Public school wisdom
When I was in high school, I was sitting in a health class and the topic of homosexuality came up in the text. This was in the early '90s, and times were quite different then. (I only assume this. I haven't been to my hometown recently.) Nobody was "out" in this school, and I'm not aware of any of my classmates even coming out in the two decades subsequent. In this particular class, I remember being vocally supportive of the concept of gay equality. A friend of mine was as well, but this was definitely the minority opinion in the room, and was a topic to be mostly snickered at among the 20 or so people in the room. My active participation in that day's class has been a point of pride for me for years. I have enlightened parents and good television shows to thank for an early education in tolerance.This teacher meant well, I guess, generally, but health was a course taught by the phys ed instructors, most of which, including this guy, were coaches first and foremost. When the debate grew heated between my friend and I and a half-dozen or so of the others, the teacher was quickly out of his depth. As his more opinionated students took over the debate, he started cracking jokes in the front of the room with a pocket of disinterested students. It's the vision of that that stays with me most vividly from that day.
I thought of that teacher and coach last week when I read this story about Northwestern University head football coach Pat Fitzgerald. He's also in over his head as he exercises his National Labor Relations Board-protected rights as an employer in an $11 billion dollar-a-year "non-profit" industry to speak his mind against unions.
Stick to run formations and safety blitzes, Coach.
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My alma mater, Iowa State University, cancelled its student-run spring festival, VEISHEA, this weekend after student rioting was touched off in an adjoining campus neighborhood on Tuesday night. I think this was a wise move to cancel the "Stars Over VEISHEA" musical and drama performances, the parade, and all the student club functions, just like the way the Universities of Connecticut and Florida dropped their varsity basketball programs last week after the campus riots on their campuses that followed the national basketball championship game.
Wait a minute. I'm told that Connecticut and Florida didn't do that, nor did the University of Minnesota disband it's intercollegiate hockey squad today, two days after the riot in Minneapolis that followed the national hockey championship. I guess that's just Iowa State that chooses to penalize its active and engaged students for the sins of its disruptive and disinterested ones. Or maybe theater and club activities aren't as financially-lucrative as sporting events.
Instead, ISU students-- along with their unaffiliated and often uninvited guests-- had nothing else to do in Ames on Friday and Saturday night but still drink and act unruly, leading to 80 arrests despite the absence of VEISHEA.
Here's another idea. Allow legal adults into private drinking establishments and let legal adults enjoy a legal drink. Stop passing laws that defy both human nature and common sense. People might stop acting like criminals when you stop treating them like criminals.
posted by CM @ 7:01 PM
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