Thanks for Four Years of Awesome
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Blogged Around Philly: Farewell Edition
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Aside from learning to filter, er, questionable odors using a dryer sheet, a rubber band, and a paper towel tube, part of the college experience is learning to think. In an ideal world, your standard-issue college student will be exposed to a zillion and one different viewpoints and learn to think critically and go through the whole 'who am I?' thing.
Under the guise of "guarantee[ing] 'free speech and tolerance' at the colleges that are owned or partly owned by the state", Rep. Gibson Armstrong (R-Lancaster) helped usher through a resolution (as part of the budget) to study what Pennsylvania conservatives call 'liberal bias' on college campuses.
"Rep. Gibson Armstrong, R-Lancaster, says he's collected about 50 examples of "intolerance" from college students. Armstrong's proposal, which parrots others made in legislatures across the country, is based on the concern among Republicans that conservative students are at worst graded unfairly, or at the very least feel intimidated because their views don't match those of their liberal professors."
50 whole examples? No word on whether or not Armstrong spoke to only state college students or only students attending college in the state of Pennsylvania. After all, Pennsylvania is home to 45 public 4 year colleges and 101 private 4 year colleges. 50 incidences of anything among college students in a pool this wide is a very small number. Nationwide, over 1 million Bachelor's degrees were awarded last year.
It's surprising that Pennsylvania lawmakers would waste their time and our money to study something that colleges have policies in place to deal with and that is such a small problem, when there are far more pressing issues they could be dealing with. After all, statistics indicate that 25% of female college students will be raped by the time they graduate and binge drinking on college campuses is a big problem.
Let's face it, though. This resolution isn't about protecting student rights. It's about a larger conservative ideology and movement, as evidenced by the fact that Armstrong's resolution is worded very similarly to the "Academic Bill of Rights" being pushed by hilariously mis-named Students for Academic Freedom. In short, the Academic Bill of Rights seeks not to protect the rights of students, but to stifle debate and the free exchange of ideas.
Under the Academic Bill of Rights, a conservative student who believes the Holocaust never happened and that it's all some big conspiracy in the fabled Liberal Media could never have his or her beliefs challenged by a professor, be forced to defend those beliefs with actual proof, and could not be flunked on a test or in a paper for stating these beliefs. You know, because even though historical fact points to one thing, it infringes on the conservative's rights to have to back up the idiocy with proof.
And that's just scary. If that's the future of academia, we're frightened for the future of the country.
Photo credit: Getty.
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