What follows are some of my thoughts on the debate night this evening put on by The Forum.
The first debate was interesting, but Natalia's argument that we don't have the funds for isn't much of an argument. One day we will have the funds, but should we still expand to 1400? I think not.
Charlie's argument that more is good and so more students is necessarily a good. But that doesn't follow as Ilan Wurman pointed out in the question and answer period when he asked what "comparative advantage" we face by growing to be as large as our competitors. How then is Claremont "unique"? What do we do to draw students?
It's a worthy point. Maybe Claremont's rise to prominence is a function of its specialization on economics and politics. As I quipped on the screen, "a literature major does not do much for the endowment."
Naturally, much should be done by the faculty to check the "Master Plan" of President Gann to expand to 1400. The very language "master" and "plan" suggests that she (or the Board of Trustees) is making these decisions as if she were a "master." Do we not have faculty self-governance?
Next to the debate about alcohol on this campus.
There was a lot of hemming and hawing about who it is to blame for the drinking culture on campus. In order to inject a little clarity, I asked them what ought to be done now and what they would call for. Of course they dodged the question. Ben Kraus turned around and asked me how I would feel about students drinking in their rooms and that their friends will be likely not to turn their friends over to an RA, when I had argued just moments before that students aren't liking to binge drink when they are hanging out with one another. The view that their friends would check their drinking might help.
I said that there is serious money on the line -- by some estimates as much as $4 million -- and what is being done to protect the college's reputation? Sure, someone might die if we crack down, but I would wager that it is far less likely and if someone does die, we can make the argument that, "hey, we tried to do something about this issue." That might save us more money in the lawsuits that are sure to come. For more on this, please see the article I wrote in The Claremont Independent. Here's a brief snippet:
Nowadays, when a child drinks himself into the emergency room or grave, the first thing many parents do is call their lawyer. In March of this year, the parents of a student at College of New Jersey sued after their son died from drinking too much. The same thing happened at Rider University in 2007 and at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2004.
In September of 2000, M.I.T. settled with the parents of freshman Scott Krueger for a whopping $4.75 million when he drank himself to death at a frat house in 1997. They also got an apology from the president of MIT who expressed sadness for "failing" Scott and his family. In truth, Scott failed all of them by not valuing himself and his education more. These lawsuits present a good argument for reducing the drinking age, but supportive college presidents should be straightforward about their motives.
In all this talk of lawyers, education, and lawsuits, the message becomes crystal clear: while most college students may not be old enough to crack a brew, they still can think for themselves and choose rationally. Colleges, recognizing that they can never truly police it all, should fight for liability reform and to be exempted from frivolous lawsuits over which they had little cause. After all, no one makes you drink. Given that the cost of tuition has so outpaced the value of what many students learn, Pomona should create disincentives for drinking. Pomona should increase tuition for students caught drinking underage. At the very least, those students who drink to excess should be the last ones to get their aid packages evaluated, with priority going toward students who have followed the rules.
Onto the debate about women on campus, contrary to what Elise argued, the point was first mentioned by a Pitzer student, but she was responding to something I wrote arguing that Fareed Zakaria was wrong to insist upon a woman questioner.
Elise's argument is that CMC is not male-dominated, but female-dominated. Well, that's not much of an argument at all! But really what can you expect from someone that worked at "The Independent Women's Forum"? Yes, she was right to make the argument that women aren't all gentle wall flowers that need manly protection, but she was wrong to turn it on its head and argue that women are always strong, courageous, etc when we all know that isn't true either.
The point I was making in the question and answer period, is that CMC seems to have very few real, heterosexual men on campus, which in turn explains why the women tend to be as assertive as men ought to be and the men tend to be milquetoasts or "bros." This, in turn, I believe explains why men tend to rarely ask out women on campus and why women seldom expect it. The men are unable to get up the courage to ask them out and the women are too assertive, too aggressive to woo. Moreover, there isn't a lot of evidence that women really are better at CMC. Can you name a successful alumna? The college became co-ed in 1976, you would that that there would be at least one in 33 years...
In any event, where's the manly virtue on our campus? Where are our Don Drapers? What the debaters failed to do is argue for a full throated defense of manliness. Indeed, the only people to try and make such a defense were also at Pitzer and the Masculinists were an ill-fated, short-lived club that really rankled the feminists.
