counseling,” French said. “She would gladly have counseled the client if the subject had been nearly any other matter.”

The student was targeted by the school’s disciplinary process as a result of her decision, and she was “informed that the only way she could stay in the graduate school counseling program would be if she agreed to undergo a ‘remediation’ program …to see the ‘error of her ways,’” ADF said.The goal was to have Ward “change her ‘belief system,’ as it relates to counseling about homosexual relationships, conforming her beliefs to be consistent with the university’s views,” the law firm said.

She refused and was given the choice of leaving voluntarily or having a formal review.

What makes this story even more piquant is that EMU is adorned by a giant stone phallus. Actually, it’s on Washtenaw Ave, not on campus property, and it is allegedly a water tower. Living near a big dick doesn’t give EMU the right to be a big dick.

Ward Churchill wrongfully terminated

…but his suffering was only worth a dollar.

Maybe a court can get him his job back. But that doesn’t mean CU has to actually, you know, let him teach.

Bribery

COLUMBUS — The Ohio Senate passed legislation this week that would provide down-payment assistance for college graduates who agree to stay in the state. On a 33-0 vote, the chamber OK’d Substitute Senate Bill 5, sponsored by Sen. Steve Buehrer, a Republican [sic] from Delta. It heads to the Ohio House for further deliberations.

“This bill has three simple goals,” Buehrer said in urging support for the legislation. “Stop brain drain, increase the number of our citizens with degrees and … (create) a few new home buyers in our state.”

The legislation would create a Grants for Grads program, providing a limited number of awards to Ohio residents who have earned associate, bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate or post-doctorage degrees.

About 300 awards of $2,500-$10,000 would be made each year through a statewide lottery system. The program would be aimed at first-time homebuyers, and grants would have to be used to cover closing costs or down payments.

Instead of bribing grads to stay here, why doesn’t the legislature quit robbing them blind and restricting what they can do? People leave the state because there is more opportunity elsewhere. So quit blocking opportunity here! 

I’m not even sure how much of an incentive this would be. It has been pretty easy (maybe not now) to get a no-money-down mortgage if your credit is at all good.  Yes, it’s free money, but in the context of a person’s earning potential, would they find it worth a 5 year leash, especially if they were a technology grad, as opposed to a Womyn’s Studies major?  And what if you get a job in Ohio and your company wants to promote you out-of-state?

Prof fired for outing plagiarizing students

Boy, here’s another one I’m of multi-minds about. Loye Young of Texas A&M International University in Laredo got canned for posting the names of six plagiarist students in his blog, in violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. He’d promised in the syllabus that he would “promptly and publicly fail and humiliate anyone caught lying, cheating or stealing” and that’s just what he did.

I have no problems in principle with what Young did, assuming that he had clearly taught what he meant by “plagiarism”. But with high schools as lame as they are, many kids never get busted for their plagiarism and never learn what it is. (Heck, I did a report on vacuum tubes in 5th grade where I basically went sentence-by-sentence from a source, though I did try to change the words around.) And they don’t learn proper citation style, so that things that could be legitimately cited quotes read like steals instead. But assuming an outright, conscious steal, I see no moral issue with exposing it, particularly if documented with parallel citations.

Legally, of course, is another issue. But assuming that Prof. Young broke the law, isn’t he entitled to a trial before he gets fired?

Most of the cases at Case that I’ve heard about are from people whose writing skills are so egregiously bad that plagiarism is indicated if they ever write a successful paragraph, and the only question is to find the source. We had one student who cited the Grove Dictionary, 5th ed., and the prof was of an age to have grown up with Grove 5. So he came down to look at it, only to find that the article in question had been ripped out of the book. The irony was that New Grove 2 had just come out and we’d put Grove 5 in the circulating stacks. If the guy had just checked it out, he could have held onto it past when grades were turned in, and might have gotten away with it, rather than creating more circumstantial evidence against himself. I don’t know whatever happened to him, but “destruction of library property” is even worse than plagiarism in my book.

Asking for his scoop from the cannibal pot

…is Nevada college chancellor Jim Rogers, who allows as how evil big businesses are getting theirs, $10 from everyone in the US would help Nevada colleges just fine.

I’m sure Vinny will get to this, but he has some previous comments on Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood here.