Category Archives: Education (higher ed)

Time to Bring Back the Blue Books?

by James A. Bacon

It’s hard to know how much credence to give to trend data extrapolated from online search queries. But if we imbue the findings of software firm Tiny Wow with any significance, one recent search trend is worrisome indeed.

Tiny Wow analyzed Google Trends for the search queries “essay writer,”  “essay ai writer,” and “chatgpt essay.” Among the 50 states, Virginia ranked 6th in the interest Googlers showed in using artificial intelligence essay-writing software.

“According to these findings, there is a clear interest in students looking to AI for essay help in the U.S.,” said a Tiny Wow spokesperson. Continue reading

The Bert Ellis Feeding Frenzy

Piranhas

by James A. Bacon

Virginia has now entered the feeding frenzy stage of the assault on Bert Ellis’ character. Abandoning all journalistic standards of impartiality and fair play, mainstream media outlets compete with one another to publish anything they can find to compromise Ellis, a member of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors appointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin and narrowly confirmed by the General Assembly.

Following a Washington Post piece yesterday that highlighted such transgressions as referring in private correspondence to a UVa employee as a “numnut,” Virginia Public Media has joined the fray. Among the new affrights uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act is the scoop that Ellis also referred to UVa administrators as “schmucks”!

It is laughable that anyone would deem such language used in personal communications to be worth publishing — as if no one else in public service speaks this way in private. Ironically, the only thing remarkable about Ellis’ use of language is how restrained it is. It is less vitriolic, for example, than the language used by Jeff Thomas, the leftist author who filed the FOIA request and peddled his findings to the media. VPM reporter Ben Paviour quotes Thomas as accusing “these people” of “lashing out with these venomous personal attacks at innocent people.”

Venomous? Really? Ellis didn’t “lash out” or “attack” anyone — these were private communications. The victims never knew about them…until Thomas uncovered them and persuaded Paviour to publicize them!

Such are the New Rules of woke journalism.

But there’s more. Paviour included one exchange in his piece that had no business appearing in any article. The fact that he chose to include it exposes the shoddiness of his journalism. Here is what he wrote: Continue reading

For Your Consideration: An Intellectual Freedom Protection Act

by James C. Sherlock

I offer for your consideration the text of a draft Intellectual Freedom Protection Act proposed this morning by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

FIRE is the leading American voice supporting academic freedom, free speech and due process. In doing so they defend democracy itself.

They are what the ACLU was before that organization abandoned the field as an impartial supporter of civil liberties to pick a side.

FIRE defends left and right equally.

I have below eliminated the preamble of the draft law for brevity. Lawyers can find the legal precedents referenced in the preamble here. Continue reading

Break out the Smelling Salts. Bert Ellis Called Someone a “Numnut”

Image credit: Washington Post

by James A. Bacon

And the hit jobs just keep on coming!

After maligning Virginia Military Institute alumni dissident Matt Daniel two days ago, The Washington Post aims its guns today on Bert Ellis, a conservative alumnus and member of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, with the publication of text messages obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. They were private communications. Like everyone else in the universe, Ellis expressed himself with candid language he would not have used in the public domain.

Make sure you’re sitting down. You might want to take a dose of anti-anxiety pills. Ellis actually called people “numnuts.”

He also had the temerity to express dissatisfaction with the Ryan administration’s obsessive focus on race, including its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives.

In truth, there is remarkably little that is worthy of note in Ellis’ text messages. Yet the Post quotes Jeff Thomas, the leftist chronicler of Virginia politics who obtained the FOIA documents, as asserting that the documents “demonstrate Governor Youngkin’s Board appointees are ignorant reactionaries consumed by hatred and neo-Confederate fantasies.”

The text messages demonstrate no such thing. Ellis has never been consumed by the destruction of Civil War statues or the assault on Southern heritage. Rather, he has lamented the trashing of Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers. There is nothing in the text messages to suggest the existence of “neo-Confederate fantasies” — nor, for that matter, the notion that he is “consumed by hatred”… unless you consider calling someone a “numnut” an indicator of unquenchable animus. Continue reading

The Players and the Dispute in the High Level Cage Match at UVa – Can a Racism Charge be Far Behind?

By James C. Sherlock

Loren Lomasky,
Cory Professor of Political Philosophy, Policy & Law.       Courtesy UVa.

I read yesterday morning on BR Tragedies in Charlottesville” by UVa professor Loren Lomasky, who wrote:

It is reasonable to judge that in either the longer or shorter version of the history of the university, no single individual has done it as grievous a harm as the man who now serves as its chief academic officer.

Among the few propositions on which Loren Lomasky and provost Ian Baucom agree is that the University of Virginia would be better off with exactly one of them gone.

Wow! Cage match!

I guess you could say that Dr. Lomasky has had enough.

He opposes, obviously strongly, Provost Baucom’s strange intervention into academics school-wide after the November shooting of three young men at the University.

We also suspect the fight might reflect the history between the two men. Baucom was Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences during most of Professor Lomasky’s tenure there.

Libertarians like Dr. Lomasky seek, in his case as a career, to minimize encroachments on and violations of individual liberties and to maximize personal autonomy and political freedom.

They are believers in personal agency and taking responsibility for ones actions. They insist on academic freedom.

Nice to see the professor, who advocates all of that, call out the University of Virginia leadership in the person of provost Ian Baucom, who emphatically does not advocate any of it.

Not a word about that story yet that I can find in the mainstream media that cover Virginia.  Fair enough.  Perhaps we will see it tomorrow.

Nothing in The Cavalier Daily yet, which does,however, offer a riveting story pressing for free menstrual products in the dorms.

But Professor Lomasky also called out the DEI bureaucracy at UVa in the strongest terms.

I have no doubt that they have opened a “case.” (Update.  I understand that Prof. Lomasky has been the subject of at least three investigations by the EOCR division of DEI).

Continue reading

Tragedies in Charlottesville

by Loren Lomasky

Poor University of Virginia, the bad luck just kept coming. In 2014 the campus was rocked by the story of a vicious gang rape perpetrated at one of the fraternities. “Story” is the operative word; it transpired that the Rolling Stone exposé was entirely fabricated. Three years later the alt right came to town. Although to the best of my knowledge no actual member of the university community took part in its marches, the image of troglodytic wielders of tiki torches spreading their menace across grounds was indelibly etched into the American imagination. And then came Covid.

These were external inflictions, but on Nov. 13, 2022, the university experienced an unexpected trauma. On a bus returning from a cultural outing to Washington, DC, one student gunned down three others. UVA responded by sending teams of counselors across the campus to respond to the pain of those who had lost friends or classmates. The university has no special expertise in psychological healing, but to its credit it did what it could.

Entirely different were alterations made to the academic mission. Backed by university president James Ryan, provost Ian Baucom decreed that no graded assignments be required from students until after the Thanksgiving break, that is, the close of term. What if periodic writing of papers is necessary to the integrity of the particular course? The question did not arise; upholding academic standards had no place on the administration’s priority list.

In case these measures were insufficient to calm the atmosphere, Baucom also decreed that all fall semester classes were now to be graded as “Pass-No Pass.” At first glance this may not seem especially radical. Almost all colleges offer an option for students to take an occasional ungraded class. Typically that option will be elected so that one can try out a subject distant from one’s major without undue risk to the grade point average. That, however, is not at all like what the administration imposed. First, “Pass-No Pass” was not an option available to some students for some courses; everyone in every course was summarily included. Second, it was not a choice between a graded or ungraded course. Rather, all students would complete the class, find out in the fullness of time what grade had been assigned to them, and only at that point choose whether to keep the grade or simply receive credit for the course. Presumably the idea behind the policy – I say “presumably” because the administration is not often inclined to spell out its reasoning – is to minimize potential anxiety. Students need not worry about receiving an undesired grade because they can simply make it go away.

One wonders, though, what effect this policy is likely to have on students’ incentive to study industriously and get the most they can out of the course. If the cost to them of liberally substituting club time for book time is reduced, perhaps to zero, it doesn’t take a savant to figure out the likely response. This is meant in no way as a criticism of UVA student conscientiousness; in my experience Hoos are hard to match. Rather, it is to observe that they, like the rest of us, rationally respond to the choices on offer. If professors’ standards are effectively removed from the equation by an administration telling students that they need not bear the consequences of shirking on study, then results are predictable. Students may enjoy enhanced party time but they will be less well-educated. Continue reading

Spirit of VMI Preempts WaPo Hit Job

by James A. Bacon

Looks like Washington Post reporter  Ian Shapira is loading up the big guns to fire another salvo in his unrelenting war on Virginia Military Institute alumni who are critical of the new leadership’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion policies. This time, instead of attacking traditionalist alumni as a group, he appears to be focusing on Matt Daniel, head of The Spirit of VMI PAC, as an individual.

Shapira obviously has done a lot of digging. Since his Nov. 21 article insinuating that dissident alumni are racist for criticizing VMI’s African-American Superintendent Cedric Wins, he has published only one other article (on a topic unrelated to VMI). Three months after his last hit, the WaPo hatchet man emailed a lengthy list of questions to Daniel that hint at specific allegations the article will make.

One question, for example, sets up the VMI grad and former fighter pilot on charges of anti-Semitism for a blog post in which he criticized leftist mega-donor George Soros — not for Soros’ ethnic identity but his role bankrolling leftist causes. 

Anticipating a hatchet job, The Spirit of VMI has published Shapira’s email, and you can read it here. And you can read The Spirit of VMI’s response here.

“What is obvious from the tone, type, and number of questions is that Mr. Shapira … will try to doxx and cancel another VMI Alumnus who has attempted to freely speak and react to to the corrosive actions of the Northam Administration,” said the Spirit of VMI statement. The statement continued: Continue reading

Moral Injury Is Driving Doctor Burnout

by Dr. Scott Armistead

Physician burnout is a major issue in the U.S., receiving attention in medical education, medical specialties and at various government levels. Moral injury, in my professional and teaching experience, is a significant and growing challenge to physician wellness. Moral injury happens when one’s personal convictions are unwelcomed and one is pressured to think, be silent, speak, act or not act in a way that compromises one’s conscience.

I graduated from the VCU School of Medicine (formerly Medical College of Virginia) in 1991, trained in family medicine and served in a mission hospital in Asia for 16 years. In 2015, I transitioned to a Virginia university practice and became heavily involved in the lives of medical students.

In the time that had passed since I was a medical student, I found the environment of medicine and medical education had significantly changed. One area of change was the emergence of the “provider of services model.” “Provider,” a relatively new term at the time, is now commonplace. Continue reading

School Discipline – Part 5 – How and When Democrats Broke Virginia Public Schools

by James C. Sherlock

We read earlier today that the eminent developmental theorist Urie Bronfenbrenner has written:

The more we study human development, the more it becomes clear the family is the most powerful, most humane and, by far, the most economical way of making human beings human.

That truth, however, does not account for the degree that families have broken down in America in the last 60 years, which is, unfortunately, a lot.  The Pew Research Center reported in 2019 that the U.S. has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households.

So we try to impart in school what some children are denied at home: humanity.

The federal government, Virginia government and local school boards have killed a lot of forests with laws, regulations and guidelines (and spent a very large fortune) trying to accomplish that.

I will provide here overwhelming evidence that Ralph Northam and the new Democratic majorities in both houses of the Virginia G.A. in 2020 did catastrophic damage to the schools’ ability to maintain order and thus safety.

The Northam-McAuliffe Board of Education in 2021 finished the job just in time for students to return in progressive-run divisions from as much as a 15-month COVID hiatus from schools.  No conservative-run division was out nearly that long.

So they created a perfect storm based on progressive dogma. At the most vulnerable time in our schools’ history.

They actually discouraged in law the reporting by school principals and teachers to police of cases of assault and battery in schools.

They never considered for a minute the easily foreseeable victims of the changes.

Ask Abby Zwerner about her school’s positive climate. Continue reading

University of Richmond: Don’t Want The Name? Send Back The Loot.

by Kerry Dougherty

Most of us didn’t pay attention last September when the University of Richmond Board of Trustees voted to remove the name of T.C. Williams from its law school because the Williams family who endowed the law school were slave owners.

After all, U of R is a snooty rich kids’ school. Not a public institution. They can be as woke as they like.

But in a delicious turn of events, wokeness is now biting the University on its well-tailored derriere.

A descendant of the philanthropic Williams family wants the money his great-great grandfather gave to the school returned — with interest — to the family.

“If suddenly his name is not good enough for the University, then isn’t the proper ethical and indeed virtuous action to return the benefactor’s money with interest? At a 6 percent compounded interest over 132 years, T.C. Williams’ gift to the law school alone is now valued at over $51 million, and this does not include many other substantial gifts from my family to the University,” Rob Smith, Williams’ great-great-grandson, said in a letter to President Kevin Hallock.
Continue reading

School Discipline in Virginia – Part 2 – Positive Options Trumped by a Race Card

From social media video of school fight

by James C. Sherlock

I have found both surprise and confusion among some readers when I use the term “valid studies” in discussing the avalanche of doctoral theses and studies produced annually by schools of education.

The federal Institute for Educational Sciences established What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) in 2002 to sort the wheat from the chaff for school divisions and state education agencies before they choose a particular intervention to pursue to solve a problem.

Since I discovered WWC a few years ago, I check it in my own research in an attempt to make sure I don’t go down a rabbit hole with some study that is flawed.

On the subject of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), WWC shows in assessments of interventions to solve problems of social-emotional learning and behavior management:

  1. strong evidence that PBIS offers no measurable improvement, and
  2. that there are alternative approaches to PBIS that do show strong improvement.

One study of PBIS, conducted in Maryland (which will come up again later), was the only one ever to meet strict WWC standards of quality and strong evidence.

Strong evidence from that trial — in 2010 — found that PBIS did not work to improve social-emotional development and behavior in K-5 children.

There were no positive findings. None.

Yet a very large number of Virginia’s largest school divisions use it anyway.

And all of them started using it after that 2010 study.

But then again, so did Maryland. Continue reading

Graduates. And Not.

by John Butcher

The U.S. Department of Education requires every state to annually report high school graduation rates. Those data, along with students’ performances on state assessments in subjects such as mathematics, English, and science, along with other measures, are also used to determine annual accreditation ratings.

The VDOE’s website includes the Superintendent’s Annual Report where one can find a wealth of information at the state, division, and school levels.

At first glance, the spreadsheet in Table 5, Diploma Graduates and Completers, looks to be a source of interesting graduation data. The 2022 report gives the diploma counts for 2022 and the fall memberships for 2019. However, calculating the federal diploma rates from those data shows a 203.6% rate for Radford and 151.8% for Hopewell.
Continue reading

Lab School Process Underway; Youngkin Oblivious to Overfunding

Stephen Cummings, Va. Secretary of Finance

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Governor Youngkin’s Lab School initiative is off to a fairly good start, although it is probably not progressing as quickly as he thought or hoped it would.

According to the Department of Education (DOE), the department has received two applications for the establishment of a lab school— from James Madison University and Southside Community College. In addition, it has received applications from 12 institutions for planning grants for lab schools.  They are:

  • University of Mary Washington
  • Mountain Gateway Community College
  • Old Dominion University
  • George Mason University
  • Virginia Commonwealth University
  • University of Lynchburg
  • Eastern Shore Community College
  • New College Institute
  • University of Virginia
  • Germanna Community College
  • Emory and Henry College
  • Virginia State University

Continue reading

Bacon Bits: More Mad-As-Hell Stories

Ditch the name, keep the money. The University of Richmond recently removed the name of T.C. Williams from its law school because he owned slaves, even though, his descendants say, he contributed to the demise of slavery. Now the same descendants are arguing that the university should refund the money Williams donated to the institution … plus interest. “If suddenly his name is not good enough for the University, then isn’t the proper ethical and indeed virtuous action to return the benefactor’s money with interest? At a 6% compounded interest over 132 years, T.C. Williams’ gift to the law school alone is now valued at over $51 million,” Williams’ great-great grandson Rob Smith told The College Fix. Funny thing about that: long-ago university benefactors may be dirty, but their money never is.

Speaking of colleges and money… It’s all-out war between dissident alumni of the Virginia Military Institute and the VMI Alumni Agencies. The establishment alumni agency wants to raise $19.74 million from the 50th reunion class. Some members are saying, “Hell no, we won’t go.” In fact, they’re urging classmates to take what they would have given the VMI alumni association and contribute it to an alternative group, The Cadet Foundation. Alumni associations everywhere, beware; do not write off your older, conservative alumni. They can raise hell and make your lives miserable. You can win the battles and still lose the war.

Sage’s law. Delegate Dave LaRock has submitted a bill, HB 2432, that would require school officials to inform parents if their child self-identifies as transgender at school. The Family Foundation has dubbed it “Sage’s Law,” in honor of a 15-year-old girl who was adopted by her grandmother because her parents were unfit, identified as transgender at Appomattox High School, ran away, and got sucked into a sex trafficking ring. You can read the horrifying details of her horrific story in The Federalist. What happened to her is unforgivable. Continue reading

Hokies, Join the Resistance!

From Campus Reform:

Virginia Tech prof accuses student of spreading misinformation, threatens to delete discussion board posts

A pro-life student at Virginia Tech was publicly accused of spreading misinformation by her professor after submitting a discussion board assignment expressing pro-life views.

After being admonished publicly, student Alyssa Jones met with her professor and recorded the conversation. “I hadn’t really been thinking the way you want me to I guess,” she said. “I didn’t say anything that was factually incorrect in my discussion post, and I’m just a little bit confused as to why you told the class that I was spreading misinformation.”

Bacon’s bottom line: Push back. Document everything. And take your case public. Students, there are people who will help you,

By the way, Hokie alumni, where the heck are you? You’ve got the most politically conservative (or least “progressive”) students among the major Virginia universities. Why aren’t you standing up for them? Join the University of Virginia, Virginia Military Institute, James Madison University, and Washington & Lee in forming an alumni resistance group. We’re happy to help. Contact me at jabacon@thejeffersoncouncil.com.

— JAB