That’s a really good point. I do think the old ruling elite was in some ways more honest within the particular framework of their morality. But maybe that was easier when getting into Harvard meant being smart-ish from a prestigious family, instead of grinding to compete against not only everyone in America, but the biggest grinders and geniuses in India and China too.
It's wonderful that the American elite has broadened as much as it has in the past 70 years or so. With it though there was some load bearing social infrastructure that got demolished.
When it was a little club, you had to think of your family's reputation in the club, and like you say there was a particular framework of their morality.
When the elite franchise was expanded, one problem was that everyone in the elite then had different ideas of morality. When they got into business, the only thing that really united everyone was that they all liked money.
One thing that used to help that we've lost is a moral code in the universities that elites have to attend to get into the club now.
Another thing, after it became illegal to teach the bible in public schools, was "secular bible stories." You had secular saints, like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Ben Franklin. They each had a characteristic story, like George Washington and the cherry tree, Abraham Lincoln walking 10 miles to return 2 cents, and Ben Franklin flying a kite and discovering that lightning was electricity. Later on, MLK was added to the canon for a whole bunch of stories of courage in defense of justice. All of the stories had a moral lesson about what it meant to be a Good American.
Lately we've cancelled most of our secular saints, and my guess is that the few that are left are on borrowed time. That's not to say that these guys never did anything wrong by any means, but the point of teaching the story wasn't even necessarily even that the story actually happened exactly as it was told, the point was the moral lesson. We've basically just given up on moral education, and all we have left are things like Social Emotional Learning, but it is thin gruel.
The elimination of personal racism in towns of less than 1,500 people in rural georgia isn’t a prerequisite to be skeptical of the claim that a university, which is subject to tremendous legal scrutiny and liability, is treating people differently based on race with regard to rule enforcement.
Especially so when you’re invoking the specter of racially discriminatory enforcement as a reason against rules that would be highly beneficial for everyone. You can’t invoke unproven allegations of racism to argue against having rules and enforcing them. That’s just a red herring for people who don’t like rules.
I’m an alum now, not a student, but even college students can submit a FOIA request. Additionally, the school can look in to it if it wants. The possibilities are near-endless for getting this kind of info. There’s also the simple fact that it’s not like it’s a secret when someone is expelled.
I don’t understand why you think it’s so impossible for people to prove this problem exists/that racism is broader bigotry is occurring. For starters, they could simply survey the faculty and ask them how they handle cheating at the school to better understand how it’s reported. Which they did, and it was very revealing. Most did not feel comfortable reporting. They literally told the school. So out the gate you had less than half the faculty even participating, which immediately changes who is impacted (I.e. incredibly unfair enforcement). Before we’re even getting into race and other factors students are basically subject to a near-coin flip over whether or not their professors even report it. Then you have to take the professor’s own potential biases into account, since it’s basically all on them (and peers to a lesser degree. Do I need to explain 18-21 year olds can exercise poor social judgment and/or may not want to ruin someone’s life? Or worse, want to?) voluntarily report this.
Additionally, you could see the breakdown by race (and more) of people that were expelled. The numbers made no sense if you wanted to assert the system was fair - less than 30% of those expelled were white at a school over 80% white. This was the case both for reporting them and verdict. It was common knowledge and over the years there had been several attempts by students to shut the one strike/expulsion only system down. There were also big gender discrepancies, with men being expelled way more than women when accused by professors.
The real issue here is why you immediately come from a place of “that’s impossible,” when it’s something that’s not actually very difficult to prove. That’s literally why it was removed. It was demonstrably discriminatory. It seems to me you just got really upset at the assertion that racism still exists, but I could be reading you wrong. Either way, this isn’t complicated and the data isn’t exactly hard to come by. So now it’s gone and the school is better for it.
I didn’t say it was “impossible.” I just asked you for your evidence. Do you have evidence similarly situated individuals were treated differently? Do you have evidence of events of cheating going unreported? I’m not saying you’re wrong about your ultimate conclusion. I’m asking about the type of evidence you believe is sufficient to support that conclusion.
The fact that most teachers were uncomfortable reporting might suggest enforcement was self selecting, but what makes you think it was the particularly racist teachers self selecting into enforcement? And under Title VI, which is what your allegation amounts to, disparate impact isn’t a valid theory of of discrimination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_v._Sandoval.
Again, strict rules against cheating are societally critical. Petty corruption and cheating is a huge tax on a society, and countries like Singapore and China have greatly improved the lives of ordinary people by taking draconian measures to stamp it out. So you have a very heavy burden if you’re arguing against such rules based on allegations of racial bias.
If you want rage bait, read the proceedings of honor code committees at your school. At least at Northwestern they were public record (sometimes with redaction of identities). The number of people who got off with obviously bullshit excuses was maddening even to read about.
When I was in high school, mad dad was subscribed to the California Bar Journal, and the discipline section was one of my favorite reads. The outrageous rational lawyers had for failing their clients or downright stealing from them was hilarious, and the rate they won their appeals was appalling.
Someone wrote a book about how organizations like state bars protect their members from clients, not the clients from their members as is the stated goal: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674295421
>Someone wrote a book about how organizations like state bars protect their members from clients, not the clients from their members as is the stated goal: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674295421
Every licensing organization does this to the extent it can get away with because it needs to provide value to its members otherwise it's members wouldn't constantly beg the state to do the licensing organization's bidding.
I once was accused and brought before the honor counsel for a really stupid innocent mistake.
Basically it was a history worksheet requiring written paragraph answers and I swapped around answers under the wrong questions so the teacher thought I cheated. It was a careless mistake I made because I had lost the original worksheet and was working off a loose leaf copy in the cafeteria at the last minute but it made it look like I copied someone else’s work.
I don’t known if the committee bought my story or was feeling lenient but I am very thankful for lax prosecution of these cases and think a lot of the value is in scaring people straight.
What is this honour council I've heard in a few comments? I thought Princeton was unique in having and honour system as opposed to strict academic integrity rules.
I am curious if there is a specific personality trait that is hard-wired (from birth) into certain people (like the Big Five OCEAN psychology model) to adhere more closely to honour codes. I too had a pretty strong natural adherence, even from a young age, and no one "beat it into me".
When Lee Kuan Yew visited London for the first time after World War II, he was impressed by the fact that it had unattended newspaper stands where people were trusted to take a newspaper and leave money: https://youtu.be/b_6H26fpZp8. As someone from a low trust society, I fully concur with his assessment that this was the mark of a truly “civilized society.”
We do have "little libraries" where anyone can take or leave books in many people's yards. But I haven't seen the honor system produce stands in urban areas for the past 10+ years.
We have a little honor system library in our neighborhood near the playground. But I’ve never seen anything like that in Baltimore, DC, or Philadelphia.
They are everywhere in Seattle. Some neighborhoods have them on almost every block. This had led to some creative variations on the concept, such as the Little Free Pantry, Little Free Art Gallery, Little Free Toolbox, Pottery, Boutique, Toybox, etc.
Not complaining. It’s a neat concept. And if you have a bunch of crap you want to get rid, it’s a lot of fun to build a big birdhouse looking thing, prop it up on the side walk, and keep it stocked with all the crap you don’t want anymore. This is why I created the Little Free Lumberyard to discard my woodworking offcuts. Seriously considering expanding into e-waste because it works so damn well.
Literally bought pumpkins to carve, firewood for the stove, and a carton of eggs from unmanned ‘honor system’ roadside stands last year. All three made it easy, venmo code posted, boop, on your way.
This is the mark of a low-trust society masking its issues with technological band-aids. In high-trust countries, you still pay exclusively with cash at these unattended roadside stands.
No, it's the mark of "many people no longer carry exact change." An unattended box of produce and a sign saying "please pay this code" still requires trust that people won't take the produce without paying.
How is making it easier to pay (cash is not as commonly carried) a mark of a low-trust society? The important part here is that the roadside stand is still unattended - it's still up to the purchaser to purchase instead of stealing.
The idea that America had “goodwill” in other countries before Trump is laughable. Where? Latin America? Africa? In the Muslim world? We bombed the hell out of all those places long before Trump. This most recent Iran war has generated less outrage in the Muslim world than the war against Iraq 20 years ago.
American foreign policy since the 1950s, fixated on fighting communism and then terrorism, has meddled with so many foreign countries that it’s silly to talk about “goodwill” towards America. That is not to say goodwill matters. Clearly the U.S. has done great without it.
Although it is worth pointing out that something changed - prior to around 2010 the US had a financially dominant position and the internet was small. So it was feasible to totally ignore opinion in places like Latin America, Africa and the Muslim World.
What we've been seeing in more recent years is that the US can't get away with that so easily. Countries like Iran, China, Russia and India are capable of pushing back both in terms of the raw resources they can bring to bear and also increasingly in the ability to get their propaganda into the US discourse. The US is being manoeuvred into a one-among-equals position in practice and probably in the discourse too which will be a moral shock.
I think the fact that hate-spewing Trump finds so much resonance is evidence that the moral shock has already arrived. His followers seem to believe he's the antidote.
The Chinese economy probably will further blossom in Southeast Asia, Middle East, Africa, Central and South America why because they seem to be able to build infrastructure in many of the places that they trade with.
The United States Japan and South Korea seem to be failing in that area, if it wasn’t for the war between Russia and the Ukraine, the Chinese would probably be halfway to Europe with their high-speed rail system, which is already in the far west of China today.
Once the war is over between Russia and Ukraine it will be full steam ahead to Europe, whether that’s through the Caucasus, in the north or south or somewhere in the north between Russia and the Ukraine, the Chinese will get there and unfortunately the United States will be standing on the sidelines scratching its head in denial.
The Russians were really good at aerospace. It's a testament to their engineering that it took this long to advance past where they were in the 1970s. I love this video describing the development from the Russian RD270 all the way to Raptor: https://x.com/Erdayastronaut/status/1204179086823825408.
The Russians beat us to all but the last milestone: first object in space, first human in space, first probe to land on the moon, and first probe to photograph the far side of the moon. The Russians would have beat us to the moon landing if the head of their space program hadn’t died on the home stretch of the space race.
That's incorrect, or at best misleadingly incomplete. 8 USC §1357(a) authorizes border agents to, "(3) within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States, to board and search for aliens any vessel within the territorial waters of the United States and any railway car, aircraft, conveyance, or vehicle, and within a distance of twenty-five miles from any such external boundary to have access to private lands, but not dwellings, for the purpose of patrolling the border to prevent the illegal entry of aliens into the United States."
The associated regulations, 8 C.F.R. §287.1, interpret "reasonable distance" to mean up to 100 miles from the actual border. But: "In fixing distances not exceeding 100 air miles pursuant to paragraph (a) of this section, chief patrol agents and special agents in charge shall take into consideration topography, confluence of arteries of transportation leading from external boundaries, density of population, possible inconvenience to the traveling public, types of conveyances used, and reliable information as to movements of persons effecting illegal entry into the United States."
The statute and regulation just mean that agents don't need to patrol the border at the literal border--which in some cases runs through the middle of bodies of water. But they must justify the determinations of what's a "reasonable distance" from the border must be based on what's needed to prevent illegal entry into the United States, based on factors such as topography and transportation routes.
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