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Friday, January 03, 2003

Kang on North Korea

Government prof. David Kang comments in the Financial Times:
George W. Bush's administration is right to ease the pressure on the North Korean regime, since the events of the past month have threatened to spiral out of control. But the US still lacks a long-range strategy to resolve the peninsula's tensions.

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 9:18 PM (0 comments)

Women's hockey

After an exhilarating win over Ohio State last night, they play Findlay (?) tonight, again at Thompson at 7:00 p.m.

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by alex at 11:35 AM (0 comments)

Thursday, January 02, 2003

Winter Sports Update

It was a good holiday season for Dartmouth Sports.

The Men's basketball team won its first holiday tournament since the 91-92 season, as they won the Poinsettia Holiday Classic by defeating Stetson 86-74 and then host Furman 63-59. Dartmouth is now 4-5 on the year. They start Ivy League competition @ Harvard on Saturday.

The Men's hockey team won the Auld Lang Syne Classic for the first time. They defeated Notre Dame 6-4 before routing UMass-Lowell 10-2 in the title game at Thompson Arena. Dartmouth is now 8-4-0 (4-2-0) on the year. The team will try for its first road win of the season as it returns to ECAC play Saturday against UVM in Burlington.

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Ben at 11:50 PM (0 comments)

Re: Freedom of Association

As Emmett posted below, UNC backed down and the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship will remain an official student group. Chancellor James Moeser said this to the AP:
On balance, given that general membership in IVCF is open to all students, I believe that in this matter, preserving freedom of expression is the more crucial consideration. Thus I have asked our staff to allow IVCF to continue to operate as an official recognized student organization.

However, Rutgers, which got into a similar scrape with its InterVarsity Multi-Ethnic Christian Fellowship, looks to be headed to court. Attorney David French has taken up the case and is looking to set precedent:

If this does become a precedent that's favorable ... it will have, I believe, national ramifications for Christians on campuses, and it also could have constitutional ramifications beyond the campus.

Stories from UPI, the AP, and Family News (a service run by Focus on the Family, a ministry). My original post.


Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 10:15 PM (0 comments)

We're #42!

Seventeen ranks Dartmouth the 42nd "Coolest College" in their survey. Rice took the top spot.

Mount Holyoke is #18, which is odd since Seventeen's criteria included "opportunities to meet members of the opposite sex." Then again, at Mt. Holyoke everyone's potentially an opposite sex.

Update: Talc tells me we already hit this, and he's right. He also notes that Wabash -- all male -- made #76 on the list.

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 9:48 PM (0 comments)

Re: Books or Bust

Could the Dartmouth Bookstore's current problems with the College and many departments have something to do with bookstore owner Dave Cioffi's affiliation with the Republican party? Cioffi is active in local politics and is a NH Republican party delegate and chair of the Hanover Republicans.

Whitney Foster Spaulding, owner of the Wheelock Bookstore, is said to be more progressive, politically. Is there a story here?

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 8:37 PM (0 comments)

Notes from the Front Lines

There's an update on FIRE's efforts at UNC-Chapel Hill: they've caved, and only one day after we did our press release. They'll be recognizing the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. We'll be doing a press release on this victory on Monday. Stay tuned.

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Emmett at 8:13 PM (0 comments)

Books or bust, part 2

Meanwhile, a cordial e-mail from Wheelock Books:

>Date: 02 Jan 2003 08:46:42 EST
>From: Wheelock.Books@valley.net (Wheelock Books)
>Subject: Winter Book Rush
>To: (Recipient list suppressed)

Happy New Year!

We here at Wheelock Books are excited for winter term to get underway! We've got more books for more classes than ever before, including the texts for ALL Government and Economics courses.

We also just expanded our facility to allow for these extra books and to accomodate more students in the store, and we're psyched to have you all check out our new space.

We will be open THIS WEEKEND (January 4 and 5) from 10am - 6pm. C'mon in and beat the big lines!

During the first week of class, we'll be open from 8am until 8pm. NO ONE ever shows up at 8am, so if you want to have a lineless shopping experience and can make yourself get up early, we'd love to see you then!

AND we could really use some more help on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 11am - 7pm, and especially in the 4:00-7:00 slot. So if you'd like to work for Wheelock Books, just reply to this blitz or give us a call (643-6567)! First come first serve.

See you all in the next few days, and best of luck for the coming term.


-Katie Lynch '02
Whit Spaulding '89

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by alex at 5:39 PM (0 comments)

Books or bust

The Dartmouth Bookstore was not kidding about scaling back on textbook offerings. Much is set up there already, but many departments have little or no courses provided for (including books for only one course in my beloved Religion Department). And the College and its departments are being openly blamed for not coming through with deadlines for submitting text requests to the store. To wit, a sign by the would-be French section:

"French books! Be very careful. We did not receive the textbook order from the french department. This is a sample of books from past terms. We hope you find something interesting!"

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by alex at 5:36 PM (0 comments)

Andrew has a roaring social life.

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Alston B. Ramsay at 3:59 PM (0 comments)

Wireless in the Classroom

The Times has a front-page article today on in-classroom wireless Internet use. Among other schools (mostly American University), Dartmouth gets a cite.

Having taken advantage of wireless access while in classes at Dartmouth (and pining for a similar service at Penn), I think that it can be a great benefit to classroom discussion. With entire libraries of authoritative sources within reach, discussions can be better factually grounded and sources more correctly quoted. Sure, 'Net access may be another distraction for students, but those not inclined to pay attention were probably reading the New Yorker or The Economist anyway.

Moves to ban classroom laptop use or to restrict wireless access (one administrator quoted in the article suggests that, at professors' discretion, Internet access might be limited to only certain websites), ignore the value that these technologies add to the classroom experience. As a tool, laptop computers are sometimes more convenient for taking notes than a pencil and paper (especially for those of us who write illegibly) and allow easy keyword searching of previous notes and other class materials. Combined with wireless Internet access, laptops can be used to access all kinds of ancillary materials, from cited cases in law classes to government statistics in political science classes.

Using Omni Outliner, I've been able to take neat outline notes in all of my classes and then post them on the Internet -- which is easily done -- for my and others' use. Even my professors have benefitted, consulting my notes to help themselves remember what's already been covered in class.

This sort of usage -- becoming more and more common every term -- is a real benefit to the classroom and shouldn't be sacrificed just because a few professors can't bear the thought that they might not have their students' undivided attentions. Short of replacing lecture classes with seminars, there's no way of guaranteeing such a thing, anyway. Even without laptops, students still find plenty of ways to distract themselves: reading books and magazines, writing letters, sleeping, knitting (seen several times), drawing, and so on. Computers are hardly the basis of the problem.

Update: Glenn Reynolds: "Students who don't pay attention in class are likely to do badly on the exam. That's their problem, not mine."

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 3:41 PM (0 comments)

Monday, December 30, 2002

Freedom of Association

Fire has out an excellent press release today on two universities that are actively restricting their students' Freedom of Association. A quick summary:
The InterVarsity Multi-Ethnic Christian Fellowship (IVMECF), a Christian Group at Rutgers University, has been banned from using campus facilities and stripped of university funding because it selected its leadership on the basis of religious belief. In an identical situation, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) has threatened similar punishment for the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF)�as well as for other Christian organizations at UNC�because it also used religion as a criterion in the selection of its leadership.

Constitutionally implied freedom of association brings with it the freedom to exclude, especially in recent years. In Roberts v. United States Jaycees (1984), the Supreme Court recognized the right of organizations to determine their membership using explicitly (and non-arbitrary) selective membership criteria. But in Rotary International v. Rotary Club of Duarte (1987), the Court limited its Roberts ruling: an organization's exclusive membership criteria must be read in the context of the group's mission.

As FIRE notes, Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000) provides some precedent as well, in that it specifically grants groups freedom from the forced inclusion of members whose presence "affects in a significant way the group�s ability to advocate public or private viewpoints."

Both groups in question now have open membership policies; that's not the issue. The issue is actually narrow in light of precedent: does the First Amendment's implied protection of selective criteria apply to groups with open memberships but restricted leaderships? The answer to this question necessarily applies to the policies of Rutgers and UNC, both state universities and so bound to uphold students' constitutional rights.

The two groups' specific, non-arbitrary or -incidental selection criteria and explicitly religious mission -- plus, perhaps, the extent to which that's tied up with protected religious practice -- would seem to call for an extension of the Roberts and Duarte rulings.

Finally, it is worth considering the sort of double standard that policies of the sort pursued by Rutgers and UNC create in today's university environment. Consider which sort of groups are the most exclusionary on university campuses. Speaking from my experiences at Dartmouth, groups with ethnic or sexual bases appear to be the worst offenders in terms of barring outsiders from their meetings and membership. A Dartmouth student need only look in the Women's Resource Center (or whatever they're calling it now) bulletin board to discover a vast array of events that he or she is explicitly barred from attending (unless the student in question is a bisexual, multi-ethnic hermaphrodite). While a student, I was asked to leave meetings of GLBTQAHGSODHG (yes, I made up those last few letters...probably) students, black students, and female students -- sometimes even by representatives of the College -- because my presence as straight white male was unwelcome. So be it. Rutgers (of which I have some first-hand knowledge) and UNC (admittedly, only second-hand) both support a myriad of such explicitly exclusionary groups. Groups that, unlike these InterVarsity Christian Fellowships under fire, don't even allow open membership, let alone leadership.

Rutgers and UNC pursue a politically-based, entirely arbitrary, and utterly indefensible double standard borne of some malice to the practice of religion, specifically Christianity. It is fortunate that these schools, being public, may not infringe upon their students' rights and that groups like FIRE are on the case when they inevitably do.


Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 2:09 PM (0 comments)

Who can use the Indian?

"If anyone�s earned the right to use the Indian logo, it�s UNC-Pembroke," said alumnus Bruce Barton to Frontpage.

Pembroke, originally the Croatan Normal School, was founded at the request of the Lumbee tribe in 1887. The school received a letter from the NCAA earlier this year demanding that it justify its "racially offensive" logo and team name, the Braves. Pembroke's case will be heard by the NCAA in late January.

"We�re going to fight this because it is not appropriate for the NCAA to order us to remove it because the American Indians cherish having the brave emblem," said Pembroke Chancellor Dr. Allen Meadors. "It�s political correctness run amok."

The more intesting angle is in the backstory, involving St. Cloud president and NCAA Division II officer Roy Hirofumi Saigo, who began his crusade against Indian mascots while teaching at Berkeley and is responsible for the NCAA's recent anti-Indian policies. "Someday our children and grandchildren will look back and say, 'Of course we got rid of the practice of American Indian mascots'," said Saigo at a conference on mascots held at St. Cloud last year.

Saigo made his case to the NCAA in March of 2001, claiming that the NCAA's values "are not served by the perpetuation of derogatory and stereotypical American Indian mascots, logos and nicknames as representatives of some of the organization's teams." And the result of his lobbying are bullying letters of the sort received by Pembroke.

Given issues like drug use among athletes, academic standards, Title IX, the continuing commercialization (and professionalization) of college sports, and spiraling athletic costs at many member schools (not to mention antitrust exemptions...), doesn't the NCAA have better things to do with its resources than pursue an unpopular quest against an institution generally favored by those it allegedly injures the most?

So who's against Indian mascots, then? Saigo cites (same link as above) these groups: the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Jewish Committee, the National Organization of Women, and the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Well, in that case...

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 3:08 AM (0 comments)

Sunday, December 29, 2002

Rewriting Title IX

In the mid-1990s, officials at the University of Rhode Island faced a quandary: the school had about 100 more male athletes than female athletes... So the school trimmed a little from each of the men's sports and added a women's rowing team in 1997, says Lauren Anderson, associate director of athletic programs.

Men's sports programs at colleges receiving federal funding--nearly all of them--have similarly suffered the fallout of Title IX since 1972, and growing female student populations have made effects of the law even more acute over the past decade. To be sure, at some schools, massive spending on football and other marquee men's sports has driven, in concert with Title IX, the demise of less popular programs as administrators seek to equalize (with respect to the makeup of the student body) participation and funding (as well as causing a raft of other problems), but Title IX has directly killed a great number of viable men's teams, for the sake of equality.

To assess compliance in athletics, Title IX regulations currently impose a three-pronged test. Schools must be able to show 1) that the rates of athletic participation of the sexes are "'substantially proportionate' to their respective undergraduate enrollments", 2) that the school has "a history and continuing practice of program expansion that is responsive to the developing interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex (typically female)", and 3) that the school meets "the interests and abilities of its female students" in athletic offerings.

It is the first prong that has caused so much damage to men's sports as colleges strive for mandated proportionality. The first prong is also where Title IX athletic regulation goes beyond equal opportunity into the realm of affirmative action, applying what has been, in practice, a rigid quota system to college athletics. Were equal opportunity merely the goal, the second and third prongs alone should suffice in meeting women's athletic interests without creating, as have affirmative action and other quota systems, losers. According to the General Accounting Office, the number of men's gymnastics teams at NCAA schools has fallen 80% over the last 25 years. Over a similar timespan, 181 NCAA wrestling teams were eliminated (including Dartmouth's).

The Department of Education recently appointed a committee, staffed by college sports administrators, to propose changes to the Title IX regulations, and their report to the Secretary of Education is due soon. Feminist groups fear that the administration will try to alter or even remove the proportionality test once the committee's report is in, and they're already drawing ugly, and misleading, parallels between these feared changes and a recent happening in politics. "I hope the Bush administration takes from this episode with Senator Lott the understanding that civil rights is of critical importance to massive number of Americans," said Jocelyn Samuels of the National Women's Law Center to the CS Monitor (from where the above blockquote on URI is taken, as well) when asked about changes to Title IX. Ms. Samuels's quote is very representative; Title IX advocates are organized and doggedly on-message.

With respect to her expressed desire, I agree with Ms. Samuels entirely. That's exactly why the administration must strike down Title IX's proportionality test, which disadvantages male athletes and men's sports arbitrarily and unnecessarily. Its capricious quota system benefits no one except for those who spend their time litigating Title IX cases (like Ms. Samuels) or derive some bizarre pleasure in keeping men from wrestling or shooting or fielding their own gymantic teams. The proportionality test does not even benefit women's sport programs; it is nothing but malicious. If Title IX is a civil rights issue, Ms. Samuels and her feminist peers have put themselves on the losing side of the issue, actively advocating sexual discrimination.

Other sources: the Winston-Salem Journal (very complete reporting, timeline, etc.), CNNSI, USA Today (good summary of the committee's activities). Also see the DOE's "clarification" of the three-prong test.


Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 2:52 AM (1 comments)

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