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CALIFORNIA’S GOLDEN IDEA

Ever since the University of California ended affirmative action, West coast liberals have predicted a new age of segregation.

However, The Wall Street Journal reported that three out of eight campuses actually admitted more minorities for the 1999-2000 academic year than they had when preferences were in effect. And while tough schools like Berkeley temporarily suffered a sharp drop in minority numbers last year, this year the number of “black freshmen is up by 45%.”

This stunning achievement is largely the work of Ward Connerly, who has led the movement to end affirmative action since 1995. After the California victory, he took the fight to Washington State. Now, he’s stirring up believers in Florida. While state Dems call his campaign “divisive, mean-spirited and racist,” he continues to present his case, saying that “affirmative action merely stigmatizes the achievements of blacks.”

One early measure of California’s success in this experiment is that state students are applying to less demanding schools, thus ensuring that their university careers will be more successful and create the true self-confidence necessary to tackle “Real World 101.”

EDUCATION TAKES THE HIGH ROAD

Good moral character may be off limits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but at America’s Christian colleges and universities, the cups runneth over.

According to David Burks, president of Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, “there is a hunger in the land for character-building education.” These days, enrollment at Harding, a private Christian college, is at an all-time high.

On a national level, enrollment at colleges and universities with religious affiliations has risen 11 percent since 1990, compared with a 4 to 5 percent increase for secular institutions.
For Jared Yoeman, a junior at Webster Christian School in Webster, N.Y., Liberty University sounds like a place where he’d like to spend his college years.

Jared, who plans to become a doctor, prefers a college where discipline is enforced and talking about God is cool, rather than throwing away the values he’s been taught over the past several years. After all, if “I recognize that God saved my soul,” why would I “throw that away in college?” he asks.

But won’t Christian students miss all the fun?

Christian students aren’t sticks in the mud, says Kelly Hemeon, 22, of Syracuse, N.Y. When her friends from other campuses come to visit, they go away “marveling at what a good time they had—even though they did none of the drinking or partying associated with typical campus life.”

FOLLOW YOUR NOSE

Cornell University administrators are trying to decide whether dissection of lab animals should remain mandatory in biology labs, according to the Yale Herald. The debate focuses on “whether it’s fair for Cornell students to have to smell like formaldehyde when it’s difficult enough for them to get dates anyway.”

The Yale wags wondered if Cornell also planned to introduce “detentions, lunch periods, awkward sex ed classes and vice principals.” This could fuel post-traumatic junior-high school fears “that braces and acne will run rampant throughout the student body and those students fortunate enough to go to dances will have to maintain a 73-foot space between partners.”

THE ACCEPTANCE GAME

When Nicholas Fash was a freshman at Green Farms Academy in Connecticut, he was just another good student who played soccer and lacrosse. His father Michael already sensed that it was going to take more to get his son into a top-flight university, according to The Wall Street Journal. So Mr. Fash, a film director, decided to teach his son squash, “a snooty sport that might impress prestigious schools.” Before long, Nicholas was a ranking player.

Nicholas Fash is now a junior at Cornell, and although colleges and universities maintain this strategy doesn’t help, today’s competitive college admissions environment is inspiring some outlandish maneuvers.

Since grade inflation and standardized test tutoring are the norm, top grades and perfect test scores aren’t enough to get an Ivy League decal on your SUV’s back window. Last year, for example, Harvard “turned down more than half its applicants with perfect SAT scores, and 80% who were valedictorians.” The deciding factor for entering students can often be extra-curricular activities, especially ones that show unusual talent or leadership skills.

Some high-anxiety parents are using creative tactics that include re-locating their families to less competitive locations and “trying to get the kids adopted by Indian tribes. (Both the Cherokee and Navajo nations say they have received such requests.)”
What works in this high-stakes game?

At top schools like Georgetown, achievement in less-common sports, i.e. squash, cross-country and crew, are successful entries. As for musical instruments, Wellesley admissions dean Janet Lavin Rapelye says: “We’re always looking for oboes.”

Bizarre interests might also work in someone’s favor. At Michigan, for example, a young undertaker wannabe could apply for a $2,200 grant from the Michigan Mortuary Science Foundation. And, offspring of nudist organization members (the Western Sunbathers’ Association) can apply for a $1,000 scholarship. At Carnegie Mellon University, there’s a full scholarship for bagpipe players.

On the other side of the coin, admissions offices have their own set of problems, coping with some of the hyperactive alumni parents. Dickinson College Dean of Admissions R. Russell Shunk says that “even though parents may be wonderful people, sometimes that trait skips a generation.”

GLOBAL HARASSMENT

The Kyoto News Agency reports that the University of the Ryukus in Okinawa became the first Japanese university to dismiss an instructor for sexual harassment. The school’s decision came after a court decided last year to award 1.7 million yen ($14,000) to a Chinese woman. The professor denied falsifying any data and “defended the relationship, saying it was consensual.”

What else is new?

TIES THAT BIND?

A school in Santa Monica California decided to change its approach to the study of slavery after black parents complained about some of the teaching techniques. According to The Washington Times, the program consisted of a lecture and slide show during which students “lay on the floor and were bound to each other by tying their wrists and ankles with rubber bands to simulate the journey of slaves from Africa.”

Parents said that the program “trivialized the grim journey of African slaves across the Atlantic and was demeaning to blacks, although it was very popular among eighth graders.
Rhonda Younger, co-president of the John Adams African-American Parent Support Group, said she refused to let her daughter participate in the program, because she was unsure how children would be affected by the methods used to present this information about their ancestors.

Teacher Amy Fowler, who said she had taught the course this way for six years, said this was the first time she had received any complaints.

GENDER CHALLENGED

The Women and Gender Studies program at Stetson University in Deland, Florida was probably miffed when food service workers removed some signs bearing offensive quotes on them, particularly since they were done in honor of Women’s History Month. However, according to Food Services Director Paul Macaurelle, the display of “Menstruation in the Victorian Age” cards featuring male quotes about menstruating women was “not something that students wanted to be exposed to as [part of] a dining experience.”

BUMPER-STICKER MANIA

DRAFT THE DODGER FIRST; AT LEAST NIXON RESIGNED; THE CLINTON YEARS–ONE BRIEFS SHINING MOMENT; HELP THE HELPLESS, NOT THE SHIFTLESS; BILL CLINTON–OUR NATION’S FONDLING FATHER. New Nickname–Bill Clinton: The Comeback Pig. Spelling Lesson: “Meddling Halfbright;”