Author Topic: THR L&P Import: CCW, Univ Admissions, Preference, & Racism  (Read 1131 times)

roo_ster

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Howdy:

I am continuing a thread from THR, which has deviated quite a ways from the original topic.
Title:  (MN) Even talking about concealed carry is grounds for suspension
Link: http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=276113

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Tecumseh thinks Troy Scheffler, the guy who sent CCW-supportive emails to Hamline University administrators is a racist & xenophobe:
Quote from: Tecumseh
Either way the man in the article, Schafer, is simply a racist and a xenophobe.

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If folks are going to condemn the fellow as a racist, I think it pertinent to parse the fellow's statements.  See what is fact and what is not, what is provable & what is not.

I took 15 minutes to check out the Hamline website & to google some other information and find a heapin' helpin' of data (see below) that might aid in this task.

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Quote from: Scheffler
I myself am tired of having to pay my own extremely overpriced tuition to make up for minorities not paying theirs.
Overpriced is relative.  $26K Tuition for 2006-2007.  ($7.4K R&B)

Is he paying for minorities' tuition?  I explore this below.


Quote from: Scheffler
On top of that, I am sick of seeing them held to a different standard than the white students (Of course its a lower and more lenient standard).
If he is referring to admission standards, he is right on the money, with a couple caveats(1).  An older resource that gathers the data is D'nesh D'souza's Illiberal Education (read the book for detail and references).  Off the top of my head, I recall that at UCLA, the cutoff(2) SAT score for white, Asian (exclusive of Filipino), and Jewish students were higher than the top(3) minority score. 

Essentially, it is Asians vs Asians for a predetermined number of Asian slots, whites vs whites, black vs blacks, etc. for a predetermined number of slots per ethnic category.

The academic mis-match in search of minority-student admissions numbers is born out in the significantly lower graduation rates for minorities admitted under such a regimen.  That is part of the argument that minority preference in admission is harmful to minorities, as (almost) any degree beats no degree and a serious/substantive degree (hard science, engineering, etc) at a lesser school beats a less serious/substantive degree (mass comm, social work, etc) at a higher-status school taken because one can not successfully earn a serious degree at a high(er) status school.

If he is referring to individual students'' treatment by individual profs/administrators during the students' academic careers, that is a much more difficult question not easily quantifiable.  I would give most profs/admins the benefit of the doubt and assume they aim to be both professional and fair, despite obvious political inclinations.


Quote from: Scheffler
Oh by the way, when is your "diversity" department going to include European ancestry?
Silly wabbit.  Rhetorical on Scheffler's part.  "Diversity" is an anti-Western civilizational notion akin to multi-culturalism. 


Quote from: Scheffler
For a "Christian" university, I am very disappointed in Hamline. With the motif of the curriculum, the atheist professors, Jewish and other non-Christian staff, I would charge the school with wanton misrepresentation.
Many Christian universities are only so in name.  After looking at their website, you'd have to be blind not to see the lefty bent to the school.  Also, the church Hamline is affiliated with is the United Methodist Church.  Not exactly a bastion of orthodoxy and fidelity to scripture.

It ought to be no surprise that atheists , non-Christian & anti-Christian elements are prevalent.  Heck, many religion departments are headed by atheists.  AS a side note, many orthodox Christian universities have orthodox Jewish scholars on staff to provide some more depth & breadth to Old Testament scholarship.

A more valid argument (than Scheffler's) would be that Hamline is not hewing to the ideals of its founders.  Hamline makes it clear the most important thing on its plate is diversity, money, and more skin-deep diversity.  Oh, and lest we forget, Hamline is interested in diversity.


Quote from: Scheffler
Furthermore, why are you diversity initiatives anti-Euro American (ie white folks)?
More rhetorical language.  Everybody knows the nature of the multi-culti-diversity beast, including Scheffler.


Quote from: Scheffler
...TAXPAYERS that are footing the bill for your diversity initiatives...
Fed dollars are not available to foreign students(4).  State dollars are a tossup.  Other dollars are dependent on the aid-giver. 

I'd say that it is NOT the taxpayers who foot the bill for foreign students at a private university, after looking at the data I have unearthed.  A public university would be a different deal.


Quote from: Scheffler
...3 out of 3 students just in my class that are "minorities" are planning on returning to Africa and all 3 are getting a free education ON MY DOLLAR.
It is impossible to say with certainty if the students in question are indeed foreign students(4), but that is implied by "returning." Also, it is impossible to say for certain if they are getting their way paid for them in full. 

But, we can see from the Hamline Common Data Sets that 53 out of 55 (96%) Undergraduate Degree-seeking Nonresident Aliens receive institutional scholarship or grant aid (need & non-need based) for an average of $17,056 each recipient (~$66% of tuition) (see HCDS 2004-2005). 

All of that aid was "institutional financial aid."  There are two types: funded & unfunded.  Unfunded comes directly out of tuition & fees.  Funded comes from some other source in the university, usually the endowment.  Undergraduate Degree-seeking Nonresident Aliens are 3% of the total UGDS students, but receive 6% of the institutional financial aid.  The proportion of total institutional financial aid that comes directly from tuition & fees from the other students is 90%.

So, it is very defensible to say that foreign students are largely supported at the expense of current American students at Hamline.  To a lesser extent, previous students and contributors pay the rest of the bill.  See the data sources below.

I could not find similar aid data broken out by ethnicity for Hamline.  It might exist, but the 15 min I spent searching for it did not provide ethnicity vs aid data.  I suspect that the larger the commitment to "diversity," the greater the likelihood that a school will disproportionately grant aid to minority students. 

Conclusion
1. Hamline administrators are a pathetic lot.  They gave Scheffler the boot for voicing a POV (regarding CCW & faux diversity) that would have increased the actual diversity of thought in the marketplace of ideas known as Hamline University.  Hypocrisy, they name is Hamline.

2. Hamline's pablum about open & free academic debate and atmosphere is only lip service.  When faced with something that challenges their POV, their response is to suppress the speech and boot the speaker.

3. Some of Scheffler's complaints about preferential treatment and multiple standards are born out by the data (UGDS Non-Resident aliens). Others are inconclusive due to (present) lack of data (minorities in general).  Still others (bias vs W Civ) I have not tackled, but are pretty easy to deduce by reading Hamline U's textual fellatio performed on what it considers "diversity."

4. There is a LOT of data to be had and analyzed vis a vis university financial aid, admissions, affirmative action, etc (CDS, financial statements, NCES) .  I spent 5-10 min plugging data into MS Excel, but could easily spend a week with only the data I gathered in 15 minutes of googling.  Someone who was actually paid to do the analysis could produce some pretty damning and damaging figures to assail the ramparts of the diversity/multi-culti mafia in academia.

5. Crying "racism" in the face of a polemic that is (at least partially) supported by the facts is a tactic used to shut down debate and discredit the accused.  Such behavior is self-discrediting and will have the unintended consequence of hardening others to such calls in the future.




Data Sources
I stick with 2004-2005 numbers, as they are available in the financial statements as well as CDS below

Scheffler Article with Emails
http://www.citypages.com/databank/28/1379/article15402.asp

Hamline Financial Statement/Annual Report 2004-2005 (YE 2005)
http://www.hamline.edu/magazine/archive/pdf/AnnualReportFY06.pdf

Hamline Common Data Sets
http://www.hamline.edu/hamline_info/offices_services/administration/ir/basic_data.html
http://www.hamline.edu/hamline_info/offices_services/administration/ir/docs/2006_2007_CDS.xls
http://www.hamline.edu/hamline_info/offices_services/administration/ir/docs/2005-2006.xls
http://www.hamline.edu/hamline_info/offices_services/administration/ir/docs/2004-05final.xls

National Center for Education Statistics
http://nces.ed.gov/index.asp

"Unfunded Student Aid" Definition
http://www.vpaa.uillinois.edu/reports_retreats/TuitDiscount_BackgrBriefing.pdf
Simple Tuition Discount: the simple remission or forgiveness of all or part of a students tuition, usually in the form of a grant, without funding the remission or forgiveness from other sources. It is sometimes referred to as unfunded student aid.

Minority Scholarship Opportunity Links Listed by Hamline (incl foreign)
http://www.hamline.edu/hamline_info/offices_services/student_relations/sas/financial_aid/undergraduate/fa_office_grants_mineth.html
(Hey, they even list an Ayn Rand scholarship.  All you HS/College-aged Randroids, get your Objectivist self in gear and get cracking!  Open to foreign students, BTW...)


(1) Minorities such as Jews and most Asians are admitted under a standard as difficult if not more difficult than whites.  Filipino students are the Asian exception. 

(2) After which no students of that ethnicity were admitted.

(3) Best SAT score of an admitted student considered disadvantaged minority worthy of preferential treatment.

(4) Foreign is the proper description.  Unless they, individually, have citizenship in 2+ countries, they are not "international" students.
Regards,

roo_ster

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
----G.K. Chesterton

doczinn

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Re: THR L&P Import: CCW, Univ Admissions, Preference, & Racism
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2007, 03:58:43 PM »
Well done.
D. R. ZINN

Ned Hamford

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Re: THR L&P Import: CCW, Univ Admissions, Preference, & Racism
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2007, 05:38:26 PM »
My original thesis at Marist examined the numbers of various groups at Marist College in NY.  I don't like putting people in groups, but the data self identification and was used by the college for all sorts of things.  Using 'white-catholics' as the base, jewish students had higher SAT scores going in but had lower GPAs.  Lot of other stiff like this that simply 'prompts further inquiry.'  The head of the department made me change my thesis.  I ended up doing an examination of income and education, religious and political affiliation.  My main critique of educational institutions; actually addressing problems and doing meaningfull research is taboo, might upset the status quo.  Rehashing abstractions done so many times they can be viewed and graded simply be addherance to normalcy, thats the... norm. 

Bit of a tangent, but I swear there is more political infighting amongst faculty and administration than there actually is in the political world.  Amazing how the 'high-minded' can be clearly shown as being petty and spitefull whenever a school policy debate is held.
Improbus a nullo flectitur obsequio.