Part-Time Pundit

Personal Irresponsibility on Campus.

This was written for Campus Magazine online

I finished my undergraduate degree in 1999 and having returned to the same University for work and graduate school, I’m amazed at how things have changed. As a side benefit of working for the University, you can take any class you want free of charge. I have been extremely free in using this benefit.

However, I learned very quickly that undergraduate courses were a waste of time. Not because of the material presented but because of the teaching methods. Most classes offer gratuitous amounts of extra credit and assign group projects with abandon. In the first case, this permits students to avoid feeling the full brunt of their excess drinking by allowing them to “make up” for poor performance with busy work. In the second case, it allows for students who would care not to do the work to be carried along by those who do care about their grades. In both cases, the bottom-feeders are not compelled to feel the full force of personal responsibility.

It’s easy to blame the administration for treating students like children, however that might not be entirely fair. Many students simply refuse to take responsibility for themselves and they are looking for the University to be their “momma.” They’ve spent years being told that every problem is someone else’s responsibility in the public schools. Sex Ed is a great example. If you can’t manage to get to the corner Walgreen’s and buy a pack of condoms for yourself, perhaps you ought not be having sex. Instead, the schools say “well here you go; we know that that trip of a few miles is too much so we’ll give you condoms instead. Thank the American taxpayer.”

Another example is all the complaining that university tuition is so expensive, it seems that all students are looking for is a handout for someone else to pay the bill. Granted, I don’t pay tuition now, but I did make sure my tuition was covered when I was an undergraduate. The primary beneficiary of a college education is the degree recipient. It’s almost a guarantee of higher earning in life. Why shouldn’t they pay?

I few short years ago I managed to pay the entire bill myself without help from my parents. Yes, that involved loans. Loans which accrue interest at a rate below inflation, and even that interest is tax deductible. My loan payment is roughly $100 a month on $20,000. That’s hardly insurmountable.

By the time some students arrive at college, they are incapable of taking care of themselves. Binge drinking and fornication are just signs of this. The University of Illinois has an annual tradition of “unofficial St. Patrick’s Day” which is little more than an annual campus binge drinking session. (The actual St. Patrick’s Day usually falls during Spring Break). Last year, a young woman died because her boyfriend was driving his motorcycle drunk and she fell off the back of it.

As a result of the incident, the University and local towns started to investigate ways to curtail the rampant drunkenness. In the aftermath, the student group that sponsored the event “Irish Illini” was suspended by the University. The bars will likely be forced to open later and close earlier. It isn’t likely that the current alcohol laws will be enforced on the revelers.

In all this, the University fails to recognize that the direct cause is that students are given the ability to act like children and misbehave without consequences. Until the University, inside and outside the classroom, insists that students behave like adults and be responsible for themselves students will continue to behave like children and get themselves killed. Is this the legacy the University wants to send into the working world?

October 2nd, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Education, Politics, University of Illinois | one comment

Always Thinking? Hardly.

Written for Campus Magazine Online

A university campus prides itself on being a sanctuary for the “free exchange of ideas”, and ideally a university should live up to this. Sadly it does not. At the University of Illinois I have encountered little of this free exchange. What I do encounter are entrenched ideologies moving to annihilate all opposition. So much so that hardly any real debate takes place on campus anymore. Or for that matter, any real thought.

That’s not to say there aren’t panel discussions on the issues of the day. It’s just that those panels all present the same position. For instance, a gay marriage panel discussion that took place a few years ago consisted of three people in support of gay marriage and one person married to his gay lover. That isn’t discussion, that’s a political rally. Almost all panel discussions or talks set up by the University present only one side of any issue.

The other nail in the coffin of free exchange on campus is the complete inability of most people, including undergraduates, to engage in an intelligent debate with someone they disagree with. Being the token conservative for the campus mainstream paper, I generate more letters to the editor than any other columnist. I also generate the most letters to the editor that cannot be published.

When most students are presented with an opinion that disagrees with theirs, they assume that their opponent has some sort of intellectual deficiency. For instance, someone posted some message about how great Sen. Obama is to a mailing list populated with law students. I rather passively dissented in the form of asking five questions. Not one person responded without making a personal attack. Not one. All of these kids are going to be lawyers one day; you’d hope they’d know how to argue.

The fault in this matter lies directly with instructors, particularly in the liberal arts. They present information based on unmentioned and underlying philosophical presuppositions. The students accept these presuppositions unknowingly. When faced with someone who holds different underlying presuppositions or who has a disagreement with those presuppositions, they simply have no idea how to respond. They don’t believe there is any other way to think.

Professors, for their part, don’t generally react with personal attacks when presented with ideas they disagree with (at least when a student presents them). They simply react with sneering paternalism and then utterly fail to address the actual points presented. As such, there are no examples of intelligent debate on campus at all.

The College Republicans, for their part, aren’t much better. After having been on the business end of thought-blocking pettiness they, like much of the “right,” have decided to return the favor. No one debates points anymore because no one wants to debate points anymore. The result is all that’s left… the blow-by-bloody-blow of partisanship.

The University of Illinois’ motto is “Always Thinking”. Unfortunately, the University has sold its birthright of free exchange for doctrinarism. It’s long past time to try and buy that birthright back.

October 2nd, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Education, Politics, University of Illinois | no comments

Light Activity

Sorry for the light activity, I’m working on something pretty big and it will be apparent when/if it happens.

In the meantime, I’ll put a few things up shortly.

October 2nd, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Blogging | no comments