Two down, 1 to go

The Oberlin College Series

ChaosFarm Reflections

The snow has melted in more ways than one. The grass in the south pasture has turned green, Spring flowers are in full bloom, and the trees in the woods are just starting to show a touch of green on their branches.

Score: Oberlin 10, Cornell 0

Things might be changing in Oberlin. The announcement that the “lady” (used pejoratively) who was a key ingredient in creating the mess with Gibson’s Bakery has resigned her position with the college for an even more overpaid and prestigious position with Cornell University. The wicked witches are not dead, but their damage to Oberlin College and the Gibsons is coming to an end. The score is now Oberlin 10, Cornell 0.

Black Squirrels and SOCs

Evolution has produced black, white, and SOC squirrels in abundance recently. There are even skunk squirrels which are SOCs with white skunk-like stripes on their tails. The sex habits of these squirrels and Oberlin College students are intersectional and in compliance with the latest intellectual fads.

Yesterday JD observed some squirrel sexcapades worthy of presentation to the College’s sex court. An alleged boy SOC was aggressively chasing an alleged girl SOC across the pasture. The girl squirrel played hard to get, spiraling at top speed up and down trees and across the space between the trees. (Full disclosure: the sexes and sexual preference and gender identification of the two squirrels are assumed and were not empirically verified by JD.)

The boy SOC was playing it cool by making sure that he let the girl SOC win each chase sequence as the chase progressed. Eventually, the girl SOC became winded on a sprint between two trees, and the boy SOC paused for under a second to strategically contemplate his prey. He then sprinted toward the girl SOC and, with or without her consent,  flipped her onto her back and savored his fraction of a second of sexist subjugation and victory. He then sprinted about six feet for good social distancing and paused to celebrate his achievement. The girl SOC resumed going about her business as if nothing had happened. Now, how would Oberlin College’s kangaroo sexcapades court adjudicate this matter?

Alumni Trustee elections

For whatever it may be worth, JD received the latest Alumni Trustee Election news from “About Oberlin > Leadership & Administration > Offices > Office of Relations > Alumni Trustee Election.” That’s quite a string of breadcrumbs (breadcrumb notation is used on web pages to describe a hierarchy.) These breadcrumbs are superb documentation of the bloat caused by the growing administrative bureaucracy at Oberlin College.

At the end of this breadcrumb hierarchy is the web page’s subject: “Alumni Trustee Election.” This webpage contains the very innocent-sounding sentence, “The Board of Canvassers (the general counsel and secretary of the college [Donica Varner] and the director of libraries) certifies the results of the election.” This sentence implies that the general counsel and secretary are two different people and that the Board of Canvassers consists of three people rather than two.

Attorney Varner, along with fellow attorney Ambar, is the ONLY person allowed to send or forward communications to the BOT. The BOT alone controls the College, and they no doubt made the best decisions they could re the Gibsons, the UAW union-busting, OSCA, etc., assuming that they were fed lies and/or incomplete information. If the BOT made their FUBAR decisions based on complete and correct info, they deserve to be pilloried. Varner is now on her way to a corresponding position at Cornell, where she will undoubtedly keep the Cornell BOT similarly well informed on the divisive issues on that campus.

Deriving facts from opinions

We live in times where facts and opinions are synonymous, which has been clearly recognized by the Oberlin BOT and Administration. It is unlikely that the messes with Gibson’s Bakery, the UAW, OSCA, Kosher-Halal, etc., could have happened without the big cheeses having the insight to recognize the congruence of facts and opinions.

Outsourcing

Show the boss

That’s Super!

Create this?

Outsource it

 

Word bending is central to the practice of law. Still, I suspect that many reputable attorneys are troubled by the overuse of precise and misleading legalistic language that has infected Oberlin’s top bureaucrats.

Free Speech of Yesteryear

The following item from Stansberry Research contrasts the free speech of yesteryear with Oberlin today, where pronouns are more important than content.

“Freedom of Speech,” the famous Norman Rockwell painting that depicts a young man addressing a local gathering, was inspired by a real event.

One evening in 1942, Rockwell attended the town meeting in Arlington, VT, where he lived for many years. On the agenda was the construction of a new school. It was a popular proposal, supported by everyone in attendance — except for one resident, who got up to express his dissenting view.

In Rockwell’s scene, the man speaks his mind, unafraid to express a minority opinion and not intimidated by the status of those he’s challenging. And while his neighbors may disagree, they’re willing to hear what he has to say.

What brings Rockwell’s painting to mind is a new national poll by the Cato Institute… the survey found that 62% of adults say that they’re afraid to express their views honestly given the current political climate.

Free speech has never been free, but the cost of such speech today has skyrocketed.

On college campuses, in workplaces, in the media, there are ever-widening no-go zones of viewpoints. Voice an opinion that self-anointed social-justice warriors regard as heretical, and the consequences can be career-destroying.

The director of communications for Boeing apologized and resigned after an employee complained that 33 years ago, he was opposed to women serving in combat.

Virtually everyone would agree that some views are indisputably beyond the pale.

But the new Cato survey found that more than one in five Americans (22%) would support firing a business executive who donated money to Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. In contrast, 31% would be OK with firing someone who gave money to Trump’s re‐election campaign.

That’s not only absurd; it’s terrifying.

And so, this ever-present dread has settled in… Challenging books go untaught. Deep conversations aren’t had. Friendships aren’t formed. Classmates and colleagues eye each other with suspicion or contempt.