Euphemism in higher ed

From NBC News, the evasive version:

Administrators at Duke University ordered all undergraduate students to stay in place for one week to contain a growing coronavirus outbreak connected to “recruitment parties for selective living groups,” according to an all-campus communication.

From The Washington Post, a franker version:

School spokesman Michael Schoenfeld said in a statement that the new cases “are almost all linked to unsanctioned fraternity recruitment events that took place off campus” and are “the direct result of individual behavior in violation of Duke’s requirements for in-person activity.”

“Selective living groups,” sheesh. But even the franker version is a tad evasive, substituting events for parties. O colledge.

FML in colledge

A student at my university attended a party in violation of COVID-19 protocols, an unmasked off-campus party to mark “Unofficial” — that is, Unofficial Saint Patrick’s Day. After testing positive for COVID-19, he posted a photograph of his test result to Snapchat with the caption “FML” — that is, “Fuck My Life.”

What a perfect me-centric way of seeing the situation. Never mind the friends or housemates or family members or community members he may have already infected. Never mind that he may have been the student who brought the virus to the party and infected others.

Well, that’s life in colledge.

Related posts
College, anyone? : Colledge signage : Homeric blindness in colledge

[I’m revealing nothing private here; this incident is public news. And colledge is not a typo.]

Six of them

Asshats, six of them, with their names visible for anyone to reference. Stupid, selfish, utterly irresponsible.

A related post
Homeric blindness in “colledge”

Recently updated

Colledge signage Now minus a sign.

Colledge signage

A sign outside a bar, right across the street from a campus in Anytown, USA:

ASK ABOUT OUR

DRINKING DEGREE

SOMETHING U CAN

GET ALL A S IN

Yes, that’s a space between the A and the S. If I were a student, I might laugh — for a few seconds. And then I’d think about how this sign is serving to cheapen my school’s reputation and my degree. If I were a prospective student, I would wonder whether the school right across the street was a good choice.

I have no animus against alcohol or humor. But I do think of college as a serious endeavor, not something to treat as a joke. The joke is what I call colledge: “the vast simulacrum of education that amounts to little more than buying a degree on the installment plan.” Colledge students and college students can be found on the very same campus, perhaps right across the street from some bar.

I have brought this sign to the attention of those who might be expected to have sway. Right now the sign still stands. And on another corner, in front of a rental property:

WELCOME BACK STUDENTS.

WE’RE GLAD YOUR HERE!

*

August 29, 9:48 p.m.: Just saw that, for whatever reason, the bar sign has been removed. Something beginning with LADI was taking its place as I drove by.

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All OCA colledge posts (Pinboard)
Homeric blindness in colledge
#finals

#finals

Checking Twitter for the various acronymic hashtags that go with the life of my university, I see things I’d rather not see. A case in point: a house-party announcement with the slogan Fuck Finals . Finals week starts tomorrow.

As a student, I found finals a source of tremendous stress, never having any idea what they’d look like. I always secretly anticipated that a final might take the form of a single trivia question: What is the name of the third courtier in act 3, scene 2? So I can understand not liking finals. I can understand hating finals. But I can’t understand conspiring to make a travesty of your own educational endeavor.

I used to tell my students: When you tweet to proclaim how stupid your classes are or how drunk you are or to show someone passed out on a floor, you cheapen your degree and the degree of every student from our school. When you add a university-related hashtag, it’s worse.

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Homeric blindess in colledge (Stupidity and social media)
How to do well on a final exam
How to do horribly on a final exam

#stupid

Checking on the fortunes of university hashtags always fills me with dismay. Yesterday, for instance, a tweeting undergrad advised prospective students to prepare for liver damage. His tweet coincided with a day-long open house for high-schoolers. Brilliant. This undergrad has company everywhere — tweeters who proclaim that they get weird, that they go hard, that their schools outdo all others in getting and staying drunk, hashtag, hashtag, hashtag. Granted, such tweeters are a fraction of a fraction of any student body (or as William Strunk Jr. would have preferred, the studentry). Yet such tweeters contribute mightily to shaping — or disfiguring — a school’s public face. They give that face a bulbous rosy nose.

O digital naïfs, when you take to the airwaves in these ways, you’re cheapening the value of your fellow students’ degrees, along with the value of your own degrees, should you attain them. That’s #stupid.

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Homeric blindness in “colledge” : Digital naïfs : Naïf watch : Naïf watch : Naïfs and Big Bird

[“Digital naïf”: my coinage. As I wrote in 2010, “so-called digital natives are often in the dark, or at least in dimly-lit rooms, when it comes to digital technology. Many so-called digital natives are in truth digital naïfs.”]

The Atlantic on social fraternities

The Atlantic has a long report by Caitlin Flanagan, The Dark Power of Fraternities. An excerpt:

Clearly, the contemporary fraternity world is beset by a series of deep problems, which its leadership is scrambling to address, often with mixed results. No sooner has a new “Men of Principle” or “True Gentlemen” campaign been rolled out — with attendant workshops, measurable goals, initiatives, and mission statements — than reports of a lurid disaster in some prominent or far-flung chapter undermine the whole thing. Clearly, too, there is a Grand Canyon–size chasm between the official risk-management policies of the fraternities and the way life is actually lived in countless dangerous chapters.

The student whose story begins this article, the guy who tried to shoot a bottle rocket out of his — well, he made a cameo appearance here in 2012.

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Three for one

The folkloric measure of college coursework: two to three hours for each hour in class. This measure does not apply in all cases: Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa recently found that an average student spends twelve hours a week studying, and that thirty-seven percent of students spend less than five. Thus it’s of more than passing interest to know that a two-for-one recommendation appears in federal guidelines for a credit hour, which state that a credit hour “reasonably approximates not less than”

(1) One hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of out of class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester or trimester hour of credit, or ten to twelve weeks for one quarter hour of credit, or the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time; or

(2) At least an equivalent amount of work as required in paragraph (1) of this definition for other academic activities as established by the institution including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work, and other academic work leading to the award of credit hours.

Professors who don’t require students to do a reasonable amount of work conspire with their students in the creation of the vast simulacrum that I call “colledge.” Such professors make life more difficult for the rest of us.

Related reading
Program Integrity Issues; Final Rule (U.S. Department of Education)
OCA review of Academically Adrift

[The federal gummint appears to be short on hyphens, no?]

Life in colledge

In the news: “A college student claims he was injured when a fraternity member in a ‘drunken stupor’ decided ‘that it would be a good idea to shoot bottle rockets out of his —

I’m stopping right there. You’ll have to click through to read the rest (found via Boing Boing).

Why colledge? That’s my word for “the vast simulacrum of education that amounts to little more than buying a degree on the installment plan.” Colledge cheapens the experience of students who are in college. Colledge students and college students are often found on the very same campus.

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All colledge posts (via Pinboard)

The rules of the game

The rules of the game, as spray-painted on a piece of plywood: U HONK WE DRINK. Ah, colledge. And it’s only Tuesday.

[Colledge: my word for “the vast simulacrum of education that amounts to little more than buying a degree on the installment plan.” Colledge cheapens the experience of students who are in college. Colledge students and college students are often found on the very same campus.]

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All colledge posts

Life in colledge

At East Carolina University:

The destruction of a sculpture outside ECU’s Jenkins Fine Arts Building over the weekend brought disappointment and disgust.

Someone shattered the recently donated sculpture, Song of the Sirens, in a sculpture garden near Fifth Street over the homecoming weekend. The piece, a conception of the creature in Homer’s The Odyssey, was valued at $12,000.

The sculpture was created by former graduate student Adam Caleb Buth as part of a larger exhibition and was left in the sculpture garden on loan by the artist, ECU sculpture professor Carl Billingsley said.

Buth expressed disappointment but not surprise Tuesday from his Wisconsin home, where he continues his work as an artist.

“I expected this would happen at this university, with all the debauchery and excessive alcohol consumption that goes on there,” Buth said. “It’s not the first time artworks have been destroyed or vandalized at the sculpture garden and on the campus.”

Billingsley also expressed disgust at the destruction of Buth’s work. He said disregard for artworks happens fairly regularly, particularly following homecoming football games. He said another piece was destroyed two years ago on homecoming weekend.

Read all about it:

Art destruction stirs ire (Reflector)

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Homeric blindness in “colledge”

[Colledge: “the vast simulacrum of education that amounts to little more than buying a degree on the installment plan.” My coinage. Colledge cheapens the degree of any student who’s really in college.]

Overheard

In the hallway of an academic building, one student to another:

"Have you had a drink today yet?"

At 11:57 a.m. Ah, colledge.

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All "overheard" posts (via Pinboard)

Spring break explosion

Ah, college life:

Three spring breakers were arrested after an explosion rocked two hotel guests from their bed and shattered the windows of their Daytona Beach Shores hotel room around 2:30 a.m. Friday. . . .

"They're really nice guys, they were just really drunk yesterday . . . We saw 'em before dark and they were so wasted that I don't think they remember doing that."

Spring Breakers Arrested After Dynamite Explodes On Hotel Sundeck (WFTV)

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Homeric blindness in "colledge"
Overheard ("Open bar!")

Overheard

From the world of "colledge," a partial conversation between two friends:

". . . got drunk."

"Open bar! How can you beat that?"

"Exactly!" [Laughs and thrusts clenched right hand in air.]

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Life in colledge

All "Overheard" posts (via Pinboard)

Life in colledge

$160,000

. . . so as to end up flaccid, immobile, alone on the carpet of a dorm room, shirtless, wheezing, intellectually menopausal, cutting lines on an iBook with a pre-paid Discover card, watching consecutive hours of user-generated porn, in the dark, in a hoodie, apolitical, remorseless, eating salt-and-vinegar potato chips from a bag without a napkin: like some hero, pretending to be otherwise, on a Wednesday, during discussion section.

That's the text of a sign created by Adam Delehanty, a Brown student, as a comment on life in college, or in what I call colledge, "the vast simulacrum of education that amounts to little more than buying a degree on the installment plan."

As University Diaries has pointed out, the model for this catalogue is likely Allen Ginsberg's Howl. With, I would add, this difference: Howl is a chronicle of endless, frenzied action, while Delehanty's catalogue is a chronicle of torpor.

Sign of the Times? (Inside Higher Ed)

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Homeric blindness in colledge

Remedial civility

William Pannapacker, who writes a column for the Chronicle of Higher Education under the pen name Thomas H. Benton, teaches English at Hope College, a small, private liberal-arts college in Michigan. His most recent column, "Remedial Civility Training," should be required reading for everyone in academic life. Here's an excerpt:

This is not about the simple rules governing which fork one should use but about norms of behavior about which nearly everyone used to agree and which seem to have vanished from student culture.

There are the students who refuse to address us appropriately; who make border-line insulting remarks in class when called upon (enough to irritate but not enough to require immediate action); who arrive late and slam the door behind them; who yawn continually and never cover their mouths; who neglect to bring books, paper, or even something with which to write; who send demanding e-mail messages without a respectful salutation; who make appointments and never show up (after you just drove 20 miles and put your kids in daycare to make the meeting).

I don't understand students who are so self-absorbed that they don't think their professors' opinion of them (and, hence, their grades) will be affected by those kinds of behaviors, or by remarks like, "I'm only taking this class because I am required to." One would think that the dimmest of them would at least be bright enough to pretend to be a good student.

But my larger concern here is not just that students behave disrespectfully toward their professors. It is that they are increasingly disrespectful to one another, to the point that a serious student has more trouble coping with the behavior of his or her fellow students than learning the material.

In classrooms where the professor is not secure in his or her authority, all around the serious students are others treating the place like a cafeteria: eating and crinkling wrappers (and even belching audibly, convinced that is funny). Some students put their feet up on the chairs and desks, as if they were lounging in a dorm room, even as muddy slush dislodges from their boots. Others come to class dressed in a slovenly or indiscreet manner. They wear hats to conceal that they have not washed that day. In larger lectures, you might see students playing video games or checking e-mail on their laptop computers, or sending messages on cell phones.

Professor Pannapacker's column jibes with recent conversations I've had with students who've told me how difficult it's become to be a good student and how fed up they are with their classmates' surly attitudes.¹ Reading this column makes me glad that I added a "decorum" paragraph to my course syllabi some years ago. It's grown more detailed over time:

The atmosphere in our class should be serious -- not somber or pretentious,‭ ‬but genuinely intellectual.‭ ‬No eating,‭ ‬talking,‭ ‬sleeping,‭ ‬wearing headphones,‭ ‬doing work for other classes,‭ ‬or other private business.‭ ‬Cell phones‭ ‬should be turned off and‭ ‬kept‭ ‬out of sight in our classroom.

That paragraph seems to cover everything -- for now.

¹ These accounts are about classmates in other classes, not in classes that I've taught.

"Teaching Remedial Civility" is available to readers without a Chronicle subscription:

Teaching Remedial Civility (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Alas, the Chronicle has placed this immensely useful essay behind its firewall. [September 10, 2009.] The essay is out from behind the firewall: Remedial Civility Training. Thanks, Chronicle.

It’s back behind the firewall again.

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Homeric blindness in "colledge"

Homeric blindness in "colledge"

I've been thinking about Homeric blindness today -- not the legendary blindness of the perhaps non-existent poet nor the literal blindness of the Cyclops Polyphemus but the figurative blindness of Homer's egomaniacs.

Odysseus is one such egomaniac. When he makes his escape from Polyphemus in Odyssey 9, he shouts back to the Cyclops to let him know just who has blinded him and stolen his animals:

"Cyclops, if anyone, any mortal man,
Asks how you got your eye put out,
Tell him that Odysseus the marauder did it,
Son of Laertes, whose home is on Ithaca."

That's a wonderful moment for thinking about Odyssean strength and weakness: having made his tricky escape from the Cyclops' cave, which involved the anonymity of being "Noman," Odysseus can't resist the desire to tie his name and line to his deeds. His desire to be known blinds him to the practical necessity to get away; he's like a pickpocket who stops to announce that he's lifted your wallet.

The suitors in Odysseus' household suffer from another form of blindness, a cluelessness as to the ways others might see them. In Odyssey 21, they're concerned that they will be shamed if the old beggar (Odysseus in disguise) is able to succeed in the test of the bow (bending and stringing Odysseus' bow and shooting an arrow through the sockets of twelve axe-heads). They want to maintain their reputation and fear being shown up by an old tramp. But as Penelope points out to them, men who have done what they have done "'cannot expect / To have a good reputation anywhere.'" Their names are already mud.

I thought of both Odysseus and the suitors today when reading a newspaper article about a student "organization" called War on Sobriety. The group's purpose is to drink (deeply) during each day of homecoming week. Saturday (the day of the Big Game) is devoted to all-day drinking, beginning with a beer breakfast. "It's our fight for the people who like to drink," one leader of the group is quoted as saying. He is identified by name in the article; I'm omitting his name here.

This student is also quoted as saying "It's really underground. We don't want to get a bad reputation." Yet he's giving an interview to a newspaper reporter (and leaving tracks that any potential employer will be able to find via a search engine). There it is: Odysseus and the suitors combined. Duh.

One question that this article doesn't address: Wouldn't a week of sustained drinking create some sort of difficulty with the responsibilities of being a college student? I suspect though that the members of this group aren't in college. They are, rather, in what I call colledge, the vast simulacrum of education that amounts to little more than buying a degree on the installment plan.

If I sound cranky, it's because the so-called War on Sobriety (front-page news in a college newspaper) serves to cheapen the degree of any student who's really in college.

(Odyssey passages are from Stanley Lombardo's translation.)