No Hitting the UCs While They are Down, Says Dean Vos

In The Los Angeles Times today, there's an article mentioning the efforts of private colleges to attract students dissatisfied with the declining U.C. system.

Richard Vos, vice president and dean of admission and financial aid at Claremont McKenna College, said he has noticed parents asking more questions about whether students typically graduate in four years.

His office details its success on that score without comparisons to other schools.

"We are not trying to capitalize on the unfortunate budget woes of the state of California," Vos said. Besides, he added, he wouldn't want "to hit a man when he's down."

If by unfortunate, you mean that they have spent way too much for too long, then I would be inclined to agree. California's budget has doubled in the past ten years. Are we getting double
the services at double that cost? Just ask would be and current U.C. students.

Ross Douthat on Jon Shields New Yorker Interview

Ross Douthat of New York Times fame (and most recently a PSU event) weighs in on The New Yorker interview with Jon Shields. (I blogged about that here.)

Naturally, I'd wager that because the subject matter is abortion, you won't hear a peep out of CMC's PR office, despite the success of one of their professors making the blog of The New York Times and the magazine, The New Yorker.

Here's Douthat's commentary:

Conservative Christians’ attitudes toward women in the workplace, in particular, have evolved dramatically across the last two decades, even as their pro-life convictions have remained essentially constant. Consider Bob McDonnell’s now-famous law-school thesis, for instance, with its hard-edged critique of working women. In 1989, that represented the default position for an awful lot of social conservatives. (That’s one reason why the early-1990s Hillary Clinton — the first First Lady to be a career woman as well — was such a polarizing figure.) Flash-forward 20 years, though, and nobody on the pro-life side batted an eye at McDonnell’s ads highlighting his platoon-leader daughter (designed to defuse the thesis issue, of course), any more than they batted an eye at Sarah Palin’s career-and-children juggling act.

During the ‘08 election, you’d often hear media types buzzing about how Palin was a bad mother for putting her political ambitions ahead of her family; you’d almost never hear that from pro-lifers. Some of this reflects partisan biases, obviously — but some of it reflects a real sea change in how religious conservatives view women in the workplace.

Indeed, you might say that the pro-life movement has done an impressive job of embracing, albeit slowly, the positive achievements of the feminist revolution, while remaining steadfast in its opposition to that revolution’s darker consequences. (Well, O.K., you might not say that, but I probably would.)

He's right that Christian conservatives are a lot more receptive to the positive achievements of the feminist revolution, but I don't think they ever provide a real philosophical reason for why these achievements are positive. They almost never talk about it in those terms. Instead, you'll here them decrying the negative aspects, only. Why is that?

On Monte Carlo Night: A Review, With Clarification

Clarification: I initially wrote that ASCMC should have the money only to send Kyle to Paris, Texas, implying that ASCMC was paying for the trip to Paris. It is not. But, by the alumnus providing it, it did free up money that would otherwise have gone to the prizes. In that way, it is fungible.

I enjoyed Monte Carlo the other night and here is a rundown of some of the things that ought to change for next year.

• The venue was disappointing. You could barely hear the dealers over the sound of the music directly next door. Why couldn't it have been in the Collins again, with the dance outside? Our dates would have been a great deal warmer, too.
  

• Costs, costs, costs. A running joke with some friends of mine is that ASCMC will instead by sending Kyle Cassella, the winner of the raffle, to Paris, Texas, because that's what ASCMC should have the money for, instead of sending him to Paris, France. Moreover, why is it the same price for guests and nonguests, if the guests can't win that trip to Paris? Shouldn't they get some kind of discount? The tickets really ought to have been cheaper, with people choosing whether or not they wanted to go to the dance, or the poker table, or both. Let people pay and reveal what their preferences are.
  

• Can can dancers? Really? Do I even need to say something about that?

• Move along. Oh, and finally, I'm sorry, but if you graduated two years ago, please stop taking over our events, stop judging Mr. Stag, stop hogging the megaphone, and go do something with your life. Yes, that means you, Sam Stecker, Class of 2008.