Right to decide?

[M Holmes]

Paul Mather writes:

> On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 06:24:26PM +0000, M Holmes wrote:
>
> => So what proportion of academics are Republicans where you are?
>
> To be honest, I don't know.  Faculty are not required to divulge
> political affiliations upon employment, nor should they, IMHO.

That's fair.

> => Why are
> => there "diversity issues" where you are if there's no problem?
>
> The "diversity issues" are an unfortunate statistical fact.  We are
> underrepresented in faculty hiring of ethnic minorities compared to
> the proportions of those same minorities in the student body.  So,
> there is an effort to try and address that imbalance.

Is the student body fairly selected or, as in other Universities i the
US I've read of, are there different qualifying bars set for people of
different races? (Note that I'm to trying to be offensive - I'm as amazed as
anyone else that entry wouldn't just be based on results and totally
race-blind - I've had an experment run here where we blinded all sex,
religion, address, school status and race information before looking at
folks making part-time job applications)

> Also playing into it are several underhanded moves by the Board of
> Governors, who passed some measures by fiat in closed session that
> angered quite a few on campus (one such being the pre-vetting
> requirement).

What's that?

> There was also the high-profile (for our campus) case
> where they reversed a decision regarding faculty hiring after they
> discovered the person was gay.  That didn't seem to go down very well
> with the department that wanted to do the hiring.

It's legal to cancel a apointment simply from sexual bias?

> (We're Michael Vick's former school.  Oh, wait a minute, you're
> British.  That'll mean nothing to you.;)

I'm afraid so.

> It's (I believe) the largest publicly-funded four-year college in
> Virginia, and is located in Blacksburg, Virginia.  I think it has
> about 25000+ currently-enrolled students.  It's probably best known
> for its engineering programme (and its vet med college).  Its
> biotechnology centre is also gaining recognition.  (BTW, the partners
> to the company that cloned "Dolly the Sheep" are based at the
> Corporate Research Center, I believe.)

Yep, they're based near here and in deep financial trouble IIRC.

> => > Now if you want to talk about loony, why not have a butchers at "No
> => > Child Left Behind," where children are mandated not to be sick because
> => > perfect attendance is required to be in compliance... :-\
> =>
> => I haven't been following that programme. Got a reference I could look at?
>
> The official government site is at http://www.nclb.gov.  (Remember,
> though, when it comes to compliance, the devil is in the details.:)
> Like most things, I'd say it is a curate's egg.  Having observed the
> standards kick they've been on here in Virginia with the
> Commonwealth's "Standards of Learning" (SOL), I'd say when it comes
> down to the crunch they'll lower the bar (and other creative ways to
> remain certified) when schools begin flunking en masse.  So much for
> accountability; it's only important to maintain the *appearance* of
> accountabilty here. :-)

Sounds like the targets boondoggle we have in the schools here. We still
get students who are functionally illiterate. Basically a minister says
they'll resign if the targets aren't met and so the targets are later
lowered to meet the abysmal exam results.

> Sorry about the mischaracterisation, Mike.  As for the numbers of
> left/right wingers, my view is that faculty should focus on teaching
> and not have to inject politics or declare a political affiliation.
> If political quotas are deemed necessary by the current Congress, I
> feel that's a sad day for us all.

Amen, but if the tenor of the FIRE stuff is even half correct, I can see
how they got there. "Herstory" classes indeed.

> (Besides, how do you measure this?

The World's Smallest Political Quiz? ;-) I wonder what the quota for
libertarians will be.

> Do you have to be registered with an approved political party to be
> able to count against the quota?

Heh. I'm in trouble if that ever comes about here.

> Wouldn't that be a Closed Shop?  Do
> we go back to the loyalty oaths that were once de rigeur even unto the
> 1970s?)

Don't joke. I was at a Disability Awareness seminar last week and we got
a session on "Special Needs": is this a Good Word, A Bad Word or a
Medium Word. The Blind bloke from Disability Scotland who was leading
the proceedings took the hump when I asked him if it used to be a good
word (it's a Bad Word y'see) and when he confirmed this I asked who got
to decide when it got made a bad one. On his stating "the disabled" I
questioned the mechanism for ths and whether they had any right to
control the language. After that they floated the "Social model of
disability" (that the disabled aren't disabled by medical conditions,
they're disabled by society's response to this). I thought I did well to
avoid the word "bollocks" and used "silly" instead. I'm not their
favourite person apparently.

PC is on its way in here too.

> I do have a sneaking feeling that the apparent push in the current
> Congress to increase the numbers of right-wingers in academia might be
> coincidentally allied with the current makeup of said Congress.

Maybe, but they're usually keener to go where the money is.

> Besides that, surely if students, etc. wanted more right-wingers in
> faculty positions it would be reflected in their spending^Whiring
> patterns... ;-)

I think that's where FIRE come in...

> (Sorry, thanks to you, that's now my catch-all answer to everything.:)

It's a good answer most of the time...

Cheers

FoFP