Author: Mariam Sleiman

I found this article to be very interesting because it tackles the notion of the importance of a student-centered institution. In this article, Wexler mentions points from Randy Stoecker’s Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement, such as what classrooms really do, as in their real purpose, and how charity is seen as disrespectful. He makes the analogy between firefighters and service learning programs by saying “the firefighters would fight fires only for set hours. If your fire lasted longer, you would just have to try to put out the rest of it yourself.” He says this because he wants to show how service-learning programs have become something so decreasingly available, and that that is not how it’s supposed to be. He believes that more students should be involved in service learning programs, and should not be solely focused on school. He says, “Classrooms are for students to make mistakes. Communities are not places to make mistakes.” This is what he means by “what the classrooms really do.” He then talks about charity at the end of his book and how it’s seen as disrespectful because it categorizes people as needy rather than people who are suffering from an unjust system. He believes that this is why colleges focus on uncontroversial causes and why they don’t do activist work. Again, this is why he argues for students to be more involved in service learning programs, because they help their community and become involved in activist work that will help them learn to encounter opposition. I believe Stoecker is right to a degree. From this article, I’m convinced that students should have some involvement in service learning programs to help their communities, but I also believe that school should still be the center of a student’s life. They can help their community, but they also should focus on their education.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/16/new-book-argues-service-learning-doesn%E2%80%99t-prioritize-students

Not only is there racial bias in the college admission system, there seems to be a form of that in the tenure system as well. There has been an emergence of cases where minority professors are being denied tenure on the bases of their race. Such a case is that of Jennifer R. Warren, who was an assistant professor of communications at Rutgers University, and was denied tenure. She believes that it could have been based on her race. Rutgers discouraged her from writing a book and suggested that she change her teaching style, which caused her student ratings to drop. She couldn’t prove that the denial was on the basis of systemic racism, but with the help of student activists and rallies, Mr. Warren got another chance to apply for tenure in the spring of 2017. Another case of institutional racism in the system of tenure is Stephen Hong Sohn. Mr. Sohn is Asian American professor at Stanford, who identifies himself as queer, and has done extensive research on race and sexuality, which some say could have contributed to his tenure denial. Tenure has become a new issue for minority student activists because the process and data on faculty diversity is very obscure and takes a long time to understand. Not only in difficulty of understanding the process, but also trying to destroy the stereotypical image of what a tenure professor is. The image is traditionally white and is male, and they are the ones who have a say in deciding whether a professor from a minority origin is worthy of getting tenure, because they believe that they know exactly what professors do. But in actuality, it’s the minority-based professors that know what do to because they connect easier with students, especially students who also come from a minority based origins. Because this is such a huge issue, groups such as “Who’s Teaching Us” have tried to come up with solutions to avoid cases like Mr. Warren’s and Mr. Sohn’s. Solutions such as changing up the system of tenure, so that faculty members who go up for tenure can be clearly informed about what is expected of them and to receive feedback throughout their early careers. Another change is to have the university have minority scholars evaluated by colleagues who understand their academic interests. I believe that it’s good that students are becoming more involved in this, even though it pertains to faculty members, we have to keep in mind that what affects the faculty, our professors, will surely affect us as students. So in the end, students should be more involved with changing this old rigid system and make it better for the society we live in today, for students and faculty members.

I found this article to be very interesting because it points out an issue that needs to be addressed in today’s society. The U.S education department released a report called “Beyond the Box.” In this report, it speaks about how college admissions should not judge a student’s admission on the basis of their criminal or disciplinary records. I agree with this completely. We see mistakes in the criminal justice system today, so if someone was to be wrongfully convicted and that was put on their record, that record could ruin that person’s chances of getting quality education. And in these records are convictions and arrests. So college admission offices can deny admission to student just because of an arrest, even though arrests can happen for the most non-violent/petty crimes, such as possession. And not only are there mistakes in the criminal justice system, there are also biases towards certain races, which can cause wrongful/racially biased arrests and/or convictions. And because these people were arrested/convicted based on their race, they become unable to be admitted into college. A third point I would like to make is that, the whole point of the prison system is that convicted felon’s owe a debt to society. That isolation from society and temporary loss of rights is their punishment. Once these convicted felons are released, their debt to society has been completed. So to subject them to the denial of education, to deny them the integration back into society is something wrong, because if they have paid their debt to society, why are we still punishing them once they have been released? The department of education provides suggestions to colleges that I believe would be helpful, such as, making sure that anyone who checks that box on their application indicating a criminal or disciplinary record has a chance to explain the circumstances, because sometimes it could be a petty crime that led to that record. Or that colleges that wish to ask such questions should consider doing so after an initial decision has been made about admission to avoid a “chilling effect” on applicants whose backgrounds may not be relevant to admissions. This is done so that their acceptance or denial of application can be based on things other than their criminal/disciplinary record.

The link is here https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/09/education-department-report-urges-colleges-reconsider-admissions-questions-criminal