Here is the part where I tell you what to think
 

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=58426

Of course, this is World News Daily, and according to some, anything they report is a lie. (Never mind that such thinking is a fallacy.)

But wait: Here's someone else reporting it, and she has updates:

http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/31...hool-responds/

Another right wing nut job--can't be believed. But here are a couple of the documents involved (before they disappear, while the university furiously covers its ass)

http://www.filelime.com/upload/files/1ud.jpg

http://www.filelime.com/upload/files/2_11.jpg

It's a wonderful thing that "white culture" can be described in sweeping generalizations, such as "perpetuating the ideology that people of color are morally and mentally inferior to white people." I wonder when some enterprising young scientist will undertake a biological study to assess which gene that attitude resides on, since it applies to 100% of whites.
Until then, Al and Jesse can continue to bloviate about anyone who makes a generalization about blacks or black culture.

Most of us recognize racism when we see it. Some of us don't recognize it when it's directed at whites. It is impossible to miss at the University of Delaware, and a Don Imus-like solution should be imposed immediately.

In the meantime, every student at the University of Delaware, and every parent who pays tuition there, should tell the administration to shove this program up their collective ass.

When did college students become such docile sheep?

media sources often manipulate stories one way or another to accomplish their political desires, leaving out this or that...or doing whatever to bias the story.

some are more biased than others...

telling a half truth is the same as a lie in my book.

anyway...some people need a slap to wake them up from their whitewashed suburban world....

however, the document "diversity facilitation training" by shakti butler is downright incendiary, and if anything, she only shoveled fuel on the fire for racism.

as a student in the dorms myself, you have to realize that RA's have no real power, unless you're in violation of university rules, and they have no authority to force meetings on anyone.

I imagine that most students in the dorms didnt show up for such meetings, as I can assure you that there would be protests on campus if it were REALLY mandatory.

and most of the related documents are available on FIRE's website if you look

After this his the main stream in the last couple of days, they have been forced to back away from this policy.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/thefirecache/8585.html

Ah the power of the internet.

His apology for a far lesser offense didn't help Don Imus.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...0&sportCat=ncf

It's sports instead of politics, but this column from earlier this year just became hilarious in addition to infuriating.

Note this fact:

From everything that's been quoted AND the statement from the school, I think only one thing is crystal clear: there's absolutely NO TELLING what actually happened.

Seems pretty clear....

School had a stupid policy, policy got out to general public, made it to internet sites like fark, school says 'oh crap, well lets put something out that says we are reviewing it but it was misunderstood and wait for it to go away.

<h2>Here is the part where I tell you that the OP contains no news reporting, because the source of the "article" is worldnetdaily, and the "organization" quoted in the article, "FIRE" is C-fucking-N-fucking-P, influenced.... i.e. rabidly conservative, politicized christian fundamentalist crap posing as "rights watchdog"!</h2>

Here's the speech by FIRE co-founder, Kors, as he gushes praise on the CNP audience. Lil Georgie was at the same 1999 CNP meeting, waiting to give his secret speech to these enemies of secular, open, democratic government:
Here is the immediate past president of "FIRE":
Worldnetdaily is not a news reporting source. How could it be, given this background:

<h2>And, here is the part where I show you that the "reporter" of the worldnetdaily article in this thread's OP is a delusional (thinking that he was going to be working for a "news" website), christian fundamentalist activist in his own right: </h2>
"FIRE" and worldnetdaily are offensive and worthless to relevant discussion on this forum. "FIRE" is a function of CNP. the Council for National Policy. Rabid christian fundamentalist propaganda "Ops" do not lend to or further our discussions here.

Man, if only there was some sort of "market" that would force colleges and universities to "compete" with one another for the business of students. I guess our only hope here is that someday, such a "marketplace" will emerge, and college students- no longer having no choice at all in where they attend college and by extension placing themselves at the complete whim of secular (gasp, possibly liberal) policies- will be able to attend any college that they can afford.

I, for one, am shocked, SHOCKED, that anyone would choose to attend a college where there is a rigorous curriculum that extends outside of the classroom. Why, who has ever heard of such a thing?? That's like communism multiplied by homosexuality to the power of sustainable agriculture.

Being forced to lessen one's ecological footprint? Egads, what's next? Forced bestiality?

Being forced to understand the importance of leading a sustainable lifestyle? Dear lord, next thing you know these poor students will be dancing.

And being forced to acknowledge the existence of systematic oppression and *choke* advocate for oppressed peoples? SWEET HOLY MOTHER OF CHRIST SOMEBODY CALL BOB JONES!!!!!!!!

hehe......I really got a kick out of that,filterton.

Meanwhile, Host - how do you go from "hiding" your entire posts to opening with 24 point bold text.

Yeah, that's all I have to offer.

Bob Unruh is a christian fundamentalist propagandist, using the cooperative worldnetdaily as his pulpit. These fundamentalists are opposed to "Hate Crime" investigations and laws, because their own intolerant prejudices and religious doctrine render them vulnerable to criminal investigation and prosecution for their intolerant "activities". Whether it's about homosexual rights or efforts to interdict christian fundamentalist political influence into legislation or other areas of government, you'll find the "reporting of religious activist, Bob Unruh.
This agency investigates reports of hate crime:
http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/civilrights/hate.htm

can you pick out the states under heavy christian fundamentalist influence that have refused to track, investigate, and report hate crime incidences to the FBI?:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2005/table12.htm

Alabama : Total number Agencies submitting incident reports= 0
Total number of incidents reported = 0

California : Total number Agencies submitting incident reports= 252
Total number of incidents reported = 1,379

Gerogia : Total number Agencies submitting incident reports= 4
Total number of incidents reported = 17

Michigan : Total number Agencies submitting incident reports= 166
Total number of incidents reported = 640

Mississippi : Total number Agencies submitting incident reports= 0
Total number of incidents reported = 0

New Jersey : Total number Agencies submitting incident reports= 216
Total number of incidents reported = 738


<h3>Is it any wonder that these christian mullahs succeeded in doing this, at DOJ?:</h3>
...and here's an example resume:...and here is James Bopp ranting away in a column at townhall.com:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/J...ngold-thompson

townhall.com is owned by Salem Comm. The two top officers of Salem Comm. are CNP members
In our example, James Bopp is a CNP member and "Republican National Lawyers Association
Board of Governors, 2002 - present"....he is a Republican national committee official:
James Bopp, until recently was also general counsel of the NRLC:
The point????? The point is that it is impossible to tell where the christian fundamentalist propaganda machine ends, and the republican party begins.

James Bopp is on the board of governors of the republican lawyers assoc. that McClatchey News reported was behind an elaborate plot to disinform about voter fraud in order to take the DOJ civil rights enforcement division out of the business of protecting minority voting rights.
Bopp is also a member of the secretive CNP, the group that candidate GW Bush gave a secret speech to, in the same series of Oct., 1999 meetings that "FIRE" founder Kors spoke at, with his gushing praise of CNP members documented on CNP's own site.

<h3>"FIRE" and "reporter" Unruh, are part of a christian fundamentalist propaganda campaign. The republican party has fallen under the control of christian mullahs powerful enough to neutralize the DOJ. It is impossible to tell the secular republican political party from the christian fundamentalized party, as the same operators, James Bopp and the Tim LeHaye/Paul Weyrich founded CNP's members seem to wield a huge amount of power and influence. There is no "problem" in the residence halls at U. of Delaware. The problem is the religious fundamentalism that has overtaken one of the two political parties in our two party system. As in Iran, it is impossible to tell the mullahs from the secular political operatives, or actual issues, from propaganda. Hate crimes and malicious prosecution to discourage voting, are REAL problems, bullshit spewed by "FIRE". via Bob Unruh and worldnetdaily, and contrived accusations of pervasive voting fraud by minorities, are not.</h3>

Holy shit. Has hell frozen over, or what?

Thanks, btw.

Really? That's quite interesting since it seems that dogmatic approach is just what the OP and other posters have made clear. It's up to the reader to decide what opinions count and matter to them. If it's World Net Daily, The Sun, FIRE/CNP, Michelle Malkin, that's their point of view and how their opinion is formulated. It may not agree with host's increased reading capable cerebellum, but it is for some people fine for them.

I could easily make the same claim that your sources are offensive and worthless to the releven discussions on these forums and from my point of view feel and be perfectly justified. It still doesn't make it right.

Seems odd since religious schools have similar curriculum and indoctrinations. People will pick an choose their higher learning in a free market.

Wow, you're not just cynical about the wrong things, you're gullible about the wrong things too!

And you have joined the tinfoil hat crowd, shame.

so let me see if I have this right.

anything from wnd, a christian, a right winger, a rabid conservative, or michelle malkin is a flat out bald faced lie that is intended to incense an audience and therefore should not only not be believed, but should be downright excoriated for passing themselves off as having any sort of valid opinion or logical reasoning. Do I have that right, host?

You might have a point if this wasn't a major state university.

It's the same thing if they were requiring every student to attend church and take religion classes.

I do agree, though, that most people can choose what college to go to. The difference is that for a lot of kids, a state university isn't their "choice" but their only option.

The point of a public university is to be open to as many students, and therefore as many viewpoints, as possible.

I'd take both of these points of view with a huge grain of salt. Firstly, ecology and social justice are not religion, and they're not really in the same category as religion -- because they aren't protected by the Bill of Rights. I'm not going to disagree that this program (as depicted) is some pretty strong ideological medicine that only represents the far extreme of a partisan spectrum, but that doesn't make it akin to the establishment of religion.

Secondly, the point of any university is patently NOT to be open to as many viewpoints as possible in the sense that you seem to mean. Universities are open to a multitude of perspectives, but that doesn't mean that they'll tolerate anti-semitism, racism, sexism, or other discriminatory practices. While they may have student groups on campus that are based on religious identification, that doesn't mean the biology department will be teaching intelligent design or creationism.

A more realistic objection (and just as powerful, IMO) is that education and indoctrination are NOT the same thing, and that mixing them up at an institution that receives public funding is inappropriate.

I worked in this field (higher education administration and even specifically residence life) as a full-time salaried professional. My experience doing so makes me extremely curious about this story... Many schools have programs in their residence halls that are intended to be educational, and the focus of almost all of them is on exposing students to points of view and people that they may not have encountered yet. Admittedly, social justice and diversity, which are typically "progressive" standards, are typically the core of these programs. And, as with any other thing in the world, people interpret the limits in different ways. Some are so aggressive about it that to them, the difference between exposing and indoctrinating is one of degree.

SO, based on my experience working, knowing these sort of people, and going to multiple professional conferences, I could actually believe that there is a large grain of truth to this story. Of course, it's hard to know what's going on here since only one side is really talking about its perspective. It would help (but in another way, is sort of telling) if the university would elaborate on how they feel their program has been mischaracterized.

Hey, you're the one running wild with the "they're indoctrinating our children" hysteria.

Conservatives have a long history of mistrust of education. Very similar to the mistrust that organized religion has for education. The connection is: the more educated the public is, the harder it is to control them.

No...but it's all so steeped in christo-fascist, white christian supremacy-republican party propaganda that it is not worth the time or effort to sort out the "wheat from the chafe", IMO.

Here are more reasons why:

Does "FIRE" have CNP written all over it???

http://thefire.org/index.php/advisors/
Board of Advisors

.... T. Kenneth Cribb

T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., is president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Cribb was Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs in the Reagan Administration, serving as President Reagan’s top advisor on domestic matters. Earlier in the administration he held the position of Counselor to the Attorney General. He also served as vice chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board from 1989 to 1992. Today he also is president of the Collegiate Network, an association of independent college newspapers; <h3>vice president of the Council for National Policy</h3>; and counselor to the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy.


Peter Malkin

Peter L. Malkin is a partner in Wein & Malkin LLP, a real estate management firm in New York City.


http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/030571.html
DANIEL PIPES AND "ISLAMISM"

Congratulations to author Janet Tassel and to Harvard Magazine for "Militant about 'Islamism'" (January-February, page 38), that sets forth the thesis of Daniel Pipes that militant Islam (Islamism) -- not Islam and not "terrorism" -- is the problem and that traditional, moderate Islam is the answer that needs maximum support and encouragement by the civilized world. While Harvard has thankfully avoided the "beyond the fringe" excesses of the departments of Middle East studies at Columbia and several other major universities and colleges, even at Harvard it is exceptional to see such a fair and balanced exposition of an honest and rational approach to defining the problem and seeking the intelligent solution.

Peter L. Malkin '55, J.D. '58
New York City

I did not find that this Malkin is related to Michelle, but he "buys" Daniel Pipes view of "the problem", and my research persuades me that Daniel Pipes, as was his father, is batshit crazy....

Michelle Malkin has no credibility, a common trait among the "luminaries" featured at CNP's townhall.com:

<h3>Malkin is a featured "columnist at townhall.com. townhall.com is a Salem Comm. media property. Salem is Council for National Policy media. CNP is christo-fascist subversion, and that is enough for me.....</h3>

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin
Joseph Farah is worldnetdaily, and I already detailed the quality of his "journalism and editorializing as it related to Al Gore during the 2000 campaign, and since.

worldnetdaily's "reporter", Bob Unruh is a fundamentalist christian activist, here are more of his "news articles":

and liberals don't? :rolleyes:

Well, it's like ubertuber said. They aren't advocating anything religious. I don't think that there is necessarily anything wrong with what they are doing- most colleges that i'm aware of make no secret about their efforts to instill a sense of civic responsibility in their student body. Many colleges in minnesota require their students to take a certain number of specific liberal arts classes, and have a student code of conduct. Obviously, the definition of civic responsibility isn't set in stone. As a state college they are accountable to the people of the state, not michelle malkin. Frankly, i weep for anyone who finds themselves in the unfortunate position of being accountable to michelle malkin.

I disagree that public universities should, in their official capacity, be open to as many viewpoints as possible. Going to a public university can be about exposing yourself to as many viewpoints as possible, but i don't put much responsibility for that on the school administrators.

And in any case, part of going to college is putting up with the pomposity of the people you don't agree with. Shit, that's an incredibly useful skill everywhere. Whenever i had complaints about my teachers when i was a kid, my folks would tell me to suck it up, because part of being successful in damn near anything is being able to put up with people who you don't get along with, and who you don't agree with having power over you. They told me to suck it up. I have little sympathy for someone complaining about the college experience making them uncomfortable- provided no rights have been violated.

Really? Yet some of the greatest thinkers have come from Catholic Universities

I don't think that the case at all, organized religion sects like Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans, Brothers of the Holy Cross all take great lengths to educate their charges. Islam also had many scholars that were quite educated. The same can be said for the Jewish religion as well. I think you are painting quite a broad stroke with that religion and more educated brush.

ok, so you only have prejudices against christo fascists (whatever that entails), real estate holders, anyone that worked for reagan, townhall.com correspondents, and any WND journalists.

you do realize that the same could be said about you or any of the sources you cite as credible and believable, right?

If I were to post that all moveon.org columnists were batshiat crazy and that michael moore had zero credibility, or that cnn and msnbc were communistic news agencies who were bent on destroying personal freedoms and liberties, as well as stating that the UN, george soros, and the democratic party in general were nothing more than socialist ideologists bent on bushwacking the foolish and unsuspecting 'liberals' into believing that that they were for a classless society and only had your best interests at heart were in actuality a totalitarian regime bent on reforming society into a feudalist world with the elites and the serfs, and you are a serf.....would I be credible or batshiat crazy? :confused:

Fair enough. Certainly the dominant flavor of American Christianity has a less than subtle disdain for higher education--the presence of so-called "Christian Universities" notwithstanding. It's all about those liberal hippie professors teaching our children to THINK...

The state of Delaware includes a 20 percent black population
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/prof...=6&cat=1&rgn=9

versus 12 percent nationally
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/prof...=1&cat=1&ind=6

Just 5 percent of first year students at U Delaware are black:
http://collegesearch.collegeboard.co...0&profileId=24

If any of the organizations you've mentioned were responsible for undermining the DOJ and harassing the minority voters the DOJ civil rights voting enforcement section was supposed to protect, and if they were part of an obsessive mega rich christian fundamentalist collective that has "given us" Blackwater, or a secret committtee that screens GOP presidential candidates who present the group with private speeches, as Bush himself did in San Antonio in Oct., 1999, or "delivered" a propaganda "talk radio" message via a national network of 1200 radio stations, and had literally taken over the political party platform and significant portions of the day to day operations of the executive branch and the pentagon policy....yeah, they would justly be labeled the same way by me...but they haven't, and are not organized, poised, or committed to do so, are they?

... and?

The demographics of the state and the university don't tell us much about this program or what may have been right or wrong about it. You don't know if the lack of black students at UD is because admissions discriminates against them, because they don't apply, because they aren't academically qualified, or because those students prefer other schools. I'm not saying it's not a problem. I'm just saying we can't tell WHAT the problem IS without looking a lot closer.

And really, WHO reported this has little to do with WHAT HAPPENED. I get that you don't feel those are credible sources, but it says something to me that the university rolled over so quickly and doesn't want to discuss or defend themselves - and that it happened BEFORE the mainstream media got involved.

Not to mention, the complaints about the program, and the heightened awareness came from students. It's not as though CNP sought out offensive education programs and recruited students to publicize a "poster case". Students were upset about what they were being forced to do and complained. There's nothing particularly interesting or novel about that. I was called a fascist because students were asked to choose between workshops on things like career networking and disease prevention. That's just what students do - they complain and they organize. It's a good and natural thing too, because they are at an age when they ought to be caring about things that happen around them, and they ought to be learning how to leverage their opinions into action.

If this particular program crossed the line into indoctrination (which the university doesn't even really deny, at least not yet) then this is actually a great and relevant story to the people who fund the university. It's just a shame that more information isn't readily available.

the op is nonsense.
a non-story in which the factoids adduced are interpreted through a thick veneer of hysteria. while ubertuber has taken care of the objections to this kind of program, and host the source for this particular tempest in a teapot in conservativeland, i am amused by a couple of things:

1. what opposing benign programs like this puts conservatives in the position of arguing against: conservatives now oppose sustainability (why?); the oppose tolerance of difference (why?); they oppose social justice (this we knew, but i doubt that conservatives like to array themselves against social justice)...they oppose programs that would tell undergraduates that being racist is perhaps not the best idea, they oppose the notion that homophobia is a problem.

so we could arrange a little picture of what conservatives support from this:
racism
homophobia
social injustice
non-sustainable practice
intolerance

well played.


btw i taught at delaware for a year. while that hardly make me an expert on the place, i nonetheless am familiar with it. if i remember correctly, it has a very high percentage of commuting students for a main state university. i mention this because it puts something of the dormitory programs into another perspective.

There you go again with the control thing. It seems to be a theme in your posting.

You keep confusing religious right with conservative. Thats like confusing every liberal with the socialist moonbats.

And by religious right I don't mean just people who are conservative and believe in god but people who have their religion as their main political issue.

My guess is you have very little exposure to conservatives in your life.

I'd also like to point out I didn't run with anything in this story. I simply pointed out how it went down. If you could be so kind as to point out where I complained about them indoctrinating our children in this thread please do so.

"indoctrinating our children" by holding official little workshops during the source of which the students are told that to get on in a mixed population, things like being a racist are unacceptable?

this line of argument is absurd.

The problem for your side of this argument is that everything I have posted is easily supported. CNP's Weyrich illustrates an at least 27 year old disinformation campaign that was so successful, it swallowed the credibility of the republican party, the white house, the Pentagon, and the Justice Dept.:

Here's the co-founder of CNP the year before "the founding":
<h2>....and reality rears it's ugly head:</h2>

These "folks" are a plague. While you downplay or dismiss the influence they wield and the damage that they do, they keep doing it....never missing a beat....

If that was the concept at hand you would be correct, only it isn't.

The issue is were these workshops racist in their ideas and presumptions, and were students required to embrace and teach these racist ideas.

The only point of contention is were the issues as presented by the OP valid or were they fabricated. Based on just how quickly the university reacted in canceling the program for review I would guess there the claims were at least partially valid.

Seeing what was openly available on the campus web site, I see no reason to doubt that the original post is accurate. My guess is whoever was in charge of this at the university got a little to activist and a little less educational in their thinking. Being this was not related to a class but just for living in the dorms it seems a bit unreasonable if the students couldn't 'opt out'.

you cant make any judgments about the "validity" of a claim from a unversity's reactions to adverse press, even in the whackjob form that this comes in.

addendum: this because universities tend to be to say the least jumpy about negative press. i have tons of stories about this kind of thing, some involving very prestigious schools which find themselves embroiled in very nasty situations thanks to the actions of some drunken student often.

You conveyed the impression that you took Bob Unruh's propaganda "Op" as news reporting:
How the fuck can you, or anyone.... possibly tell the "difference" between religious right and conservatives?

Isn't this the "party of conservatives" website?:
http://www.gop.com/GetActive/CallTalkRadio.aspx

aren't many of the "radio personalities" listed on this GOP web page, employed by a "christian radio network", founded and managed by two CNP members and former officers? Wasn't CNP (Council for National Policy) founded by christian fundamentalist zealots?

Ustwo, I doubt that you are even aware how pervasive fundamentalist christian influence is in American conservative politics.

Why don't you post about how you separate conservative politics from religious fundamentalist propaganda and political psy-ops? Is townhall.com a political commentary site, or is it a media property owned/controlled by aggressively political christian fundamentalists who mix their religious and political agendas to an intensity so interwoven that they cannot be separated?

I can't tell what is secular conservative politics versus religiously motivated; which SRN talk radio mouths and townhall.com columnists are primarily religiously motivated or politically motivated, and I doubt that Stu Epperson and Ed Altzinger even want me to be able to discern the difference, if there even is any....so, how do you do it?

Neither of us know the truth behind it beyond the evidence presented.

Well lets pretend the OP was true.

Do you think the reaction unjustified?

Ustwo...these bastards manipulated the reaction of the DOJ voting rights enforcement investigation and prosecution sections, with variants of this same "psy-Op"....marginalized voting rights enforcement in the entire U.S.

They're excellent at what they do. They've taken over the GOP, the executive branch, and much of DOD.

Why do you focus on the reaction of one smallish university to being targeted by a wing of this huge, zealot driven propaganda assault.....as if the University's reaction somehow makes Unruh's bullshit, legitimate?

You still want to concentrate on the OP, as if it wasn't what I've documented it to be.

Why isn't your concern focused on what is actually going on? This is a small part of a much larger, outrageously undemocratic, unconstituional, and illegal subversion of law and law enforcement, and it's religiously driven politically motivated.

Why the denial....the total lack of concern over the real problem that this thread's OP showcases?

nothing about the interpretation given to these programs seems to me accurate.
nothing at all. so i would say delaware should not have bothered to react to this. the "story" isnt worth a damn, the "interpretations" given in the far right press are lunacy (the fixation on the word "treatment" is particularly funny--working hard to make a benign social tolerance program seem like something stalinist.)

on the other hand--ok let's play your game, ustwo.
if the reports were to be confused with something not tendentious (you know, distorted by a partisan viewpoint so much that the factual content comes to be meaningless) what is your objection exactly?
to wit (quoting myself....ugh,)


btw: host has pretty effectively demolished the source.
the interpretations of the op piece were already taken apart by the good mister tuber above--i came in late to the thread and am only adding small things--the main arguments to be addressed here, really, are in host and ubertuber's posts...but we can play if you want. it'll get to the same thing.

I have no doubt that you wouldn't know the difference.

You observe from a distance so far away from main stream thought, that differences are undecernable to you. Your center is radical, your radical is hypothetical.

You live in a world of elite enslavers and impoverished rebells. I live in a world of families, homes, jobs, parties, weddings and funerals, you know, real life.

this has to be the most ridiculous sentence i have read from you, ustwo.

so you have a monopoly on "real life"------and people who do not agree with your politics have no contact with it.

that's funny.

Actually, this isn't a dorm, it's a residence hall. A dorm is a barracks for students. Schools don't really have them any more. Residence Halls support the educational mission of the school, and as such nearly all of them require some sort of educational component as a condition of living there. Opting out is not really even in the realm of consideration. The other side of this, of course, is that it is incumbent on the university to ensure that these educational programs/seminars are appropriate and defensible. THAT'S where there may be some traction with the student complaints.

This may sound like pontificating or something similarly useless in the real world, but difference is actually huge. The living environment is part of the learning environment of the school.

(As an aside, an ironic twist is that the versions of these programs for freshmen often go by the acronym FYRE, or First Year Residential Experience. A lot of schools like that one because it's catchy and they aren't really original enough to come up with their own label. I thought that was funny given the involvement of FIRE.)

And the reason I don't see host's posts as having much traction in this thread is that character assassination of the source is besides the point. This stuff happens. Sometimes, things happen that are over the line. We can't really know what the deal is without more reporting - perhaps it would be helpful if the "real" media sources could shed some light. The university's flaccid response makes me extremely curious to know what their original thinking in implementing the program.

uber...the "real media" parroted the phony "voter fraud" mantra of these thugs, for more than five years.

If you know of a better way for me to do what I did here to object to and to counter the "crap" in the thread OP, I'd like to read it, In the interim, consider:

c'mon....these are the same zealots who conned (hijacked ?) the DOJ into running a five year investigation/prosecution campaign against "voting fraud" by potential voters expected to vote in oppostion to republicans....a five year campaign against a 'threat" that did not even exist.

I'm certain there is a one percent chance that this is not what it appears to be:

T. Kenneth Cribb is on the "FIRE" board of advisors, and he's also vice president of CNP.
He also is president of Delaware based, "Intercollegiate Studies Institute".

How strong do you think the possibility is that FIRE's involvment here is a result of grassroots disatisfaction with U. of Delaware student residence "programs", when folks like Cribb already embraced this as their "life's work", and their Intercollegiate Studies Institute is in the neighborhood? Check out who funds Intercollegiate Studies Institute...the usual suspects.

<h3>uber, you constantly react to my posts as if I am "premature" in my "take". Is it really so necessary to handle thugs, like these...with "kid gloves"? Their intent is to blur the lines between snippets of fact that can be assembled into fairly reliable conclusions.</h3>

Since we all depend on third party reporting to shape our conclusions and our world view, isn't what these folks are on a mission to do.... discredit through propaganda "Ops" like this, part of a larger crime against society?

You have to ask yourself if you're making it easy for them to get away with it, or more difficult. CNP is a criminal org, IMO, and they've been a primary part of a process that had turned the contemporary GOp, into an org that displays many signs of being a criminal org., too.

Uber said he could see such a thing happening having been in that environment, so I dont' know what you are talking about there.

Let me quote him...

I don't think that supports anything host said, or you.

Additionally I rarely read hosts posts for what should be obvious reasons, and I think Cynthetic covered it nicely.

You avoided my question, so you didn't play my game at all.

Lets pretend the courses were in fact exactly what was laid out by the OP. Do you think the reaction against them was justified and that the university should review them?

The question here is not the source, but a pure hypothetical.

i seriously wouldnt put much weight in the way delaware reacted to this...universities tend to cower proactively in the face of negative press...part of this has to do with concerns about keeping the alumnii happy and by so doing maintaining a significant funding source.
look at any alumnii magazine, particularly the letters to the editor section, and you'll see quick the political problems they face in this regard.

delaware is a very conservative state, too.
it's kinda frightening, like a twilight zone.
at least it was to me when i would be commuting from civilization (philadelphia) to the wilds of newark.

so the university response is so heavily bounded that you cant take much away from it in terms of an official admission about anything to do with the contents of this ludicrous story. its a reaction to negative press attention of any kind, i would wager.

Maybe, except there's not really any negative press. There's like one or two original sources and virtually no syndication. To me, THAT'S what makes the situation curious. I just don't think there's enough information to really draw conclusions.

Host, I don't see your direction as being particularly relevant. SOMETHING happened. We don't really know what, whether or not we take the reporting at face value. And yes, based on my experience in the real world, I do believe that the original complaint probably issued from a student. I have no way of knowing how that transitioned to anything else because, as I noted above, there's just not enough information out there.

And no, I don't feel that I have to ask myself if I'm making it easier for "them" to get away with "it". I don't think that asking questions about what really happened and applying my knowledge of working directly in the field makes me complicit in anything. In fact, I think that your suggestion of me enabling or being complicit because I'm skeptical of both sides pending more information is comical almost to the point of farce. Really, to rule this out of bounds despite the ambiguity and my personal experience would be an ideologically-based knee-jerk. I try not to roll that way.

**EDIT**

I'm going to lay aside any issues of "national agenda" on the part of FIRE or CNP for now because I followed the FIRE links to archived versions of UD's internal documents regarding the program. I'm reading through them now and gaining a much clearer understanding of what was going on. If you are interested in doing the same, you can look at this link. Look past the fact that it is a partisan diatribe from FIRE - in the numerous links within the text, FIRE has provided links to pdf files of documents from UD, including correspondence between the two organizations.

I'll come back later when I've read more, but the summary documents from UD as they were assembling the program do make me wonder how they didn't see the objections coming. You'd have to be at least a little detached from reality to work with students all the time and not forsee the completely predictable effects of implementing something like this, even if you did it well, which they didn't.

I'll agree with you that in general there's nothing to be worried about when it comes to similar programs, but this specific case could be different and there are imo logical reasons to be against it.

It's hard to see how could you not have a problem with it, if the program really was as sinister as is implied(living in a state college in the northeast I can say that this is probably suspect, but I have no specific information on this case)? The problem is not with the ideas taught but with the method. It’s reminiscent of a the type of thinking outlined in Plato’s republic. Which I myself found disturbing, good city my ass. It(the program) rests on methods that treat people like sheep. An almost abolition of individual freedoms for the greater good. I don’t think enlightening people can be achieved by imprinting on them enlightened ideas; rather giving them the tools to reach their own conclusions should be the preferred method of education. You won’t get everyone this way, but maybe you’ll teach a few to think critically. Generally though this is what I find available to me at my university, and I assume is available elsewhere.

there is no centralized decision=making chain in this sort of situation within a university, so chances are that a residence life committee decided to institute this program and the central administrative structure wouldn't know anything about it in particular, nor would they be terribly concerned about it, as individual administrative zones have a fair degree of autonomy.

such programs are typically really boring affairs and people dont necessarily enjoy sitting through these sessions. i am not sure that the complaints, such as they are, cannot be understood as responses to the dullness of such affairs.

i dont see a problem with the program, however: even if one were to throw judgment out the window and assume for a moment that the far right wingnut interpretations floated in the op were in some sense of the term "accurate" i still am not sure i see the problem. students have to do alot of things they dont necessarily like in a residence hall===and i would wager that no matter how boring these sessions are, they are still better than eating dining hall food.

at any rate, this brings me back around the the question i posed to ustwo twice, and which he has dodged twice, even going so far as to play that silly projection game wherein he gets to say that i am the one not answering the question.

so where is your objection to the programs, really, ustwo?
do you oppose the idea that racism is a bad thing?
do you oppose the idea that sustainable practices are perhaps good to know about and maybe even to implement where possible?
do you oppose notions of social justice?


=========
albania: you were posting while i was---the details of how the program is implemented seem to be at the center of this--but this is also what ibertuber has been saying.

personally, i dont think this type of program has to be patronizing--i would think that any good it could possibly do would be undermined if it was--they should be presented in ways that encourage debate, encourage critical reflection and argument.

i've done a fair amount of work in programs like this. but usually on particular issues in the world (iraq) rather than on problematic attitudes within the university. when i have done them, they are generally organized as spurs for debate, so the trick is to provoke the students, encourage them to not believe you, to do research for themselves and articulate their own positions.

whether it works or not isnt clear---you hope that the conversation continues after the sessions are over, but there's also the lure of watching television of hanging out or doing whatever else one does to amuse oneself in a residence hall.
personally, i think many many undergraduates tend to be intellectually lazy as well. that is a problem at all kinds of levels, but probably isnt terribly germaine here--unless it factors in to explaining such "reactions" as there were to the delaware program.

Honestly I'm really perplexed why anyone is arguing about this.

Someone greatly expands sensitivity training at a state university dorm.

Some students complain that its a waste of time and stupid.

Complaints reach main stream via the internet.

University claims things are not really that bad but they will stop anyways just in case to review.

So whats the issue? How does this become a conservatives are hate filled evil people thread exactly? Why do the same people always jump off the deep end?

Here's where I see issues things that seem like they aren't very well thought out. This is structural stuff about the department, but I think it leads to predictable reactions from students (who like to react to things) and to predictable criticisms to which UD has a hard time refuting.

Curricular vs. Programming Models

The difference is in the type of educational setting. Programming is generally voluntary, which means that you have to couch your education inside something that is attractive, like food, games, or social events. Curricular modals are generally mandatory in some way (usually by providing a range of things to choose from and requiring completion of a set of them), and typically features lectures, seminars, etc. Most places use a programming model or a mixed model. The mixed model is what I'm most familiar with. There is a great reason that the curricular model is not widely used by itself - the people who work in residence life and student affairs aren't education professionals - they're administrators in an educational environment. Residence Hall Directors aren't really trained to understand how to design and implement a curriculum, much less actually teach the content. They just aren't experts on the subject matter. So what you typically do (what I did when I was in this position) is go out and find a bunch of experts to come in and talk about packaged topics - the overall composition of the package of topics makes the content of your curriculum and you somehow induce students to go to an appropriate variety of these things. Going out and getting experts was easy for me because I had the resume carrot - people wanted to be able to say that they had presented or taught something at Juilliard. Because of this, I was able to get people from places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and do 75+ seminars for less than $2k. Schools without that prestige draw have to do it the old-fashioned way, which is buy experts' time. That's expensive. The UD program is problematic from the get-go because they are designing, implementing, and teaching a program with 100% in-house talent. That's not the most solid ground upon which to build something that may be controversial.


Exposure vs. Indoctrination

There's a difference between exposing students to ideas and indoctrinating them. That difference is especially acute with college-age people because they are very prickly, moderately activist about their laziness, and quick to become self-righteous. The UD program is mostly on the side of exposure, but there are a few places in which they cross the line - and here I'm only talking about the design on paper, not the implementation, which itself can invite more trouble. It is one thing to expose people to ideas of social justice, inequity, and even things like sustainability. I mean, those are relatively slam-dunk issues in our society... However, it's another thing to require them to espouse a certain package of beliefs as a condition of the curriculum. Put it this way - an academic class about Christianity can require you to recount beliefs for a test, but they can't really make you go out and get baptized. Requiring students to say certain things, participate in particular projects (without having alternatives or justification), and reveal personal information crosses the line.


Implementation

This is the real doozy, and it's the place where I have to wonder WTF the UD residence life folks were thinking. They went out and designed a very extensive program. Formally speaking, they did their homework. There is a pretty good amount of material supporting how and what they were planning to do. HOWEVER... They aren't really staffed to accomplish the things they wanted to accomplish. The biggest problem is that they were using their RAs, who are students, to accomplish their indoctrination. This is problematic in and of itself, because getting a bunch of student staff members on the same page and performing at an adequate level is like herding cats. It's much worse when you're really talking about requiring change in personal views. The RAs are not trained to teach, they aren't experienced in these types of interactions, and frankly, they don't have any authority with the content. The lunacy here is that a large part of the program was being enacted through one-on-one meetings, essentially interviews. So you require students to meet with someone who is untrained, unqualified, and inexperienced - in essence their peer - and discuss extremely personal information. Information that skirts topics which, in actuality, you can't pry into - like sexual identity, etc. That's a recipe for disaster. No matter how good your training of your student staff is, this is going to produce problems - and the student staff, in that they are acting in the fulfillment of their job descriptions represent UD to the students, definitively. So you end up with a situation in which, in a situation explicitly described as "curricular" and "outcome based", UD asks someone when they discovered their sexual identity. It's not really rocket science to figure out how people will react to this.

There's more to the situation, and I'm still reading through the documents. However, I don't really think it is possible to characterize the whole thing as nothing more than a political "hit". There were actual problems with the program as designed and implemented.

Oh yeah, roachboy is right in that the central administration probably didn't know the extent of the idiocy being enacted. They hire residence life folks and student affairs folks to not do things in a way which is effective but also keeps them out of trouble. In this case, those people stuck the university's neck way out, and I bet that the full nature of it wasn't understood until after the shit started hitting the fan. In that circumstance, I might also offer a flaccid defense. A more vigorous one would invite questions about how something so complex gets enacted without more common sense.

just trying to get you to explain where your objection lay, ustwo.
if you dont want to do it, you can simply not do it.
recourse to hyperbole isnt the most direct way to avoid answering a question or 3.


==============

ubertuber: very interesting.

what i dont understand exactly is where the assumption comes from that ra's have no training in doing this sort of work. the program would have had to include training, yes?

if there's none--no matter how goofy it might be--then yes, there is a problem.
but it wouldnt follow directly from using ra's in this role--rather from how the university trained (or did not train) them to occupy the role they were expected to occupy.

Typically you train them on everything they have to know within about 6 days, which also includes all university policies, procedures, how to identify problems and make appropriate referrals, the necessary role-playing exercises to get them up to speed, getting to know each other, and the operational details of opening the facility up - so things like maintenance requests, decoration, condition assessments, etc. You also do in-service things periodically, but in practice those mostly end up being in support of seasonal activities for which you need spot-training. Add to this the fact that they're really just college kids and their levels of qualification (social skill wise), competence (common-sense wise), and motivation vary dramatically. In other words, training them enough to do the things they were asked to do isn't really practical.

So really, they aren't trained in a way that you'd want them to represent the school in most sensitive matters. The way you handle that is by making sure that their job description and protocols never allow them to do something that may involve liability or representing the school officially without having professional staff present or involved in the decision making process.

I've read quite a bit of those now and there is nothing evil or indoctrinating in it, just an amazing steaming pile of stupid and poor judgment.

If I were a student I'd be annoyed with such a colossal waste of time, and I really feel sorry for the RA's who need to monitor and teach this crap.

I had a taste of this with some sort of 'rape sensitivity' training we all had to take as males at the school.

I'm so glad someone told me that rape was wrong and that no means no, I mean how would I have ever known I was doing something against her will!

Thats the level of these activities, only without the clear concept of preventing rape. If they weren't scanned I'd quote some of the better ones.

For fun, read page 67 of the Russell Curriculum as the worst 1-1 :)

My RA only had to keep the noise down and make sure no one was drunk, boy he missed out on some fun I say!

There is a difference between mistrust of education itself and mistrust of those in charge of and involved with the education system...who have proved on more than one occasion to be biased.