RUTHFULLY YOURS

There are a number of significant challenges in higher education today, including rising costs, diminishing returns, and the stifling effects of runaway political correctness on academic inquiry. That being said, it’s not all bad news. In fact, there are a number of hopeful, emerging trends that promise to create new and expanded opportunities for students while fostering a healthier campus intellectual climate:

1. Declining Number of Applicants – The number of college applicants peaked in 2009… around the same time the number of jobs for graduates bottomed out. What a disaster! Since then, due to demographic realities, the number of graduating high school seniors has declined and, with it, we have a smaller applicant pool in higher education. It is now becoming a buyer’s market for college applicants, and colleges are struggling to fill their freshman classes. This increases the applicants’ admission chances as well as their negotiating power for financial and merit aid awards.

2. Increasing Number of Jobs for Graduates After the worst job market for young adults since the Great Depression, graduates finally have reason for optimism. Thanks to the aging of the Baby Boomers and their shift into retirement, the labor market is starting to open up for young people. According to The Wall Street Journal, incomes for the newest batch of graduates are now the highest in over a decade, while unemployment rates are falling quickly. Also, the National Association of Colleges and Employers reports that employers plan to hire 11% more college graduates this year than last.

3. Tuition Discounting. After years of runaway tuition price inflation, completely disconnected from the rest of the economy and supported by mushrooming levels of student debt, market forces are finally starting to exert some influence at some schools. Institutions are offering all-time-high tuition discounts to encourage students to enroll and, for the first time in recent memory, we’re starting to see good old-fashioned price competition breaking out among some consumer-minded schools. Now, that’s refreshing!

Sergeant Schultz Knows Everything

“I know nothing!”

That was Sergeant Hans Schultz’s favorite and well-known refrain in Hogan’s Heroes, which ran on CBS from 1965 to 1971. In the linked clip, he adds, “I was not here! I did not even get up this morning!”

Suppose you had a chance to chat with the real-life Sgt. Schultz’s in Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark. The “interfaith” dialogue would go something like this, after you’ve reported a crime committed by a Muslim.

Sgt. Schultz will claim that he knows everything, he was there, and that you should go back to sleep and pretend nothing ever happened. You were not raped by a Muslim or a gang of Muslims. You did not have your head kicked in by a gang of Muslims. You were not robbed by a Muslim. Or stabbed, or groped, or spit on by a Muslim on a train or on the street. Or even raped and then disfigured by a Muslim. Or by a “refugee,” or by an “immigrant.”

All right, Sgt. Schultz would concede. All or one of those things happened to you. There’s no denying the facts, is there? But if you fought back, and used illegal means such as pepper spray to deter your assailant, then you must be punished. Your fighting back is evidence of bigotry, or racism, of being anti-Muslim or anti-Islam or anti-immigrant. Of your lack of patriotism! Those states of mind are illegal, as well, and must be corrected.

You must allow yourself to be raped, robbed, and spit on. It’s your duty to submit to the diktats of Islam. You must submit to Sharia. Horridly primitive system, yes. But, who are we to judge? You may not survive the experience, but it’s an issue of sacrifice. Of self-sacrifice for the greater good. For the nation. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, even Italy – all of our lily-white societies, have a duty to be invaded and assaulted by Muslims and others. We have a duty to relieve the suffering they endured in the countries from which they came. We have no right to assert that our morals and our society are superior to the cultures of the immigrants. We have no right to impose them on immigrants, even here. That is the height of cultural hubris and civilizational imperialism. Okay, so the perpetrator was Somalian. And he hates whites, even though Sweden was not a party to the downfall of Somalia. Or Ethiopia. I’m a little foggy on the history of that part of the world. So what?

The University of Kentucky is offering a course titled “Taco Literacy: Public Advocacy and Mexican Food in the U.S. South ” where students will examine the social and racial issues surrounding tacos.

Or, as the course’s website puts it, “how food literacies situate different spaces, identities, and forms of knowledge.”

“This class allows our students to explore the issues of immigration, inequality, workers, intercultural communication, and literacy through the prism of food,” the course’s professor, Steven Alvarez, told Vice.

This existence of such a course isn’t surprising; tacos are a very controversial subject these days — and plenty of people have gotten into trouble for handling the (apparently) sensitive issue in an (apparently) insensitive way.

A few examples:

In 2013, Northwestern University’s Hispanic/Latino Alliance wrote a letter warning students not to eat tacos on Cinco de Mayo because that could make some students feel “unsafe.”

In 2014, California State University – Fullerton’s chapter of Alpha Delta Pi sorority faced “serious sanctions” from the school for hosting a Taco Tuesday event where students wore sombreros because that’s “culturally insensitive attire.”