By NINA WILLDORF
The fall-term course catalog at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor lists the usual assortment of English classes: “Creative Writing,” “Introduction to Poetry,” “Discourse and Society.” Then there’s this one: “How to Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation.”
“Just because you happen to be a gay man doesn’t mean that you don’t have to learn how to become one,” reads the description of the three-credit course, which this fall is to be offered to undergraduates for the first time.
But not if the Michigan affiliate of the American Family Association can help it. The Mississippi-based organization -- dedicated to exposing “the radical homosexual agenda” and stopping its “spread though our culture” -- is doing its best to make sure the course is withdrawn.
At least one member of the university’s Board of Regents agrees. Daniel D. Horning says the course “crosses the line.” When the board meets this month, he says he plans to argue that the course is “wrong” and should be eliminated. “I have difficulty being able to grasp what educational value this course and this subject will bring to anyone,” Mr. Horning says.
Leaders of the family association are more blunt. “U.M. actually wants to force taxpayers to pay for a class to openly recruit and teach teenagers how to engage in a lifestyle of high-risk behavior that is not only illegal but many believe immoral,” said Gary Glenn, president of the association’s Michigan affiliate, in an e-mail message last month to the regents, state lawmakers, Gov. John Engler, and the university’s president, Lee C. Bollinger.
University officials are standing by their man -- in this case, David M. Halperin, a professor of English.
“We are completely in support of Professor Halperin’s course and of his freedom to teach this course as he constructed it,” says Nancy E. Cantor, Michigan’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
Mr. Halperin, who is gay, says Mr. Glenn and other critics have got it all wrong: “He seems to think that the course is about the causes of homosexuality, whereas it’s actually about the cultural process of identification.” His course description says students will examine “the role that initiation plays in the formation of gay identity” by reading gay male writers and studying such cultural markers as “muscle culture,” Broadway musicals, and interior design.
He admits that the course title is an attention-getter. But to critics of the notion of teaching sexual metamorphosis, he has this to say: “If I had the magical power to turn heterosexuals into homosexuals, I wouldn’t be wasting my time teaching at a university. I’d be engaging in world domination.”
By NINA WILLDORF
She might be 43, but Ragena K. Waters says she can kick, jump, and cheer for her college team with the best of them.
And to prove it, Ms. Waters has joined the cheerleading squad at Bacone College, in Muskogee, Okla., where she is majoring in commercial art.
Ms. Waters, the mother of a 3-year-old, decided she wanted to be a cheerleader when she noticed that no one on campus was greeting her.
“I said to myself, ‘What can I do to make these students know that I’m OK?’” Ms. Waters says.
So in September, she tried out and won a position on the four-person squad. Her teammates, two 21-year-olds and one 19-year-old, were stunned into silence, Ms. Waters says. Still, they cheered on the basketball team through the winter and are thinking about raising spirits at baseball games this spring.
For Ms. Waters, who had never participated in sports or cheerleading in high school, the new rah-rah gig hasn’t been particularly easy. She says the hardest part for her, besides the challenge and assorted aches that come with the tumbling, has been winning the acceptance of her teammates.
The biggest boon? Losing her “cesarean stomach.”
By NINA WILLDORF
Dog lovers in the Pacific Northwest are lining up to adopt a deaf, nearly blind mixed breed.
The flood of interest isn’t for just any hard-luck pound hound -- it’s for Hope, a long-haired black dog who was shot between the eyes by her owner in February. Hope became the object of affection after she was transported to the Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine last month. Local veterinarians had saved Hope’s life, but they moved her to the college, where experts have repaired the extensive damage to her snout and mouth.
Hope is featured on the teaching hospital’s World Wide Web site (http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu), which has received more than 330,000 visitors since she arrived.
“I’ve worked here for 11 years, and this is the greatest outpouring of support I’ve ever seen for a single animal,” says Charlie Powell, a spokesman at the hospital, which treats about 12,000 animals a year. He credits the response to Hope’s friendly nature and to the cruelty she suffered, which received plenty of media attention.
Patricia M. Hess, an animal-control officer in the Gallatin County sheriff’s department, says the dog’s owner, Andrew Davis Gage, “went ballistic and took her out into the woods and shot her” after he discovered that the dog had gnawed on the upholstery in his truck. After shooting her, he left her in the woods to die, but a “good samaritan,” Ms. Hess says, rescued the wounded animal. Mr. Gage later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty. He was fined $200, plus the local veterinary fees, and he lost his right to the dog, whom he had named Zephyr. The sheriff’s department renamed her Hope.
The fine doesn’t begin to cover all of Hope’s hospital costs, which may run as high as $2,500, says Mr. Powell. But the bill won’t fall to the person chosen to adopt Hope from a pool of 20 applicants.
That’s because Hope has a doggy trust fund at a local bank in Bozeman, Mont., where some of her human friends have been stashing the donations dog lovers have been making to pay for her recovery. Her haul to date: $13,000.
By JOEL HARDI
Members of the Southern Methodist University Mustang Band left more than footprints when they marched on the field of their football rival, Texas Christian University, last fall. They left grass seed.
The band sowed its trademark “Diamond M” formation on the field as it marched during halftime of the Horned Frogs’ 21-0 trouncing of S.M.U. The band members didn’t plant just any grass -- they planted rye. The variety was vital to the stunt. T.C.U.'s field is planted with Bermuda, which turns yellow during the winter. But rye grass thrives in cool weather, which explains why the “Diamond M” formation sprouted in lush green last December.
T. Ross Bailey, T.C.U.'s director of athletics facilities, says his crew was onto the caper right away: “They left their little plastic seed baggies all over the field.” But T.C.U. officials decided not to do anything about it.
“We didn’t really know they had horticulture over at S.M.U.,” he jokes. Besides, the prank did a lot less damage than one the Mustang Band pulled off in the 1950’s. That time, band members dropped rock salt, which killed off grass in the shape of an M.
Now the Bermuda grass is greening up again on T.C.U.'s field, Mr. Bailey says, so the S.M.U. brand is no longer visible. And he expects the Texas heat to do in the rye grass soon enough.
“Down here, when it gets hot and we start mowing the grass real low,” he says, “it will burn right off.”
By JOEL HARDI
The editor of a new conservative student newspaper at Villanova University says he is “Catholic, conservative, pro-life, pro-gun, and proud of it.” But he claims the Roman Catholic institution is trying to shut down his operation for taking a hard line on “traditional Catholic values.”
Last month, university officials confiscated all 2,500 copies of an issue of The Conservative Column that had been distributed.
Chris Lilik, the editor of the biweekly newspaper, which began publishing this year, accuses the university of censorship. He says the issue was seized because it included a mock advertisement for First Union Bank that showed an aborted fetus and read, “A Proud sponsor of Planned Parenthood and CHOICE! Turn Your Catholic Cash into Blood Money!”
Censorship is not at issue, says Tom Mogan, the university’s director of student development. Student organizations must be registered to distribute materials on the campus, he says, and the newspaper simply hadn’t met the requirements. The Conservative Column, formerly recognized as part of the College Republicans, fell short of qualifying as a student club on its own because it did not yet have a faculty adviser at the time the issue appeared. Mr. Mogan says he had warned Mr. Lilik that the paper would be confiscated if it were published before the editors had won approval as a student organization. And, he points out, the university returned the copies of the issue a week after seizing them, once the newspaper had an adviser. “It’s not about the content,” Mr. Mogan says.
Mr. Lilik claims he has proof that it is. He replayed a voice-mail message for The Chronicle that he says he received from Mr. Mogan. “We obviously have some concerns about the content of The Conservative Column,” the message says, adding that administrators would be confiscating the issues. Mr. Mogan says the remark was taken out of context.
At any rate, The Conservative Column is making good use of its moment. The editors are planning to reprint the confiscated paper with a banner touting it as “the banned issue.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Short Subjects Page: A12