College Encourages Lively Exchange Of Idea - The Onion - America's Finest News Source
College Encourages Lively Exchange Of Idea - The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
BOSTON—Saying that such a dialogue was essential to the college’s academic mission, Trescott University president Kevin Abrams confirmed Monday that the school encourages a lively exchange of one idea. “As an institution of higher learning, we recognize that it’s inevitable that certain contentious topics will come up from time to time, and when they do, we want to create an atmosphere where both students and faculty feel comfortable voicing a single homogeneous opinion,” said Abrams, adding that no matter the subject, anyone on campus is always welcome to add their support to the accepted consensus. “Whether it’s a discussion of a national political issue or a concern here on campus, an open forum in which one argument is uniformly reinforced is crucial for maintaining the exceptional learning environment we have cultivated here.” Abrams told reporters that counseling resources were available for any student made uncomfortable by the viewpoint.
It turns out that if you’re a curious, motivated individual in the Swat Valley or Ado-Ekiti, access to knowledge and information means a lot to you: it can, in fact, be central to your values, your education, your livelihood, and the way you explore and understand the world. “Knowledge is a weapon to change the way of people’s thinking,” Kusmarni told me from Jakarta, in a sentiment that was echoed by everyone who answered my ad. But information, they all reminded me, is only valuable if you can get it, and use it, where you live.Joseph, from the Ekiti State University in Nigeria and Owusu, from Donkorkrom, Ghana, told me of the insurmountable difficulties they and their classmates face when attempting to use Western collections: paywalls, geoblocking, and membership requirements routinely stand in their way. “You can imagine my frustration when I stumble across a site that has all the information I am seeking only to be informed that my geographic location does not have access to this,” wrote Joseph. Owusu’s stories echoed these frustrations, but he added hopefully, “To have an online digitized library that is free to be accessed is in my opinion the best thing that can ever happen to me and most of my mates at the University.”
It is an article of faith in our community of scholars, institutions, and collections that we work for a noble purpose: that building, preserving, and disseminating knowledge is one of the defining acts of a wise and enlightened society. But our success in these endeavors will be defined by the choices we make—what we choose to catalog and digitize, what we share with the world, and under what conditions we permit or restrict access to our wealth of resources. Remarkable people like Kusmarni, Owusu, and Joseph seem to be everywhere—all over the globe as well as in our local classrooms and communities. Will we in the Hidden Collections program act as if we believe in their genius? We can and we should.
I have one thought
Today I hear from one source that the killing of Tamir Rice was “objectively reasonable” and from another that when some students and faculty at Missouri take over a public space within that community and decide which members of the community can enter that space — enforcing their control by calling in “muscle” to expel members of the communty they disapprove of — we should “relish the moment” because that’s “democracy in action.”
I think all y’all are crazy.
This unquestionably was a tragic loss of life, but to compound the tragedy by labeling the officers conduct as anything but objectively reasonable would also be a tragedy.
But persistent or not, the myth of the unemployed humanities major is just that: a myth, and an easily disproven one at that. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce has been tracking differences in the employment of graduates from various disciplines for years, demonstrating that all graduates see spikes and troughs in their employment prospects with the changing economy. And AAC&U’s employer surveys confirm, year after year, that the skills employers value most in the new graduates they hire are not technical, job-specific skills, but written and oral communication, problem solving, and critical thinking—exactly the sort of “soft skills” humanities majors tend to excel in.
We honour today those whose readiness to respond to the human duty to serve others became, because of the times they lived in, choices unto death. We, living in peace and plenty, are the generation they could not imagine. We are the recipients of the gift of life which springs out of the deaths of our forebears, and for that reason we honour them. God knows the value of each individual gift, and understands the compromises and cruelties of violent times. But every life offered for the sake of others is not wasted but given, and the life which springs from that gift is one we have received. We thank them, and we thank God, who redeems every human gift through the sinless gift of his Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, who died at the hands of the violent and rose again to proclaim the peace of God’s kingdom upon this troubled earth. May that kingdom come.Amen.
I find it amusing to reflect on the idea that mankind may sometime soon grow tired of reading and that writers will do so too, that the scholar will one day direct in his last will and testament that his corpse shall be buried surrounded by his books and especially by his own writings. And if it is true that the forests are going to get thinner and thinner, made the time not come one day when the libraries should be used for timber, straw and brushwood? Since most books are born out of smoke and vapour of the brain, they ought to return to smoke and vapour. And if they have no fire of their own in them, fire should punish them for it.
Brett Foster, “Back-to-School Rondeau”
It’s almost time to set aside the waning
distractions of first youth, the life contained
for years at home. What’s home? The place you grow
out of, everything receding slowly,
fading like a chalked sidewalk in the rain.
Leave childish things behind, said a certain
fellow. (Others afterward.) Don’t remain:
the friends gone late in summer let you know
it’s almost time.
Don’t leave behind new clothes, impromptu plans —
they’ll match surroundings well, remind again
of shining coming: new homes to let go
of, too; the best things said; mind’s overflow;
surprising callings; time for love, and pain.
It’s almost time.
[gallery] Another example: this is what happened when I pressed my finger on the sentence beginning “The suspended….” I tried scrolling up and down, and even refreshed the page. It was still impossible for me to select the text I was touching. I feel like Sepp looks. I am having my very own small emotional breakdown.
After this I went to another site where pressing the text with my finger resulted in nothing at all. So on three different sites I tried simply to select text, and that basic operation failed in three different ways.
This is a “mature operating system”? I think not.
