Colleges Being Remade Into "Repress U"? 527
The Nation has up a sobering article from its upcoming issue about how colleges and universities are being turned into homeland security campuses, in the name of preventing homegrown radicalization. Quoting: "From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism prevention' — as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name — have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university."
Fearmongering works on both sides (Score:4, Interesting)
Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.
The Weathermen were a "peace and justice organization".
Many campus police departments are morphing into heavily armed garrisons, equipped with a wide array of weaponry, from Taser stun guns and pepper guns to shotguns and semiautomatic rifles.
Dear me, police armed with non lethal weapons? They have guns in a gun owning society? We're all doomed, I say, doomed.
Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out
Enforce the law against illegal immigrants? A horrific sign of incipient totalitarianism.
Take over the curriculum, the classroom and the laboratory
I'm shocked by this one, frankly (even more so than I was by the tasers). A government department wants to sponsor research within it's remit?
Privatize, privatize, privatize.
a) this has fuck all to do with repression of academia, just a left wing fear of the private sector
b) giving contracts to private sector companies is not privatisation.
The new homeland security campus has proven itself unable to shut out public scrutiny or stamp out resistance to its latest Orwellian advances
Protip: Orwell wasn't warning about the right in 1984. If the average reader of the Nation got their way, only the targets would change. Any kulaks here?
Re:What amazes me about this is... (Score:3, Interesting)
But damn, everything our parent's generation did when they were kids, they have made illegal for the next generation. Did your parents go to parties when they were underage and drink? Did they get Cited by the police for it? What about smoking a bit of weed. Bet they would ground you! In my town, they used to cruise one of the main roads. Nowaday's there are signs posted saying you can be fined/jailed for driving down the street more than 3 times in a night.. (seriously!)
Free Speech Zones (Score:5, Interesting)
If the right is truly repressing speech on campus via federal reg's, it's double-plus bad ungood; however, I contend there's far more internal repression of speech, and hence of thought, from the left on campus and has been for decades. (Why? Because they believe that true diversity will be achieved once everyone agrees with them.) So, if we want free speech on campus, let's make sure all of the sources of repression are dealt with.
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:2, Interesting)
The reputation for activism that American universities received as a result of the Vietnam War has largely faded. Corporations have invaded the collegiate research department decision making process en-masse. The Federal Government has used the threat of widespread disqualification for Federal funding to coerce administrators into making certain changes (FBI record access w/o warrant springs to mind).
Top this all off with the ever increasing trend of American apathy at the ballot boxes and you have a pretty dismal picture of tomorrow's leaders.
Let's see what the leaders of tomorrow do about highly visible restrictions on their freedoms on campus. Let's see what they have to say about all this. For all we know we these measures could put us on the verge of a major revitalization of the activist spirit of the American Student.
Hell, various European nation student bodies have maintained significant political clout over the years... Why not ours?
Sad but necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have the "right" to stand up and have a bitch-fest in a class you're signed up for, either - if you disrupt class, the professor has the right to order you out and call security if you don't leave. You don't have the "right" to prevent people from reaching classes either, and we had fuckwits from Code Pinko blockading the classrooms of engineering profs who had military service records and have some military research grants.
And that even includes the fuckwad professors who hold chemistry class bitching about Bush and why everyone should be antiwar, too. You want to protest them? Take it up w/ the Dean, in the student newspaper, in the courts, or on your own time - not in the class.
students at Hampton and Pace universities faced expulsion for handing out antiwar fliers, aka "unauthorized materials."
I don't care what you're doing - whether it's an anti-abortion flyer, a pro-abortion flyer, an antiwar flyer, a pro-war flyer, or an advertising for your frat/sorostitute group's drinking party. If you're trying to force it into people's hands, or putting it on their cars (which is what WE get all the time where I work)... no. If someone actively takes it from you? Fine. But you don't have the right to force crap into my hands and you don't have the right to fuck with my vehicle. And I'm 100% sure that's the bullcrap they are really referring to.
I also love this little gem:
1. Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.
I'd trust the guys writing this so-called "report" more if those so-called "peace and justice organizations" weren't fronts for communist groups (ANSWER, International Socialist Workers Party, etc), anarchist groups, blatant racial supremacist organizations (MEChA and La Raza, motto "For the race, everything, for other races, nothing"), or international terrorist/genocide groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
I mean, really. We had a table of morons set up who were boldly collecting money that they admitted they'd be sending to Hezbollah. They should all have been deported for violating their visas - half of them had already dropped this semester's classes anyways, like they do every semester.
Almost forgot: (Score:5, Interesting)
I helped get this established on our campus. Why did we do it? It has nothing to do with "tracking everyone" and everything to do with crime. We have cameras on the parking lots because we kept having "neighbors" from the black-dominated slums nearby breaking into cars and carjacking people, and so they now have someone watching to dispatch a cop to a problem spot 24/7. We have cameras on buildings leading to classrooms, and even a few IN classrooms, because of people committing rapes and getting into fights.
5. Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out.
Yeah. Because enforcing the law is a problem... how?
The American Immigration Law Foundation estimates that only one in twenty undocumented immigrants who graduate high school goes on to enroll in a college--many don't go because they cannot afford the tuition but also because they have good reason to be afraid: ICE has deported a number of those who did make it to college, some before they could graduate.
When every one that gets in displaces a legal citizen, legal resident, legal visa-holder who had the RIGHT to apply... yeah. I applaud such efforts.
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:1, Interesting)
Personally, I disagree with the supreme court's ruling on this but, if I remember correctly, one of the reasons for the ruling was that the kid in question was merely being silly and did not intend to convey a serious political message.
That is not to say that "Bong hits for Jesus" does not have a serious political message. Based on objective measures, alcoholic beverages are more dangerous than marijuana (more addictive, more risk of overdose, more risk of violent behavior) but, despite this, a religion that centered around a ritual of taking a hit from a bong would be viewed much differently than religions that centered around a ritual of taking a swig of an alcoholic beverage.
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Give me a break (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying but the article on university repression, while a bit over the top, seemed to me to be more about outrage than fear - "we don't like being pushed around" rather than "we're afraid of being pushed around".
One thing that has struck me as a bit strange is that I've seen former members of the Bush administration get university faculty appointments. I know that universities like to be open-minded but, based on their speeches, I wouldn't have thought that members of the Bush administration had enough of a commitment to factual accuracy to be appropriate as university faculty. I mean, as a student, one does expect the instructor to provide some perspective and context but one would also be unpleasantly surprised to later discover that the instructor had dispensed with factual accuracy entirely.
rumors (Score:2, Interesting)
We also found a new prank: using the phones in random rooms to yell "terrorist buzz words" into.
Re:Informative? (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, do you have any experience with shotguns other than Doom/Quake? A shotgun fires a number of pellets that spread rapidly into a cone shape. After about 30 ft, the spread will be about 12 inches. With 00 buck shot, that is 8 pellets somewhere in a one foot circle. Think about a shoulder shot with 4 pellets missing the target entirely. They will be heading down range and can easily hit a bystander. Shotguns are great weapons for close in fighting, especially indoors and in heavy brush, due to limited range. At anything more than 60 ft, they loose effectiveness and are a danger to anything down range.
Oh, and shotgun pellets can go through walls just fine. Especially 0 or 00 buck shot at close range. The big difference is that the shotgun will put a 2-3 inch hole in the wall and create more shrapnel.
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:4, Interesting)
Rampant capitalism is simply feudalism and bonded servants. In the US it has been the dismantling of the good work done at the end of the depressions, the rules the constrained the worst excesses of corporations and the rich, the social services that were put in place that stabilised and produced a healthier society, and as a result a more complacent society. It was a complacent society that allowed the damage to be done starting in the 70 and culminating in the current disaster.
You can guarantee things will get worse if you create an even more ineffective social security net, allow fewer constraints upon the greed of corporations, less tax for the rich (they should pay the most, they benefit the most), fail to ensure free trade is actually fair trade (it ain't free trade if one side can cheat by underpaying workers, with poor and dangerous working conditions, use child slave labour, and polluting the environment). Failure to turn things around will ensure a path to a more primitive Mexican economy of the previous century that the Mexicans are now endeavouring to leave behind. A vote for even more necon capitalism is a vote for 'El Presidente de la República de los USA' , a vote for someone who fights for the workers, the majority of the people, is a vote to recreate a country the respects it's own constitution and the people it is meant to respect (don't think so, check out the social security net of Mexico that's what you are aiming for).
As for turning around private campuses, haven't you realised yet, that they are in fact trying to get rid of the smart arse free thinking individualists because they are buggering up the grade averages and making to hard for the spawn of the 'rich but ugly' and the 'pretty but stupid' to gain a passing mark ;).
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not just a matter of semantics. I wouldn't bother with this point if the vast majority of 'anarchists' were "Chaoticists" misusing the word to mean doing away with all law. The word is actually, very frequently used to mean no rulers. In the UK, there have been literally over 10,000 people put on lists of suspected anarchists because they oppose Monarchy (literally "One-archy"). They are people advocating getting rid of the British monarchy, including having no House of Lords, but many still support elections and laws, including having a House of Commons based parlimentary system. The U.S. gets these lists as part of establishing its own no-fly, and no-visit lists, and the US's intelligence services usually take the British anarchist designation as meaning "opposed to all government" so the U.S. is currently keeping "British anarchists" out of the country because they are people who don't support the current heir to the throne of George III. Funny, I thought the U.S. got started that way.
Re:Almost forgot: (Score:2, Interesting)
It has nothing to do with "tracking everyone" and everything to do with crime. We have cameras on the parking lots because we kept having "neighbors" from the black-dominated slums nearby breaking into cars and carjacking people, and so they now have someone watching to dispatch a cop to a problem spot 24/7.
So, what you're saying is there are no cameras in the white-dominated slums then?
We have cameras on buildings leading to classrooms, and even a few IN classrooms, because of people committing rapes and getting into fights.
If you're putting cameras IN the classroom, perhaps you should instead take a closer look at your admissions office. Certainly they wouldn't be looking the other way just to get those massive federal subsidies per student enrolled...
Re:Overly paranoid article (Score:2, Interesting)
a lot of 18 and 19 year old students don't have great judgement on things like shoot / no shoot decisionmaking.
Is that not why we have educational institutions? After all, men and women that age are shooting people in Iraq daily. Are you suggesting we raise the minimum age requirement to join the military?
And the law in the US prohibits handguns from anyone under 21 anyways
Without arguing the unconstitutionality of that law, allow me to point out that long arms are still available to students even if hand guns are not.
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
Full disclosure: I am a 30 year old college professor at a small private school.
Disrupting classes, invited lectures or other campus-wide gatherings is not only rude, but it is nothing less than thuggism. The whole point of the academy is the free and open flow of ideas. You may agree or disagree with those ideas, but to shout them down or disrupt the educational process is beyond the pale. Engagement with those you disagree with is far more constructive than acting like a jackbooted jerk.
Before the late 1960s, hipsters were escorted off of campuses, student radicals were usually expelled. Professors who did not 'fit in' were routinely let go.
Today, the politics on campus has all but reversed itself from the 1950s. "The man" today is the Boomer-aged Administration and Faculty: leftists who promote speech codes and shut down campus debate, harass conservatives, excuse 'favored groups' antisocial activity, etc. There hasn't been a truly progressive bone in the corpse of campus leftism since I was an undergrad in the late 90's. All that is 'left' is a proto-totalitarianist mantra of thoughtcrime and newspeak (oddly enough, that was the name of our campus newspaper whilst I was there!)
To be a real 'campus radical' today is not to be a pot-smoking hippie; it is to be a member of the campus Republicans!
Is this why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Almost forgot: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's only one appropriate way to summarize the situation you describe:
WTF? What is wrong with you people. Seriously. What kind of mentality do you need to screw up your own education and throw away your liberties in the process? And these are supposed to be the intellectual upper class (or at least middle class).
If you didn't see it yet, watch Mike Judge's "Idiocracy". Its resemblance to real life is getting scary.
Re:Sad but necessary (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Free Speech Areas (Score:5, Interesting)
The real point of the Bill of Rights, in case you don't know, was to allow the people of the United States the ability to revolt in case the government turned bad. Seriously, that's what the Bill of Rights was about: preventing the government from quelling a general rebellion.
If you don't believe me, go back and reread the amendments in this light. During the American Revolution, the British government made laws about who could meet with whom. The made it illegal for people to have guns. They quartered soldiers in people's houses. They searched whoever and whatever they wanted. Bla bla bla... the point is that the British government did every one of those things with the intent of quelling rebelling and keeping people in line.
So the point was largely the writers of the Constitution saying, "Remember everything we went through to get free from Britain? Let's make sure that if our own government ever gets as bad as that, they won't legally be able to stop us from rebelling against it like we rebelled against England."
..and you conviently left out... (Score:2, Interesting)
You left out that the Democratic party was formed around a group of conservatives who did not want a change to the status quo...ie, slavery and states rights. The Republican Party of the 1860s was very liberal, fighting for the rights of all people, poor, colored, etc. They were in favor of federal control and felt that the government should help the common man.
What you left out was that the two parties essentially switched place in the 40s and 50s. The Democrats began sliding toward the left, becoming more liberal. This caused a groundswell of conservatives to bolt from the party, forming the Dixiecrats. These people began to fill the ranks of the Republicans as that party drifted to the right. The result was that by the 1980s, the Republican Party was the party of limited federal government (states rights) and business before the common man (slavery?). Democrats took up the torch of liberalism (change...being liberal is about introducing change into the system!!!!!!) and pushed for more social reforms which increased the government.
Something strange is happening now...its the switch all over again, except that people aren't really seeing it. The Neo-Cons are essentially the extreme right heading out on their own again. The Republican party had attracted a large number of middle to lower class people based on the platform of religion and guns (two areas that hold great sway for them) while the Democrats have begun to attract more "conservative" types who want less government and a balanced budget!!! This is a switch happening before our eyes. The real question then become which party will become which. I think that this is why the candidates that are running are so diverse. There is no one overriding issue like there was last time (civil rights) to really divide the parties.
The point is that the current administration is the Dixiecrats, they will support big business is that business treats them with the honor befitting the ruling class, the plantation owners if you will, and they will gladly tell the masses that they are really looking out for them.
Case in point: In the 8 years in office, has Bush done anything to lessen gun control? All they have done is let a bill sunset...no successful attempts to allow more lax laws. How about religion? They talk about it all the time, but when congress and the president were of the same party, they didn't radically change everything and require prayer in schools, 10 commandments everywhere etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not with everybody else. I'm just trying to figure out where my vote will go and it doesn't look pretty right now.
Pro-gun, socially conscience, and against intrusive governments....Re:Sad but necessary (Score:3, Interesting)
The Republican party then took on the "cause" of the pro-slavery jim-crow supporters with their "Southern Strategy" staring with Nixon and continuing until this day.
The rest of your post about "elitism" and "CEOs supporting Democrats" is pretty much complete nonsense. Corporate America (tm) supports both major parties, favoring the more "business friendly" ones (ie, Bush, Clinton, Lieberman). "Elite" college professors make much less than your average software engineer in Silicon Valley.