Sunday, January 31, 2010

What sort of employer is this?

I had another discussion about my most recent life choices yesterday, with someone who is most likely to cause frustration and anger. Then I read something like this, from the Thinking Housewife:

A male high school senior I know recently visited an elite liberal arts college. The college matched him up with a student who was responsible for showing him around. The school arranged for him to spend the night in the student’s dorm room. The student was a girl.

She made known her intentions during the night. Was this part of the college tour? He declined to sleep with her. They spent the rest of the night talking about her problems with other men.

America’s colleges are in the business of prostituting women in a thousand subtle and overt ways.


How can cooperate with such evil, even if it's only remote and material cooperation? (And I don't think that is the case.) Perhaps professors, once they have tenure, will have the courage to speak their convictions and criticize the administration for their poor (or should we say evil) policies, but what of faculty members who do not have tenure yet? Should they wait until they are hired before they bring up such issues? But should they not instead be looking at prospective employers, working environment, and the institutions while they are considering employment there? (Otherwise, they would be negligent.) Hiring is done by the department, and not the administration. It might be said that being honest about the problems one has with the school during the hiring process is rather pointless, since the department doesn't make school policy (even if the majority of the faculty support it). But if you can't be open with your supposed "colleagues" about fundamental questions, with whom can you be open? And if they disagree with you and believe that thinks are a-ok, can you really work with them, when the whole point is to bring others to the truth? Being forced to be silent for "prudential" reasons can be very emasculating--one must judge if there is a reason to be silent, or some greater good to be brought about. If one must instead open his mouth in order to bring about the greater good (or if not doing so is tantamount to not objecting to evil), then he must say something, should he not?

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