Coo-Coo On Campus

America’s universities have gone crazy. Decades of dubious African-American Studies, Queer Theory Studies, Womens’ Studies, Gender Studies, and the like have produced a nearly uniform dippiness in students, faculty, and administration. That students and their parents would spend upwards of $50,000 per year to study such things is bad enough, but that’s their business. That government spends our tax money on them in the form of grants and subsidized loans is far worse.

Those applying for admission to the University of California are asked to identify themselves as either “male; female; trans male/trans man; trans female/trans woman; gender queer/gender non-conforming; and different identity.” They’re asked their sexual “orientation,” which assumes they were born either homosexual or heterosexual, but it also asks: “what sex were you assigned at birth, such as on an original birth certificate?” This is reflective of the assumption among progressives that homosexuals are born that way, but men and women are not.

According to the progressive mantra, sex has nothing to do with genitalia, chromosomes, anything physical or scientific, and has little to do with reproduction either. Rather, it has everything to do with feelings. Feelings trump logic, history, biology, evolution, and creation. 

Speaking of feelings, students attending at least twelve campuses experienced panic attacks recently, triggered by seeing “Trump 2016” and “Build The Wall” drawn in chalk on a sidewalk. According to campusreform.org, the “victims” who read these messages have been offered counseling. Administrators have banned political chalking entirely. Students complained about how much water is wasted to hose off the chalk.

He's talking about seeing "Trump 2016"in chalk on his campus

There was some craziness when I attended what is now UMass Lowell in the 1970s. A professor recruited me to attend a class called “Sociology of Women and Sex Roles” because no men signed up and she wanted some male perspective in discussions. I didn’t have to do the reading and I only had to show up twice a week though the class met three times. I had a full-time job on the second shift and couldn’t make the third class. One of the books we discussed was “The Bitch Manifesto” which was still being studied in 2007 according to a quick net search. I wouldn’t be allowed in today without first renouncing my heterosexual-white-male-privilege.

It got crazier in the 1990s when my wife finished her undergraduate degree in Social Work at the University of Southern Maine. I accompanied her to a graduation party in Scarborough where several lesbian graduates lived, one of whom was her friend. Upon arrival, attendees were assigned badges declaring whether we were gay, straight, or bisexual.

In 2010, I wrote what I considered a tame review of Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues but I it got me fired from one of the papers carrying this column. The publisher received so many complaints about my use of the word “vagina,” he said he couldn’t defend me anymore. It didn’t seem to help when I explained that those readers’ taxes subsidized the play when it was produced annually on multiple campuses of the University of Maine, not to mention hundreds if not thousands of other campuses across the country. I was hired back a few weeks later when the controversy died down.

Science departments used to be anchors of sanity at universities. They’re infected now too by millions in government grants for dubious research on alleged human-caused climate-change. I hope I live long enough to see the day when it’s finally exposed for the power-grabbing hoax it is. I also look forward to Mark Steyn’s day in court, the legal preliminaries for which have dragged on for almost five years. Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann, author of the infamous hockey-stick graph purporting to demonstrate anthropogenic global warming, has sued Steyn for defamation after he accused Mann of fraud. Steyn refused to apologize and wants a trial to further expose Mann’s specious research. Given Steyn’s brilliant mind and biting wit, that promises to be the best legal theater since the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Mark Steyn

I wanted to get this out before Maine Attorney General Janet Mills comes after us climate-change “deniers.” Together with sixteen other Democrat AGs around the country, Mills is on a witch hunt to criminalize research into what they all insist is “settled science,” as if there were any such thing.

Political correctness on campus has gone way beyond ludicrous. One longtime friend who is very loyal to his alma mater was pushed over the edge when its administration dictated which Halloween costumes were allowed and which were not. He’s a thoughtful guy and has been left-of-center for the many decades I’ve known him. Now, however, he’s supporting Donald Trump in hopes that he would counteract it. I was shocked.

Around, around, and around it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.

Addendum: Response by Michael Mann in Conway Sun, one of the papers carrying this column:

It's Not Easy Being Green

Portland Harbor from South Portland February 2015

Portland Harbor froze over for the first time in thirty-five years. That presents a dilemma for people around the southern Maine area for several reasons. Ice breakers are necessary to keep shipping lanes open. Ferries to the islands get more difficult too, but the hardest thing is explaining how this could happen when you and your fellow greenies — the dominant species around the greater Portland area — have been wailing about the dangers of global warming for decades. The polar ice cap was supposed to have disappeared by now, but locals are looking over their shoulders this winter for fear that ice cap may creep south and take over our state the way it did four times before — and melting the last time only 12,000 years ago. This month will go down at the coldest February on record. 

Poor Adam (From Portland Press Herald)

Adam Souza’s car was destroyed in Portland last weekend when huge ice chunks fell on it from a five-story building. “They told me my insurance doesn’t cover an act of nature,” he said. I have to wonder: what if the car had been submerged by rising ocean waters the greenies predicted? Would he be able to sue oil companies? Would he have been able to insist it was human-caused, and not an act of nature? Other Portland residents are reminded they have to shovel snow off sidewalks in front of their houses, but they wonder where they’re going to put it. Snowbanks are already so high they have to drive halfway onto the street to see if there are any cars coming. Body shops say there are three times more cars with collision damage compared to past winters.

Boston

Then there are the endless stories from other greenies in Boston where winter snows keep piling up and below normal temperatures prevent any of it from melting back. Environmental cassandras like Robert Kennedy Jr and Bill McKibben are still insisting it’s all caused by global warming. “Climate change is a time test,” claims McKibben. “If we don’t act very quickly — well, Boston is getting a taste right now of what a changed climate looks like.” He’s the leading cassandra of the global warming movement and likely will be the last to admit it’s really mass hysteria.

Coo-Coo McKibben

Kennedy, meanwhile, is trying to convince Harvard to divest from fossil fuels to prevent catastrophic global warming. He wants to lead “Heat Week” sit-ins for students to pressure the university. They’re going to have to shovel out some space for the students to sit, unless they want fashion Cambridge’s enormous snow banks into chairs somehow.

Massachusetts

Greenies at the Washington Post are struggling desperately to keep their “climate change” house of cards from collapsing with a recent headline: “What the massive snowfall in Boston tells us about global warming.” They just won’t give up, insisting: “It doesn’t yet for most of us, but sooner or later we’re going to have to get past the idea that global warming and huge amounts of snow are somehow contradictory.” Contradictory? Who would ever think that? Kermit The Frog warned us all a long time ago that it’s not easy being green. These are indeed very difficult times for greenies. As Kermit sang:

When green is all there is to be

It could make you wonder why, but why wonder?

Why Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful!

And I think it's what I want to be.

Penn State’s Michael Mann, author of the dubious “hockey stick graph” touted by Al Gore, still insists all this snow and cold is indeed caused by global warming: “storm[s] will be feeding off these very warm seas, producing very large amounts of snow as spiraling winds of the storm squeeze that moisture out of the air, cool, it, and deposit it as snow inland.” Warm seas? They don’t appear warm to me when I look out over the ice in Portland Harbor.

Portland from Bug Light Park last week

Scott Peck, a psychiatrist who had some best-selling books back in the 1980s, described the greenie dilemma well: “Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life.” He said we construct one in adolescence and try to use it without modification throughout life. It’s tough to admit we’ve been wrong even in the face of overwhelming evidence. “Life is difficult,” he said. To even consider we may be wrong about the way we understand things is hard enough. Admitting it to ourselves and others is even harder. Constructing a new life map is the hardest of all, so most of us never undertake the effort.

Portland Head Light last week

It’s especially hard for the head greenies like President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who keep insisting that global warming is more dangerous to us than Islamic terrorism, I mean “extremist violence.”