The Campus Conservative

  Canada's fireworks at the 2013 Celebration of Light in Vancouver (Source: Wikipedia Commons) They changed it!  UT-Tyler has removed a provision within its strategic plan that was set to enshrine Critical Race Theory into its institutional mission. The provision that once read that the university will advance a campus climate that cultivates “justice, equity, diversity and inclusion” now reads that it will advance a climate “of equal opportunity and success” instead.  This is a huge win as it removes the institutional bias that would have entered the university's  philosophy (and then spread throughout the entire institution) as a result of this language. What Is Critical Race Theory? For those who are unfamiliar, critical race theory is the theory that white people built Western society through systematic racism to benefit white people. Therefore, the very DNA of Western institutions is racism, and the appropriate way to remove discriminatory bias from within Weste...

(Ritter Tower at The University of Texas at Tyler // Source: James Hescock) The University of Texas at Tyler (UT-Tyler) has proposed a new institutional plan that puts critical race theory at the center of its approach. The plan states that the university’s new commitments (among others) are [to advance] "a campus climate that cultivates justice, equity, diversity and inclusion” (or what's know as JEDI).  While these traditional terms sound positive, in reality, they are applications of critical race theory (CRT), a toxic ideology that claims Western society exists to benefit white people through systematic racism and that equality of outcome is a desirable goal. Sadly, CRT’s introduction into the university’s strategic plan introduces a biased ideology that corrupts the soundness of the university's judgement and makes it wholly untrustworthy with respect to its decisions. The unfortunate result is that the university’s current stakeholders—students, parents and local emp...

(Source: Pexels.com; public domain)  In the coming months, UT-Tyler will propose its new strategic plan to its oversight board, The Board of Regents. In the new plan, the University intends to include a provision to adopt a "JEDI" orientation (a commitment to pursue "justice, equity, diversity and inclusion") as an institutional commitment. This is a big deal. The JEDI tenants all appear nice until one realizes that this is an ideology, not a rational response to fact and evidence.   Ideological commitments blind a person from the real world since they start with hypotheses rather than facts. In the case of the JEDI framework, the foundational assumption is that disparity of outcomes is always the result of discrimination. Adopting this false assumption in the JEDI ideology into the intuitional plan will create a blind spot in the university and ultimately lead UT-Tyler to be irresponsible with its mission. UT-Tyler should reject the JEDI commitment from its strateg...

 (Source: DS Bigham via Flickr) The Black-White Test Score Gap. It is a disparity that has existed on standardized tests for decades. On exams that claim to measure reading, vocabulary and math skills, Blacks and Hispanics consistently underperform Asians and Whites.  Conservatives have long blamed culture for this disparity, but Liberals often derided this as prejudiced and instead asserted that the cause is poverty, not culture. Hence, Liberals have now spent decades working to equalize Black schools to their White counterparts. They have increased teacher pay, school resources and the whole lot. Yet, after equalizing all other variables and with still no change, some observers are coming back to what many Conservatives have been saying all along: it's culture. So why have Liberals resisted culture as the explanation for the test score disparity? Why have they chased every other explanation to no avail while this explanation was here all along?  Why Liberals Can't Accep...

Riter Tower at The University of Texas at Tyler (Source: James Hescock) I’ve been looking through the internet lately trying to understand what the big deal is behind "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion". I did this because, back in February, Stephanie Fenter, UT-Tyler’s vice president of strategic planning, announced to student government that the draft of the university’s new strategic plan has a provision to make Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (or “JEDI”) a strategic university priority. “We are committed to growing our student body by advancing a culture that cultivates justice, equity, diversity and inclusion,” she told the student assembly. What Is JEDI?  JEDI is a next step from traditional Diversity and Inclusion (DI) efforts which have been in higher education for years. It takes this same ethic—which is the equalization of outcomes—one step farther. Many regard JEDI as the next evolutionary step of social justice activism in higher education .  For example, a...

  (Driving by Simon Collison via Flickr) Have you noticed how much UT-Tyler has changed?  Over the last five years, specifically with President Kirk Calhoun’s arrival, the university has exploded in the size of its administration and oversight of student life. For example, the institution is now hiring its first diversity officer, has pushed again for a higher athletics fees and has vowed to provide more traditions and social programming for student life, expanding its administrative reach ever farther. That’s a lot of administrative growth!  However, it’s not always for the better. This kind expansion leads to a larger bureaucracy that is ultimately more expensive to operate and eventually more costly for students through higher tuition and fees. However, if there is any group of students who can put a check on this expansion, then it is the commuter students at UT-Tyler. By opposing the next athletics fee increase, UT-Tyler’s commuter students can rein-in Big Education’...

("Soup Kitchen" by Frankie Roberto via Flickr) If there’s anything a college campus has a lot of, it’s programs. There’s a program for nearly anything. There’s a program to stop smoking, a program for getting free food, and even a program to distribute free tampons. Moreover, there are also public awareness campaigns galore on college campuses, such as campaigns to promote awareness about sexual assault, domestic violence, and an endless number of other campaigns for nearly every social ill under the sun. The abundance of programs on college campuses demonstrate the Liberal’s over-dependence upon programs and interventionist approaches to solve human ills. However, interventionism is not the way to change people’s behavior. Rather than intervening in someone else’s life to protect them from this or that by extension of an impersonal program, it’s through reinforcing participation in meaningful human relationships that lift people into wholesome living. Let us consider: interv...