Couple of things
- Charlie Maddox's people shared some of his answers to the Federation of Neighborhoods survey, and I share those with you.
- Speaking of Maddox, I let you know why I'm troubled by his candidacy.
- Clarke County School District buses are going to start checking out biodiesel, which is pretty cool. It's expected to be the same cost-wise and mileage-wise, but should help (understandably) with that whole pollution thing.
- Speaking of Maddox (again), Hillary has a copy of States McCarter's endorsement.
- Listen lady, I'm all for free speech, even if your definition of free speech is a rather unfunny bumper sticker. But, the citation was dismissed and the law was overturned in 1991 ... so why wage this unusual fight? It seems hard to me and my novice legal mind to understand how your constitutional rights were violated when the actual violation has been thrown out.
- The University of Georgia should work on this, but I think saying it's shocking the students didn't know their professors were tenured is a bit much. I'm not entirely sure that's the first thing on their mind. I mean, if I follow the recent logic of the editorial board, all those crazy kids should be interested in is illegally consuming large quantities of liquor.
- I was going to write this letter. By the way ... why does everyone keep saying we haven't been attacked since 9/11. If I remember correctly, October 2001 was dominated by an anthrax attack, while later the same year some idiotic kid with sympathetic views to al-Qaida slammed a small plane into a high-rise in Florida.
- Speaking of Maddox, I let you know why I'm troubled by his candidacy.
- Clarke County School District buses are going to start checking out biodiesel, which is pretty cool. It's expected to be the same cost-wise and mileage-wise, but should help (understandably) with that whole pollution thing.
- Speaking of Maddox (again), Hillary has a copy of States McCarter's endorsement.
- Listen lady, I'm all for free speech, even if your definition of free speech is a rather unfunny bumper sticker. But, the citation was dismissed and the law was overturned in 1991 ... so why wage this unusual fight? It seems hard to me and my novice legal mind to understand how your constitutional rights were violated when the actual violation has been thrown out.
- The University of Georgia should work on this, but I think saying it's shocking the students didn't know their professors were tenured is a bit much. I'm not entirely sure that's the first thing on their mind. I mean, if I follow the recent logic of the editorial board, all those crazy kids should be interested in is illegally consuming large quantities of liquor.
- I was going to write this letter. By the way ... why does everyone keep saying we haven't been attacked since 9/11. If I remember correctly, October 2001 was dominated by an anthrax attack, while later the same year some idiotic kid with sympathetic views to al-Qaida slammed a small plane into a high-rise in Florida.
posted by Jmac at 7:37 AM
7 Comments:
I should have sent this to you earlier - here's the link to Heidi's responses for the full version:
http://electheidi.com/issues/GreenAcres_questionnaire.php
Readers should note that there was a word limit of 500 words total for these questions so they lack the depth that we would have preferred to give.
Al
JMac, those are fair points about the two attacks late in 2001. But, really, all the neocons have to do to overcome this is say "Okay, no terrorist attacks since 2001". In other words, just drop the reference to 9/11 specifically. Those other two incidents were happening in the immediate (or so) aftermath of 9/11, and nobody in their right mind would try to pin them on some faulty governance by Bush and the neocons. And, since then, we've gone around the sun almost five times now without any repeat performances.
Not that I buy that kind of argumentation, anyway...
"Lisa, I believe I will buy that rock."
"but I think saying it's shocking the students didn't know their professors were tenured is a bit much."
I think the above isn't what you meant to say, but I'm not sure what you meant to say. Should it be "weren't tenured?" Anyway...
I think it says that the students don't care (i.e., haven't complained) about the non-tenure status of their professors. I'm guessing that the editorial is referencing the vast amounts of grad students and non-tenured profs who are teaching lecture classes -- like the class I teach as a grad student. Maybe the students don't care because we're (non-tenure folks) doing a good job? I've had plenty of tenured profs who just didn't seem to care at all about the undergrads and I think it might have to do with the years they have taught and the fact that they have tenure. To be fair, some of my best profs have had tenure. It seems it's more of a status thing for the university; not a regard for students' well-being or ability to learn some good stuff.
You are very much correct Russ! Typo on my part.
And I agree with your points. My point is that I don't think students really put that much thought into if their professors have tenure or not. So it's not surprising to me that they don't know it.
And I agree with you Xon, however I don't necessarily think many neocons think the same way. Along with the fact that I have trouble with people falsely associating 'terrorism' with our current struggle against 'Radical-Islamic-terrorism' ... because terrorism is quite vague.
I mean the recent Amish school shooting is something we'd classify as terrorism, wouldn't we, if it had been committed by an extremist Islamic organization.
I think it has to serve some sort of overtly 'political' purpose to qualify as terrorism. Perhaps.
I mean, McVeigh was definitely terrorism. As are abortion clinic bombers/shooters. I don't think there's any sense in haggling over words there.
As for professors who are tenured, the real reason university's want tenured professors is because of research. Profs are generally tenured for their ability to research, and thus to bring in money (grants, general recognition, etc.) to the department. It's true that many of these tenured folks can't teach worth a darn, but the universities don't care. It's not really about helping the students, either. It's all about academic prestige, defined as original research projects and MONEY. Just the way it is.
Yep -- to go along with what Xon wrote -- I'd bet that most profs view teaching undergrads as a nasty hassle they have to put up with in order to be at a prestigious R1 (top research) school. I know of quite a few profs who actually use grant money to buy themselves out of teaching so they have more time to do research. Students are better off working with those tenured profs one on one for research in their fields than taking classes from them, anyway. If I take a class from Dr. Marsh no one cares, but if I work with him on his research doors begin to open. Grad students (some of them) can teach just as well as a tenured prof.
On the bumper sticker lawsuit, I believe one argument is something like this: It is illegal for a police officer to stop a car for no valid reason; the obscenity law that the police officer cited the driver for was overturned in 1991; therefore, it was illegal for the cop to stop the driver.
Precisely because the law was overturned in 1991, the cop had no right to stop the motorist. It makes no difference whatsoever whether the police department threw out the charge or the recorder's court did it later -- stopping the motorist was a violation of the law.
The stronger argument deals with the cop's alleged motivation of interfering with the driver's 1st Amendment rights.
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