Articles

Articles

Apr 15, 2005 ·

Kirsanow Assails Affirmative Action in Academia

For decades, higher education institutions have utilized racial preferences and quota programs, euphemistically called “affirmative action” in their admission policies. At least one member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights would like to see that practice come to an end.

Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights who was appointed by President Bush, spoke to students Tuesday at UNC-Chapel Hill where he focused on ending the victim grievance model of civil rights. He also argued that the focus on civil rights activism should be on looking towards the future rather than to the past. In an interview prior to his speech, Kirsanow explained that higher education is focused too much on racial policies that were effective in the 1960s, but are now unnecessary and even counterproductive.

Apr 15, 2005 ·

College Advice in Less than 45 minutes

CHAPEL HILL – Maybe Ray Lane, former president and chief operating officer of Oracle, was onto something at my college graduation three years ago.

Lane rode into the West Virginia University Coliseum on what was at the time a new invention – a Segway scooter. He said that that moment would likely be all we would remember from the speech and graduation day itself.

“In 2036, when you’re standing where I’m standing now, you’ll be able to say, I don’t remember who my commencement speaker was, but I remember what he rode in on,” Lane said. “This baby is my insurance policy against obscurity.”

Apr 14, 2005 ·

Caveat emptor, suckers

House Bill 1183 would give the children of illegal immigrants the privilege of attending UNC schools and community colleges in N.C. for in-state tuition. Looks like yet another talking point used to sell us on the $3.1 billion bond referendum for higher education in 2000 could turn out to be a big fat whopper.

Apr 8, 2005 ·

Does North Carolina Need an Optometry School?

“No one spends other people’s money as carefully as he spends his own.” So says Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. Let’s keep that in mind as we consider a new spending proposal being pushed by one of the schools in the UNC system.

The University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNC-P) has advanced a plan to build a new school of optometry at the geographically remote campus. The budget contains $10 million for the initial planning and development of the project, but no funds can be expended until the UNC president’s office gives approval. A meeting to decide on the plan is scheduled for later this month.

Apr 7, 2005 ·

UNC-Pembroke aims to build School of Optometry

CHAPEL HILL – UNC-Pembroke leaders are in the development stages of a proposed School of Optometry — a school some say is unneeded given the prospect for a surplus of optometrists in the country.

Already, $10 million in state funding has been appropriated for UNC-Pembroke to plan and develop the new school. According to UNC-Pembroke Vice President for University and Community Relations Glen Burnette, that money cannot be used until UNC Office of the President gives the proposal the green light. UNC-Pembroke officials are scheduled to meet with members of an administration committee within the Office of the President by the end of the month in an effort to obtain approval to go ahead with the project.

Apr 7, 2005 ·

Broad announces retirement

CHAPEL HILL -­ UNC President Molly Broad announced her retirement Wednesday in a letter to Board of Governors Chair Brad Wilson. The announcement comes two days after a Senate GOP letter lobbied to name former Clinton Administration Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles the system’s next president.

Broad’s retirement is effective at the end of the 2005-06 school year or once a successor is named. An economist by training, Broad came to the UNC system in 1997 after serving as the executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer for four years with the California State University system.

Apr 5, 2005 ·

Supreme Court Decision Harms Title IX Reform

In Birmingham, Ala., a high school girl’s basketball coach, Roderick Johnson, noticed something he believed was a violation of Title IX regulations. The girl’s program was receiving fewer resources than the comparable men’s program, leaving Johnson’s program at a competitive disadvantage, in his opinion.

Historically, Title IX has been used as a way to increase the number of women’s athletics programs across the country. It has had an adverse affect, owing to Title IX enforcement by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, at cutting the number of athletic opportunities for men on college campuses.

Apr 1, 2005 ·

Questions for the Women’s Studies Department

A recent report on the Women’s Studies Departments in North Carolina state universities by Melana Zyla Vickers asks the question: Do students want Women Studies? When reading over Vickers’ report and contemplating this question, I couldn’t help but ask myself an equally important question: Do Women’s Studies want students? I think perhaps the department would rather have protégées to train so that one day they might teach in the Women’s Studies Department and thus keep their room in the ivory tower. Otherwise, what good is the Women’s Studies program? What are they preparing students for?

Now, I have never taken a Women Studies’ course at UNC-Chapel Hill; I’ve been too busy filling the requirements for an education major to spend time learning about “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (to note just one course), but I have had several friends who have taken Women’s Studies courses — and have all regretted it. I hope to take a course next year, just for the sake of having done it, but until then, I’m currently occupied fighting feminists and liberals outside of the classroom, let alone take them on in a “comfortable learning zone.”

Mar 30, 2005 ·

Inquiry Paper No. 21: An Empty Room of One’s Own

For several decades, women’s studies programs have found comfortable sinecures at publicly funded universities of North Carolina including UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Greensboro, NC State and East Carolina University. Heralded by feminists as the symbols of women’s equality in academe, the programs were set up to offer majors and minors in women’s studies, advance scholarship in the field, host their own special events, and design and teach their own classes. Women’s studies programs also had their own administrators, faculty, and office space. In their way of thinking, feminists had secured in the ivory tower, what Virginia Woolf described as “A Room of One’s Own.”