“Little Johnnie? He’s a student at SDSU. That’s right. He loves it there. Studying criminology.”
After the arrest of 75 San Diego State University students for selling drugs yesterday, school mathematicians probably consoled themselves in the knowledge that, statisitcally speaking? The FBI could find no evidence that the other 99.992% of the student body were peddling drugs to high school students and undergrads.
A criminal justice major was arrested on suspicion of possession of cocaine. As he was being arrested, he asked officers if this would hurt his chances for a law enforcement career, officials said.
Seriously, speaking as a parent? How pissed would you be when $80,000 of student loans ended up in the county lock-up? Not to mention the parents of the 19-year old girl whose death last year brough the school under the federal spotlight.
They were dealers, who were self-financing, no loans needed.
Um, where is SNO attending college?
“How pissed would I be?” Very pissed. Betsy Newmark, who blogs on Betsy’s Page, and teaches civics at a charter high school, posited the idea a few months ago that high schools [good ones] had taken the place of colleges, since colleges had become the refuges of the wispy, twisted remnants of the rebels of the sixties, and are presently being used to prove to the students who take courses and the Remnants who teach them, that radical leftism isn’t a failure after all. Which doesn’t leave room for much rigorous learning of economics, history, sciences and math, and, last but certainly not least, English language and lit. Lots of “gender studies” and “women’s studies,” offered in today’s halls of higher learning [what in my day we called "pipe courses," the easy kind you don't have to study for].
Looks to me as if dam few civilian universities are teaching anything which could be described as rigorous learning which might assist you in later life to earn a living. Only military colleges, like your “Boat School” and West Point and the Coast Guard Academy seem to want to turn out students fitted for the struggles of real life, and who are intelligent and literate enough to do so.
Oh, well, maybe M.I.T. hasn’t been completely contaminated yet.
Marianne
Idiots must not even watch TV. Text messaging information about illegal activity. Maybe they should have downloaded “The Wire” or something.
Marianne: there are a good amount of civvie colleges that haven’t descended yet. Most of them are engineering schools where the students where they might at least have the wherewithal to not do such things.
“Slay them all! God shall know his own!”
- Arnold Amaury
Yeah, engineering schools seem to not have these problems. I suspect because engineering students don’t have the spare time or available brain cells for such pursuits. . .
Marianne- I will defend the quality of the academic training I received at USNA until the day I day. Absolutely top notch (and yes, I do have a significant basis for comparison). As for “students fitted for the struggles of real life”. . .I have reservations. I mean, USNA coddles so much in the life skills dept. that the first time I ever had to do my own laundry was the June after I graduated, at the tender age of 22. I had a friend who showed up to a non-military wedding in SDBs b/c he didn’t own a real suit. Or sportcoat. Or even a collared shirt that didn’t have epaulets. He never needed ‘em in college, so he didn’t even think about getting a set. ‘Course this is the guy who only had two sets of civvies (“Two days of libo a week, two outfits are all I need.”), so he may have had other problems. . .
SSG Jeff, he’s at USD, across the way there.
Much different environment.
Attended graduation and commissioning at Cal Maritime Academy a couple weeks ago. Suh-weet setup. Lots of serious minded young men and women raising their right hands. Dry eyes? Not me. Wish I’d known about it 30 years ago. Son&Heir is motivated to apply now. We’ll see…
Enjoyed talking with a young LT bug driver from my old Airwing. Were we ever that young and earnest?
posted memories of the occasion on my blog (click on name above).
Just so happens I spent a year at SDSU in 1962. Had orders to PG school, but they didn’t have room at Monterey, so eight of us were sent to SDSU. Wasn’t bad duty.
One year of taking math, physics, meteorology, statistics, and computer courses. It was a pretty good school, but it was relatively easy to get good grades as we were competing with less intense college students, who weren’t getting fitness reports based on their grades.
It had 25,000 students then. No dorms or fraternity/sorority houses so no one lived on campus. It’s probably a lot bigger now. I suppose there were drugs around but I was never aware. Of course I had a crewcut and wore preppy clothes to school. Not exactly the profile of a user.
Sure the quality of education was not as good as Monterey, but I was thankful for a year of free education.
Lex, this is one of those times. They should pack these fools up and send them home, “C.O.D.” to both “Mommy and Daddy”. Let them both pay all of the bills, THEN! When I was growing up, my Father had an interesting strategy. He said, “There is only one thing, DON’T EMBARRASS ME! If you do, just go out back and dig your own grave, because I’ll bury you.” He only said that once. That was enough. I would talk with him some 35 years later about this whole concept. He said, “Parents go out and tell their kids the limit is ‘5.0000′. So the kids go out and live in the range of ‘4.0000′. As long as the first number just before the decimal point was a ‘4′, everything was cool. In reality, that was a lie. The real target was to learn a self discipline, rather than a bunch of external rules. There was one thing, you did not want to embarrass yourself more than me. I knew you would figure it out, this included the Military, you didn’t have many problems there either. About the Military Academies, they have all had their issues. But their students learned from their mistakes, that is the really big thing.
Grumpy
In my rant above, friends, I didn’t really mean to diss all civilian universities [just the ones which deserved it, like my old Alma Mater, Columbia U., which had the incredibly poor judgment to offer Ahmadinijad a platform from which to express hatred of the U.S. and to promise our destruction.]
But many, many civilian universities seem to have strayed and lost their way these days. The University of Chicago, for God’s sake, has given that terrorist Weatherman, Bill Ayers, buddy of Obama,tenure. Not NOT good … not defensible in any way. And the University of Colorado gave Ward Churchill, that fake Indian, tenure, to promulgate his sappy theories about the evils of democracy. I speak as the child, sister and grandchild of professors who did know better. I guess that’s what makes me bitter.
At any rate, I’m sorry if my extreme position annoyed anyone. It’s just that I fear for the health of our country.
Marianne
Marianne: I have the same fears as you. And it starts in our places of higher learning. By and large they teach such druck, such untruths – such horrible blasphemy. It’s no wonder we are afraid.
Whoa!! Horrible blasphemy?? Untruths?? Seems extreme to me, but a good point for sure.
I agree 100% that the higher education system in America has been and is being degraded and perverted. Colleges need money, more studs=more money. So they let more people in, and have to keep them in. Lower standards, bigger curves. Easier to get by with less learning.
A travesty.
I level equal blame on society. “You need to go to college to make it, nowadays.” Not 100% true, but the numbers make a good case for it. College is the safe bet. So colleges are filled with people who in earlier times ( even a mere 20, 30 years ago) would NEVER have considered college. They’re not there with a desire to learn, but a desire to get a piece of paper that will get them a job. Which is not the focus of a college or university education. That’s the focus of trade school.
Look at the percentages of undergrads who change majors multiple times. They’re not seeking knowledge, they’re seeking an easier path. And our education system supports this. Thrives on it, actually.
Sickens me.
So really, seeing druggies on campuses, not so surprising to me.
As a Grad from SDSU (‘90), I am furious albeit not at all surprised at this… except for maybe the scale.
Unfortunately knuckleheads like these do nothing to value my diploma… rumor has it if you drive through campus they’ll throw a diploma in your car now… This is not true! You’ve got to stop first!
The other disturbing element to this is the continued cries of outrage at the “Heavy Handed” pursuit of this! What a bunch of bovine scatology! It is our continued “tolerance” of crap like this that leads to the early retirement of promising if not misguided young people.
The cries go out for more drug education, yeah that receives a lot of attentive listeners at that lecture! Damn it, these drugs are killing our youth and killing our spirit… people do not take actions until the consequences are standing in front of you like a severe halitosis marine DI! Make them pay the consequences and make an example out of ‘em all!
-JC
Maybe this is just the nerdy engineering type in me, but why bother going to college if one plans to spend most of it high in one form or another.
Now, there have been times where I’ve used amounts of Redbull that were risky, but cocaine?
Amen to that Mr. Carmichael. I’d hate to have my newly minted degree hit with a scandal like this.
“They’re not there with a desire to learn, but a desire to get a piece of paper that will get them a job. Which is not the focus of a college or university education. That’s the focus of trade school”…actually, I bet that most people who attend a trade school expect to learn something that will be useful in the trade. If you go to welding school, you probably are aware that you’re actually going to need to learn how to weld. It’s more in the *universities* that the focus has become primarily on that piece of paper…which is valued for the circular reason that it is valued. See my post an academic bubble?
Where there are not the issues to this degree at the engineering schools, there are still issues. When I was hired 20 years ago, no engineer ever failed the drug test. Not anymore. I hear its rather commonplace now.
I used to walk the halls and we all kind of looked the same (although I don’t look like a guy) and now, the young folks either look like we do (conservative) or way whacked, with all sorts of piercings, funky hair, and tatts. They smoke too… which is something most engineers of my generation do not do.
Very odd… this new generation. Drugs are seeping into the engineering schools too. Its there… just not quite as bad as the other schools.