May 19, 2004
Abolishing "A&M"-erica; etc
Someone forwarded me this note from
the
Chronicle of Higher Education daily email
bulletin for May 18:
“Breaking with tradition at
Texas A&M
“Paul
Burka, a senior executive editor at the magazine,
describes the distinctive culture of
Texas A&M University at College Station -- a culture
that is grounded, he writes, in patriotism,
Protestantism, and loyalty to institution and family --
and one man's efforts to change it for the better.
A glance at the May issue of "Texas Monthly"
Hmmm. Apparently, CHE
believes that "a culture that is grounded…in
patriotism, Protestantism, and loyalty to institution
and family" is something that needs to be
changed for the better. [Ask
CHE about this curious idea.]
The story it’s referring to is
called Corps Values, and it, like the CHE
story, is behind the subscription barrier. But I'll give
you a few highlights. [Texas Monthly May 2004
Corps Values, By Paul Burka, also
here]
“Affirmative Action: The prospect that A&M might adopt
race-based admissions [VDARE.COM
note: after the
Michigan decisions
made this legal in
Texas ] dominated campus debate in the
fall, with
conservative-minded students sponsoring
an "affirmative action bake sale" that offered lower
prices for non-whites and the school's new athletics
director complaining in a widely disseminated e-mail
that the resulting publicity hurt the recruiting of
athletes.”
“But
A&M's president, Robert Gates, decided in December
against establishing an affirmative action program,
announcing instead that the university would step up its
attempts to recruit minority students who meet the
standards for admission. This laid bare the issue of
whether A&M is ‘Crackerland,’ as one dismayed faculty
member put it in a letter to Gates, where—despite
official rhetoric and goals to the contrary—minorities
are not welcome for fear that they won't buy into A&M's
traditions (there's that word again) and prevailing
ethos.
"Crackerland." That one word
is not only offensive in itself, but shows how far the
debate has come.
The President of the University is
offering to admit any member of a minority group who can
pass the entrance exams (Aggie entrance exams). He is
willing to go out on the highways and byways
searching for other members of minority groups who
might want to be Aggies.
But if A&M is not willing to
lower the academic standards to admit minorities who
can't pass the tests, then it's "Crackerland."
(In a historical note, the first black was admitted to A&M in 1950, and by 1967, the place was
fully desegregated.)
What President Gates is really
trying to change for the better, however, is Texas A
&M's academic reputation.
Students at Texas A&M are known as
Aggies, and are the subject of what are known as
Aggie Jokes, similar in content to
Polish Jokes,
Newfie Jokes, Blonde Jokes, et cetera.
None of these stereotypes is
very true. But it is true that you need a higher SAT
score to get into Caltech, or MIT than you need to get
into an Agricultural and Mechanical College.
Gates wants to raise admittance
requirements for everyone. He apparently doesn't realize
that this will bar a lot of minority applicants, as
well, of course, as a number of white Texas farmers,
from getting in.
But about the tradition thing:
President Gates [email
him] didn't actually say that the college's
traditions were grounded in "patriotism,
Protestantism," et cetera; that was the Chronicle
of Higher Education's interpretation of his actual
remarks, which were non-sectarian:
"Our culture is grounded
in patriotism, religious belief (however expressed),
loyalty to family and to one another, a hard work ethic,
character, and integrity."
Texas Monthly's Paul Burka's response to that
is a textbook example of what we mean by the "Culture
War," AKA "Abolishing
America:"
“What is striking about
these values is that they are personal rather than
intellectual; most major university presidents, I
suspect, would put open-mindedness and respect for ideas
at the top of their list and leave patriotism and
religion as matters of individual, rather than
institutional, choice.”
This is exactly backwards, of
course. It's
patriotism,
loyalty, and
religion that are institutional, and are expected to
be taught by
college presidents.
"Open-mindedness and respect for
ideas" are
academic shibboleths that usually mean believing in
nothing at all, and being loyal to
every country but your own.
Reference the above piece using this permanent URL:
http://www.vdare.com/fulford/aggies.htm#abolishing
Aggie Afterthought
Elite opinion would have it that
Texas A & M is too white, too rural, too American, and
too…well, Aggie, to survive.
Meanwhile, back in the evil days of
segregation, a "separate but equal" college was
established in
Prairie View, Texas, for what the legislature called
"colored youth."
Guess what? It's still going
strong. And while its mission statement says that it's
meant to serve
"diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds,"
US News and World Report says it's one of the
least diverse schools
in the country, at 94 percent African-American.
Perhaps someone should tell the
Supreme Court.
Reference the above piece using this permanent URL:
http://www.vdare.com/fulford/aggies.htm#afterthought
