What It Looks Like When A University Truly Fixes How It Handles Sexual Assault

Brenda Tracy never dreamed she’d wear an Oregon State University T-shirt — not after what happened in 1998. In June of that year, Tracy, then 24 and living with her parents, reported to police that four men had gang-raped her at a party. Two of the accused assailants, she said, were OSU football players. What […]

Free Speech vs Shielding Students: A False Choice

The U.S. Supreme Court once praised the unique qualities of higher education by describing our classrooms as “peculiarly the marketplace of ideas.” Just last week at the University of Michigan, however, chalked anti-Islam messages in the center of our campus gave a different impression– that we are in danger of becoming a marketplace of labels, […]

Is It Possible To Pop The Grade Inflation Bubble?

Image Credit: By own work (http://www.paintingwithlight.xyz/architecture/) Grade inflation was back in the headlines last week when the long-overdue updates to a popular grade inflation database were finally released. We’re taught early on that grades typically fall along a bell-shaped curve where a few people do poorly, a few do very well and most fall somewhere […]

Tennessee Legislature Resurrects Discriminatory Transgender Bathroom Bill

Tennessee lawmakers on Wednesday advanced a bill that would require students to use school bathrooms that correspond to their gender at birth, after dropping consideration of the measure last month. The House education committee on Wednesday passed the bill 8 to 4, moving it to the finance committee for further consideration, according to the Tennessean.  The […]

A Whimsical Look at Fallacies: Appeal to Authority — Part 4: The Limits of Reason

Dear Reader, prepare yourself for mental legerdemain. As you recall, Part 1 of our story tells of Everyman, conditioned from birth to believe the authorities and myths of his tribe, and forbidden, under any circumstances, to think for himself. Prompted by inner doubts and travel restrictions, he steals away in the night to discover the […]