My whole life, I’ve tried to be for Michelle and my girls what my father wasn’t for my mother and me. I want to break that cycle — where a father’s not at home, where a father’s not helping to raise that son and daughter. I want to be a better father, a better husband, a better man. . . . Growing up, I made quite a few [bad choices] myself. Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency to make excuses for me not doing the right thing. We’ve got no time for excuses. In today’s hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world, with millions of young people from China and India and Brazil, many of whom started with a whole lot less than all of you did, all of them entering the global workforce alongside… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: College
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Diversity Flacks
A new study from the American Council on Education shows that the percentages of black, Asian and Hispanic provosts have declined over the past five years. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports this story under the headline “Falling Diversity of Provosts Signals Challenge for Presidential Pipeline, Study Finds.” FALLING DIVERSITY! LOOK OUT BELOW! Ha ha . . . but seriously, who even knows what a provost is? I don’t. I’ve vaguely heard of it as an academic job title but that’s about it. I know that Jon Provost played little Timmy on the Lassie TV series. I know that Marie Prevost was a one-time Mack Sennett bathing beauty and leading lady in the 1920s whose screen glory had faded by the time she died of acute alcoholism in a small Hollywood apartment at the age of 38. By the way, I notice that Asian students are continuing to excel, even… Read more →
Tedford Relieved of Duties, i.e., Fired
BERKELEY – Jeff Tedford, who has overseen the Golden Bear football program for the past 11 seasons, has been relieved of his duties as head football coach at the University of California, Director of Athletics Sandy Barbour announced Tuesday. — The University of California Official Athletic Site Tedford must have seen this coming back in August when he put his house on the market for a cool $5.35 million. He was saddled with a doofus quarterback as a throw-in on the Keenan Allen deal and the team’s 3-9 record speaks for itself. Tedford did a lot of good things at Cal. He took over a 1-10 team in 2002 and won seven games his first season. In 2004, Cal went 10-2, finished ninth in the final AP poll, and in 2006, the Golden Bears went 10-3. Tedford was getting NFL offers during that time and turning them down. He was… Read more →
The Lives of Julia and Paul
David Henderson says — accurately, I think — that Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks can be paraphrased as “People who are dependent on government will vote for the candidate who credibly (to them, at least) promises to keep the programs that have created that dependence.” Do you think President Obama disagrees with that? He doesn’t. If you think he does, please see The Life of Julia on the president’s web site. It lays out a “typical” woman’s cradle-to-grave dependence on government assistance and describes how Obama will keep those programs going while Mitt Romney won’t. The most insulting thing about it is that as you read about Obama funding this and Obama funding that, it sounds like he’s doing it all out of his own goddamn pocket. What a prince! There’s no acknowledgement that Obama is taking from some and giving to others, and that all of Julia’s “free” stuff… Read more →
Everyone in America Can Go to College
This morning I heard President Obama call for universities to lower their tuition rates so that “everybody in America can go to college.” I am virtually certain that the President is not stupid enough to think that if tuition rates fell to zero, there would magically be enough room in the colleges for everybody in America. So I’ve got to believe that he’s purposely saying stupid things in order to appeal to stupid voters — the sort of voters, in other words, who probably don’t belong in college. — Steven Landsburg Read more →
The World’s Greatest University
It’s move-in weekend at UC Berkeley, the world’s greatest university . . . Saul Perlmutter, who just won the Nobel Prize in Physics, is teaching an undergraduate seminar on physics and music this year. How many schools even have Nobel Laureates on the faculty? Of those that do, how many of them teach small classes for freshmen and sophomores? Ivy League schools, with the exception of Harvard, are coasting on their reputations. When’s the last time you heard of an enterpreneur from Dartmouth or Brown or Yale? Stanford is great in engineering and business but limited in other areas. Also, top professors at private schools would rather piss on a spark plug than traffic with undergrads. That said, the University of Southern California football season starts Sept. 1 against Hawaii. The Men of Troy! FIGHT ON FOR OLD ‘SC! OUR MEN FIGHT ON TO VICTORY! Read more →
Penn State Death Penalty?
College football — Penn State Nittany Lions earned wrath of NCAA — ESPN Forget the NCAA death penalty . . . Penn State University should be burnt to the ground, plowed under and sown with salt. Read more →
Another Guy Who Didn’t Get the Memo on the American Dream
Kennedy Odede grew up in Kibera, a slum in Kenya where more than one million people live in an area the size of New York City’s Central Park without sewage systems, roads, or access to basic health care and education. And on Sunday, May 27th, he stood proudly before his graduating class with honors, and gave the commencement address. He became the first person from Africa’s largest slum to graduate from an American University. — From an African slum to Wesleyan University – The Daily Nightly Sounds like another guy who didn’t get the memo that America is “no longer the land of opportunity” and “the ‘American dream’ is a myth.” Read more →
The Person Who Says It Can’t Be Done Is Interrupted By The Person Doing It
In his latest book, The Price of Inequality, Columbia Professor and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz examines the causes of income inequality and offers some remedies. In between, he reaches some startling conclusions, including that America is “no longer the land of opportunity” and “the ‘American dream’ is a myth.” — The ‘American Dream’ Is a Myth: Joseph Stiglitz on ‘The Price of Inequality’ “If there is anybody at all who has a dream, then they can definitely make it happen,” she told WBTV. “There are no excuses. It depends on you and no one else.” — Dawn Loggins: Homeless, Abandoned Teen Heads to Harvard – Yahoo! Shine The second link above goes to a story about Dawn Loggins, an 18-year-old girl from Lawndale, NC, who, after her mother and stepfather left the state without her and she was dropped by her grandmother at a local homeless shelter, “just made a… Read more →
Another Reason Notre Dame Has a Terrible Football Team
Officers reported that several people began jumping over a fence when they arrived and, specifically, they observed a group of five men attempting to jump over a fence and ordered them to stop, said Capt. Phil Trent, South Bend police spokesman. — Notre Dame quarterback, linebacker arrested Thursday morning – wsbt.com Police arrive to break up a party, five guys jump over a fence and the only two who get caught are Notre Dame football players. Read more →
Things You Can and Can’t Do
Things You Can Do Discriminate against Asians in college admissions. Things You Can’t Do Use “Chink in the Armor” as the headline for an article on the New York Knicks. Read more →
Financial Aid Follies
The FAFSA asks if, since July 1, 2011, the student has been homeless or “at risk of becoming homeless.” Isn’t everyone at some non-zero risk of becoming homeless? I’m going to say “yes” and see what happens . . . Read more →
Crosstown Cup: USC 8, UCLA 3
The Crosstown Cup was on the line Saturday night. The USC and UCLA hockey teams faced off at Anaheim Ice and the Trojans dominated pretty much as I expected. It was also Senior Night — the last game of the season. One of the Trojans players is graduating with a doctorate in education, one kid is getting an MBA and two kids are graduating with a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering. As scholar-athletes, they’re pretty darn good scholars. As athletes . . . let’s say that they were somewhat less good than my kid’s 18-and-under roller team from last season. Speed, puck control, rink awareness — all limited at best. They were a lot better than UCLA though. The Victory Bell was in attendance. Something I didn’t know is that the Victory Bell is really loud if you’re right next to it. And by “right next to it,” I… Read more →
Underrepresented Minorities in the UC
The University of California is prohibited by law from considering race in the admissions process, but they are allowed to identify certain ethnic groups as “underrepresented minorities.” Here are some freshman enrollment numbers at UC Berkeley for Fall 2011. The first four groups on the list are considered underrepresented; the others aren’t. Ethnicity 2011 Fall African American/Black 130 Mexican American/Chicano 325 Other Hispanic/Latino 150 Native American/Alaskan Native 33 Pacific Islander 11 Chinese 936 Filipino 108 Japanese 68 Korean 250 Other Asian 45 South Asian 324 Vietnamese 142 Read more →
Don’t Check Asian
Asian kids are putting a different race on their college applications to boost their chances of getting into the top schools. Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white. — Some Asians’ college strategy: Don’t check ‘Asian’ – Yahoo! News That’s a rather modest strategy. Identifying yourself as white does give you a little bit of a boost but to really improve the odds, I’d advise everyone to go ahead and check the Black or Hispanic box. Or Eskimo. Eskimos are kind of Asian-looking. Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade examined applicants to top colleges from 1997, when the maximum SAT score was 1600 (today it’s 2400). Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have… Read more →
UCLA 66, USC 47
After this debacle of a basketball game, my son, a college freshman, says to me, “I should have gone to USC. I could probably walk on to basketball and make the team.” “Are you kidding? You could probably walk on and start,” I said. Read more →
Stating the Obvious
“I’ve got to say we out-physicaled them today,” Alabama linebacker Courtney Upshaw said. — Alabama 21, LSU 0 (final) – latimes.com You attend the University of Alabama. You’re not going to out-mental anybody . . . Read more →
Aside
How will the recent Virginia Tech shooting deaths affect football recruiting, ESPN?