@baltimoreguy - I have no animosity towards Brown. It is a fine school, and we know some families who have kids who are very happy there. The purpose of this thread is to discuss people dismissing schools based on perceived politics, not to bash any particular school. The thread title is from the name of the Chronicle article. They knew it would be good click bait.
Is it click bait here, too? Some families want to control their kids’ college choices.
Some parents always have.
If the point is some post-election shift, a few revelations from private counselors doesn’t seem substantial enough. So what if one finds, “Many won’t consider Oberlin or Wesleyan, and Brown is completely off the table?”
That’s not new. And the author admits, “…there isn’t much evidence that political vetoes are hurting colleges. Yale hardly lacks for applicants, after all. Neither does Brown.”
So, how are we supposed to react? Get all alarmed?
Another news flash, sometimes “basket weaving stoners” could not only be topflight students with topflight scores, but also double/triple major non-basket weaving majors and pick up professional skills outside the classroom as well.
Knew plenty of undergrads during my undergrad years then and now who have and currently still do fine.
Some of those “stoners” have even become board certified MDs…
Unless the one being libeled decides to file a civil suit and successfully meet the burden of proof/legal threshold to prove it as such to the judge and/or jury, the characterization itself could be plausibly argued as “libel” against mattress girl as well by your open definition.
Well…unless he decides to attempt to file the suit in UK courts which have a much lower threshold and place the burden of proof on the defendant in libel suits…and they accept they have jurisdiction and accept the suit into their court system.
I think it is pretty easy for most parents to steer their kids away from schools they think are too liberal or too conservative just when making a list. We started by making lists of the kinds of schools my kids were interested in. One has quite a few LDS friends, but BYU wasn’t on her list even though she would have put it on if I weren’t involved. There are quite a few schools I don’t like, so I just never mentioned them. If one of my kids was “Harvard or Bust,” I’d try to talk her out of it, but in the end it would have been her choice whether to apply after a good deal of input on why I don’t like it. And then I’d do my voodoo curse on the AO to have her rejected.
We looked at some that turned out to be much too liberal for one daughter who is rather conservative. We didn’t make a big deal about it, it was just off the list and move on. Not picking Harvard doesn’t mean her only choices were Liberty or Ave Maria. Plenty of room between the poles.
@Zinhead that article’s headline is literally that these things “do not faze” so where is the article expressing concern over a drop in the quality of the student body? Harvard and Columbia might have more dollars per student but the graduate programs have always been the priority and the curricula are quite different. Hence my point that the real concern among Brown students and alumni when it comes to the quality of the student body is the need to remain true to the university-college model and the open curriculum.
During that diversity and action plan extravaganza, one of the things that lit up my facebook feed of alumni was the demand by students for a mandatory class on minority perspectives or something like that. People may not have liked some of the other elements of the students’ proposal but a mandatory class outright terrified people.
Right now we offer something that no other school does which has its own, unquantifiable value that allows us to compete with less money. The less that exists the more you’re absolutely right that we just become an inferior product and unable to keep up.
Seems like such a thing would be a bigger deal at Brown than at many other schools, since many other schools already have various general education requirements (and many of them already have some requirement of this type in their general education requirements) that Brown does not have (except for ABET-accredited engineering majors).
@hebegebe "So here D is, a strong student that actually leans somewhat liberal (pro-Choice, etc.) with a family connection to Yale, and yet Yale didn’t even merit an application from her. Columbia, with the Mattress Girl incident, dropped from a top choice to a “I guess I can go there if I have to.”
Is that because of how she protested was allowed or because you thought Columbia looked the other way and wanted to cover it up, or some other reason?
That seems incredibly shortsighted to me. Assuming that, as mentioned in the above quote, it is the current political climate rather than parents’ own deeply-held beliefs precipitating the elimination of certain schools from a student’s application list. I think people need to keep in mind that the political “climate” is cyclical and that political global warming (unlike physical climate change) may not necessarily be a long-term trend. If we were to focus on current political trends, we’d all be urging our STEM students to change their majors to business. But I, for one, am not doing that at this time because I think my college student, who has not just an undergrad education to complete but years of post-grad studies in her future as well, should prepare for the future rather than the present.
I find it interesting that the Halloween protests at Yale were seen as a reason not to apply, but the frat-boys chanting " ‘No’ means ‘yes;’ ‘yes’ means anal!" several years ago wouldn’t have discouraged daughter or parents.
I am surprised you brought up that issue, because it seems to me then Yale acted swiftly and decisely against a culture of misogny. IIRC, the frat lost its charter.
Contrast that with the inabilty of Yale to come down swiftly and decisely in support of the Christakis following the Halloween incident. How did Yale lose its way in such a short time?
Suppose the roles were reversed. Would Columbia allow a male who accused a woman of sexual assault, and failed to prove his case, to publicly denigrate the woman for years afterwards? Why did Columbia tolerate her doing so to him?
Incidents at Yale and other schools are blown way out of proportion. Students involved are a small minority. Most students are there for education, not to be political activists.