The University of Wisconsin- Madison has suspended the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity(SAE) for continually making racist slurs.
University of Wisconsin-Madison has suspended the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity through Nov. 1 after an investigation found chapter members repeatedly used racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs, and then ostracized a black member who told them to stop, according to documents released by the university.
Sara Goldrick-Rab
is a professor of educational policy studies and sociology with a
national profile in both her field of research and the ongoing debate over faculty tenure in Wisconsin public universities. She has openly said she's looking for another job because she believes academic freedom is in jeopardy in Wisconsin.
Goldrick-Rab acknowledges that she searched Twitter for individuals who identified themselves as future Badgers.
The prolific Twitter-user says she wanted to inform them of changes to
faculty tenure and shared governance that were about to become part of
state law — changes she says would hurt the quality of their education,
but that the university wasn't telling them about.
Professor Golrick-Rab took to twitter, to have informative discussions with incoming freshman and many were happy to get the personal attention and information. Unfortunately though for Professor Goldrick-Rab, she also ran up against some incoming right wingers and that is where she made her mistake.
Professor Goldrick-Rab made the mistake in thinking that all 18 year olds would be interested in gathering as much information about the world they are heading into as possible to help form a world view that is bigger than the sheltered one they have been living as high schoolers.
Six days later, Goldrick-Rab reached out to all six students on Twitter:
"I hate to bring bad news but," her tweet began. She then linked to an
opinion piece published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel with the
headline: "Threats to shared governance and tenure put mission of UW at
risk."
Fairly safe there, just some quick info to a group of incoming freshman. Then after some back and forth banter, Professor Goldrick-Rab crossed the line.
"We don't want students 2 waste their $. It's info that's all," her
tweet said. "University is changing as we speak. Maybe look at info?"
In case you missed the one sentence that disgusts and repels hard core WI right wingers than this line: "Maybe look at info?"
Has Ms. Goldrick-Bab not listened to any of the right wing hate talked filled radio shows she would know that Republicans in WI have no interest in looking at info.
They know what they know when they know it. One of the kids said it best in their incredibly rude response to their Professor:
"No one cares sara," one of the students replied.
When I went to college no one would call Professors by their first name (at least unless we have had numerous classes of theirs), however that was long before this kind of Governance took hold in WI:
The head of the college Republicans at UW-Madison, the aptly named Arthur Birch even went so far to accuse Professor Goldrick-Rab of harrassment:
College Republicans of UW-Madison Chairman Anthony Birch on Wednesday
confronted Goldrick-Rab in a news release posted on the group's
Facebook page: "Professor Sara Goldrick-Rab: We find the way you have
approached the dialogue around the intersection of politics and our
university's future disgusting and repulsive."
Goldrick-Rab crossed "all boundaries of
professionalism and respect by seeking these recent graduates out on
Twitter and proceeding to harass them with articles intended to lobby
and persuade them to not attend the University of Wisconsin," the
College Republicans statement said.
Professor Goldrick-Rab needs to immediately stop harassing college students with articles and information.
Does she think these kids came to college to be challenged intellectually or something?
One thing we can take from this horrible incident though, is that our children are being indoctrinated in today's society. I however would much rather they get their information from a degreed and award winning teacher as opposed to a thrice divorced radio talker.
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