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    Posted by LetsShrug 9 years, 8 months ago
    Wasn't there a post recently about how Liberal Madison WI is? I guess this proves it. I can't believe anyone goes along with this bullshit as if it makes and sense at all and it's a good idea. I'm starting to think there are lobotomisers in Universities. It's the only thing that makes this nonsense make sense.
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    • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 8 months ago
      Madison is as leftist as Moscow ever was. There are lobotomizers at most universities. Florida Tech is unusual in that we have more conservatives than liberals, and more libertarians than conservatives.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 8 months ago
    Let me add a different note to this conversation. Just yesterday, I included the addy of a neat blog on Paleoanthropology (specifically, Paleo-genetics). John Hawks is one of the leaders in the genetics of the really ancient human landscape, including population genetics and the gene flow from other species into H. sapiens. His blog is generally courteous, but he cuts little slack to professional colleagues who present poor science in their findings. John Hawks is heavily involved with the Rising Star dig in South Africa, that has a chance of totally revising our view of our ancient lineage. He also recently created a Paleoanthropology course for Coursera that had an initial sign up of 30,000 students (though the final tally was only a few hundred). (I believe the UW told him to take a camera crew and fly all over the world to film the on-site digs and interviews for the course.)

    He is a professor at...you guessed it...UW-Madison. So, while I do not know much about UW in other respects, I can say that their Paleoanthropology department is terrific. There has been only one hint of anything other than a merit-based approach in his work: a team of all women anthropologists were selected to squeeze through the crack to dig the Rising Star find. (That they were the smallest anthropologists was definitely a point in their favor, but I also think that the U of SA was making a statement as to the support of women in Anthropology. There is a bit of a backstory here...)

    If you would like to peruse the work of a dynamite brain-riding Paleoanthropologist who has done very nice work in the introgression of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes into the human genome, please check out www.johnhawks.net. And - somehow - this is the other side of the coin from the article above and from the rep that UW-Madison apparently has.

    Jan
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 8 months ago
      The person who wrote the original article critical of the UW policy is a well-respected UW professor. This policy is not something I suspect most people here would support. I don't expect it will continue.
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  • Posted by Temlakos 9 years, 8 months ago
    Did not Rand say that racism was the lowest form of collectivism?

    The only thing is: this makes explicit what I always assumed was implicit.
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  • Posted by Lysander 9 years, 8 months ago
    After actually reading the report, the above title/assertion is pretty accurate. Racist at best, this diversity really boils down again against merit. Why? Past discrimination is an excuse. Should past privilege also be a disability..I didn't have to work hard, now I'm struggling in college!
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    • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 8 months ago
      What is interesting is that they are ignoring the evidence. Thomas Sowell has done studies that show that Affirmative Action policies actually have the opposite effect of the intended because they encourage the enrollment of students who are not academically, emotionally, or mentally prepared for the rigors of college. He looked at the drop-out rates among colleges that used AA and those that didn't and correlated to race and found very strong causal evidence that AA is actually dissuading especially blacks from getting higher education.
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  • Posted by NealS 9 years, 8 months ago
    This is just another attempt to get us off track of the real issues (not AJA, but the article itself). I graduated high skool (sp), and had about two years of college (part time) before I was drafted in 1966 at age 25 (between wives). After I won the war in Vietnam I came home and completed a little more of my education at night skool(), and even graduated from a technical school in electronics. I got a job with a great company, listed my education, and I know no one ever checked out my grades. I even doubt they checked the validity of my educational claims, just like Obama's. Do companies operate any differently these days? I cood (sp) have had all "D's". How wood (sic) they no (sic) how smart I really is (sic)? What difference does it make, what were Obama's grades in college, what courses did he take? No one cares, so forget about it and go back to what happened in Benghazi, IRS targeting, NSA collecting Galt's Gulch members comments and email, open borders, the important stuff. Sorry AJA, no offense to you, only to the article itself. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity. These are just my thoughts, I kood (sp) be wrong.
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  • Posted by wiggys 9 years, 8 months ago
    is it any wonder why we have dumb graduates when they have dumb teachers. the university is now catching up with how the grade schools have performed for 40 years. welcome to the usa dumbed down country of the world.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 9 years, 8 months ago
    This is, of course, outrageous. However, outrageous is a word that can no longer express the true outrage of any rational thinker because it is now used so often that it is becoming meaningless. The fact that such an idea is even being considered, let alone carried out, is beyond the pale and sounds the death knell of higher education. We are about to be living in the Land of the Marching Morons.
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  • Posted by woodlema 9 years, 8 months ago
    What this means to me is this. "historically underrepresented racial/ethnic’ means that this category of people are either :

    1) Too damn stupid or lazy to do well so they have to be "given" grades thereby completely diminishing the value of the grade, of;
    2) "historically underrepresented racial/ethnic’ actually ARE three steps behind whites on the evolutionary scale and totally incapable of getting good grades based on work and effort.

    PICK ONE!!


    “Professors, instead of just awarding the grade that each student earns, would apparently have to adjust them so that academically weaker, ‘historically underrepresented racial/ethnic’ students perform at the same level and receive the same grades as academically stronger students,” he wrote.
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  • Posted by Eudaimonia 9 years, 8 months ago
    One great thing about shrugging - no longer will the sweat of my brow be forcefully taken from me and redistributed to these ridiculous sausage factories.

    I am so *sick* of thinking my tax dollars fund these f'ing looney bins.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 9 years, 8 months ago
    UWM says this article is false: http://www.news.wisc.edu/23011

    Although, it would be the place to make such a statement, one would think the Michigan SCOTUS case would doom such a policy, if it were real.
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    • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
      With one daughter who just graduated in May, and another starting her junior year, I can tell you that this is true, regardless of how the "diversity" police are trying to spin it. They also are implementing a diversity quota system for "prestigious and high demand programs." That means that deserving students will be denied if they are white (and especially if they are white males) if the proportion of non-whites isn't sufficient.
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      • Posted by khalling 9 years, 8 months ago
        This happened to my nephew. High grades and denied at UW. He ended up going to Marquette. He is out now working in a lab at Mayo and is applying to med school.
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        • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
          Good luck with that. For a white male, there's not much hope - at least not the first time around.
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          • Posted by khalling 9 years, 8 months ago
            He already found that out. He probably should have done Teach America (where they supplement your salary with food stamps) instead of increasing his micro biology knowledge. Probably would have a better chance.
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    • Posted by khalling 9 years, 8 months ago
      I read their response. They assert a professor has taken out of context this passage from procedures adopted in 2009:
      “Representational Equity: Proportional participation of historically underrepresented racial-ethnic groups at all levels of an institution, including high status special programs, high-demand majors, and in the distribution of grades.”
      Then they say it is not meant to tell professors how to grade...what?
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      • Posted by $ Thoritsu 9 years, 8 months ago
        Yes, I saw that too.
        Think whoever wrote the language meant it to be sufficiently nebulous to allow them that ability to use it as they choose. However, I doubt the document is enforceable. Now, I suspect they are backing away from the language and "clarifying" its scope to avoid it being openly challenged and shut down using the Michigan's race/sex/religion info prohibition precedent.
        Would be nice for some group that cannot easily be ignored to write a letter to the college asking 1) what the language specifically means with respect to distribution of grades and race, and 2) how distribution of grades based on race benefits education or in any meaningful way is compliant with accreditation standards.
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        • Posted by khalling 9 years, 8 months ago
          I feel (whoa oo oo) that in the last decade I'm in that situation alot. Something glaringly apparent that "spokespeople" claim is exactly the opposite. The circuit court ruling today for example. The new press secretary says "This ruling has no meaningful effect on ACA." Really? Or we have a "humanitarian situation" on the Border. what?
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  • Posted by $ Susanne 9 years, 8 months ago
    We can also grade not on achievement and hard work and getting the answers right, but if they show they "tried".

    Judging by some of the job applicants I've seen recently, I think they already are.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 8 months ago
    The man who wrote the article critical of the UW policy of race-based grade discrimination, Dr. Lee Hansen, goes to church with me. He's a good guy.
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  • Posted by RevJay4 9 years, 8 months ago
    If this is true...let the dumbing down accelerate.
    I don't think the school has much of a future in the eyes of the students. Most of them prefer to get the grades they have worked for and earned. Most of them. Some prefer the something for nothing path, sorta like welfare.
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    • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
      Too many of them think that they are "earning" these grades. They think that showing up is all the work that they need to do - and many of them don't even do that.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 8 months ago
    I misread that the first couple times. I read it as, "UW-Madison professors call to distribute grades based on race"...


    Your grades should be based on how much of the material you are there to learn you actually learn, and how well you learn it. What other students do or don't do, whatever their skin color, or yours, should have no affect on your grades. College shouldn't be a social-engineering initiative, but a way for people to acquire the knowledge they desire.
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