Texas A&M University’s governing board has picked Elsa A. Murano as sole finalist to head the university’s flagship campus, in College Station, despite objections from angry faculty members who say they were not included in the selection process, Katherine Mangan reports on The Chronicle’s Web site.
“Under state law, faculty and staff members, students, and alumni will have 21 days to comment on the selection before the regents’ final vote,” Mangan writes. If approved, Murano, who is vice chancellor of agriculture in the A&M system and dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, will become the university’s first female, and first Hispanic, president, Mangan notes. Read more.
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15 Responses to Texas A&M U. Picks New President Over Faculty Objections
Guest - January 17, 2012 at 12:19 am
I respect your commitment to students, so I do not want to come across as rude, but you are completely wrong about the appropriateness of asking people to indicate their sexual orientation on a college application. Their sexual behavior is a private matter and should not be public record.
All data I have read indicate that young people involved with LGBT identity have disturbingly high rates of suicide, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and addictions of all kinds. MSMs are seroconverting at 44 times the rate of other males. These are data from today, not from the supposedly wretched, closeted 1950s. All these facts indicate that increased openness, frankness, and surface “acceptance” have decreased taboos but have not made young people happier. My current book project, which is summarized in the link below, is confronting the conundrum of the gay movement’s gigantic Pyrrhic victory against homophobia:
http://criticalnewsscan.blogspot.com/p/here-is-my-next-project-gilded-lilies.html
As you point out, we have pushed acceptance to historic highs, but as it turns out, gay youths are unhappy for reasons that do not have to do with a lack of acceptance.
The fact that young people in large measure find homosexuality unremarkable does not mean that young people become happier as a result of disclosing their sexual practices in public, engaging in homosexual activity while they are teenagers, or glomming onto a gay identity politics. The result of the changes you document above is that their peers feel comfortable gossiping and speculating about their sexual behavior, other gay people become intrusive and pressure them to identify as gay, and their first sexual encounters are often with older gays who are not well intended. Ergo, the epidemic of basic misery we find among young people who identify as gay.
Asking young people about their sexual orientation reinforces the idea that they should have already had sexual experience by the age of 18 and ought to know which label they can apply to themselves, while feeling okay with telling complete strangers what they do with their bodies. The administration should not be intruding into this business. Neither should they encourage a culture of over-sharing and gossip, which the Elmhurst application question encourages.
Gay unhappiness (and dropout rates probably) is not a result of homophobia or too much silence, but rather of the basic disconnect between the vulnerable, tender state of teenage development and the ponderous consequences that attend homosexuality: the threat of AIDs, the prospect of never having children, the sense of being trapped in homosexual lifestyles with no option to change their minds and date the opposite sex again, the exposure to a gay community that is still plagued with unsupportive and even anti-social behaviors (between gays, not from homophobes against gays.)
In the first few paragraphs of the link above I offer data backing up my point. The reality is that adolescence is not a good time to officialize discussion of homosexuality, especially because many of the articles of faith pushed by gay activists — the notion that people are biologically predisposed to homosexuality, the bogus concept of “gaydar,” the view that homosexuals who aren’t public are liars, self-hating, or going to be homophobes themselves — are themselves accepted uncritically by young people even though these notions are largely falsehoods that served adult political purposes rather than demonstrate truths helpful to young people questioning themselves.
Below is a link to my five ideas for a different modality of queer activism:
http://criticalnewsscan.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-to-reset-your-desktop-to.html
Also, below is a piece I wrote after a great deal of soul-searching, regarding the suicide of a young 14-year-old in the same neighborhood where I attended high school:
http://criticalnewsscan.blogspot.com/2011/12/meditations-on-death-of-jamie-rodemeyer.html
What struck me about Jamie’s death was that he killed himself three months after his home state of NY legalized gay marriage and after recording his own It Gets Better video. I was 14 in 1985 in that exact neighborhood but growing up in a secretive culture that wasn’t as open as it was today allowed me to focus on school and things other than sex. As a result, rather than kill myself at 14, I grew up, had a family, and become a successful professor. There is a lot to think about there.
Have a good new year.
nicolette13 - January 17, 2012 at 10:25 am
I notice that the T group in LGBT fades out over the course of your article. Would you consider writing something on the unwillingness of schools founded with a commitment to supporting marginalized gender groups–such as the seven sisters–to recognize transsexual and transgender students because of a misguided commitment to “single sex education”?
Richard Grayson - January 17, 2012 at 3:16 pm
By “have a good new year,” I assume you mean 1942.
Richard Grayson - January 17, 2012 at 3:17 pm
By “have a good new year,” I assume you mean 1942.
Richard Grayson - January 17, 2012 at 3:20 pm
Hey, I know a lot of straight guys that said they were gay in the late 60s and early 70s — at their draft physicals.
Of course when the sergeant who saw my questionnaire at my own draft physical noted I checked the box for “homosexual tendencies” and asked why and I replied, “Because I like guys,” he said, “Then you’ll like the army; we got a lot of guys here.”
ruritania - January 17, 2012 at 6:24 pm
While I thought you gave a reasoned, cogent response unworthy of Grayson’s dismissive post, I must question, having glanced over the links you posted, what right (or knowledge) you have to label the actor Robert Preston gay. He was married for 34 years, and other than his Oscar nominated turn in “Victor/Victoria, (he was after all, an ACTOR) I have never seen nor read anything to make one think of him as gay.Be careful lest you enter Dan Savage territory….
reddevil - January 17, 2012 at 8:07 pm
While I can see why a college or university might want to add sexual orientation to a housing questionaire, why would they want to, and why should they add it to their application for admissions? Should a person’s sexual orientation be a factor that is considered in the admissions process? If so, would being a LGBT student be something that should be a positive or a negative consideration for the admissions office?
It is simply a losing proposition for a school to even ask the question. Collecting the answers will do nothing other than set the school up for a lawsuit.
tenured_radical - January 23, 2012 at 5:13 pm
Don’t you mean homo-hum? Great piece, Lesboprof. My nephew came out on his college application, and of course it counted as “diversity”. Making the check off part of the application goves kids permission to take this part of their lives seriously. It also sends a message that its a queer-friendly campus, which students do not just assume. I suspect that the checkoff serves this marketing function too, bringing them talented kids who might not otherwise apply.
trudie - January 31, 2012 at 4:59 am
http://www.noorlandjuristen.nl/Familierecht/Alimentatie/ for exemple Alimentie
chattahoochee - March 14, 2012 at 10:34 am
I don’t think that academics give experiential learning enough credit. We rely so much on “book learning.” Congrats for jumping in and proving to yourself that you do have something to offer (beside the obvious), something that you didn’t realize that you had. –Willena
11182967 - March 15, 2012 at 9:34 am
Love the pen name!–so appropriate to the topic. E.A. Robinson would be flattered.
rsgassle - March 17, 2012 at 4:28 am
Congratulations on adjusting to your reputation. I have that trouble from time to time. I notice however that you got an invitation to something on the basis of your status as administrator. I was an administrator for about a year once, and learned a valuable lesson. I tried to handle a case by myself, only to find out later that it was someone else’s jurisdiction. My problem was not consulting others. Maybe there is someone in the group you administer who knows this area and could do a better job. OTOH, doing it yourself (and myself), it turned out well.
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chest222nut - May 22, 2012 at 10:29 am
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The job
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As
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1.
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Correct
Grammar
Sentences
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·
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Parallelism
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Definite
Meaning
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·
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·
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·
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Retaining
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·
Do not use serial comma if the writer obviously
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·
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·
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·
When Chicago editing style is preferred, use
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·
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Make sure you know what documentation style is
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·
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·
In virtually all styles, commas and periods go
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This is how it appeared in the original manuscript.”
Example:
When she said, “Aspiration is a progenitor of inspiration,” she was
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Perhaps
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