The Week

‘Well, So That Is That’

Last week 2015 slouched into history with a sigh. For many on college campuses, it was a year less memorable for accomplishments than for distractions, which continued unabated into December. The danger, of course, is that in the public’s mind the distractions could come to define American higher education.

• Wheaton College, an evangelical institution in Illinois, put a tenured professor on leave after she insisted on Facebook that Muslims “worship the same God” as Christians. The college said in a series of statements that it needed time to “explore the theological implications” of her remark, which “seemed inconsistent with Wheaton College’s doctrinal convictions.”

The Facebook post came as the faculty member — Larycia A. Hawkins (above), an associate professor of political science — explained that she intended to wear a hijab, or head scarf, over Christmas as a public expression of her religious solidarity with Muslims. “They, like me, a Christian, are people of the book,” she said. “And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”

“While Islam and Christianity are both monotheistic,” the college said, “we believe there are fundamental differences between the two faiths, including what they teach about God’s revelation to humanity, the nature of God, the path to salvation, and the life of prayer.” It added that it had not asked Ms. Hawkins to resign, but had, at her request, “proposed the terms of separation.”

• The University of Iowa’s new president, J. Bruce Harreld, apologized after a university librarian called him out for suggesting in a staff-council meeting that any professor who goes to a class unprepared “should be shot.”

The librarian, Lisa Gardinier, was among many who had misgivings over the decision to hire Mr. Harreld, a former IBM executive and consultant. Following the meeting, she emailed him to say it was “horrifying and unacceptable,” as well as “irresponsible and unprofessional,” for a university president to make jokes about shooting faculty members, especially so soon after yet another mass shooting.

Mr. Harreld responded, saying that it was “an unfortunate off-the-cuff remark” and that he did not “seriously mean to imply I support gun violence in any shape, manner, or form.” He added: “I have used the comment in many, many forums, and this is the first time anyone has objected to it.”

• At the end of a year marked by important student protests, allegations that Oberlin College’s food service had engaged in cultural appropriation attracted the attention of bored social-media users after The New York Times and other publications tried to sort out a series of food-related complaints at the college.

Some black students mounted a protest after submitting a petition calling on Oberlin’s food service, run by the Bon Appétit Management Company, to make fried chicken a regular Sunday-night menu offering and, among other things, “reduce the amount of cream used in dishes” because “Black American food doesn’t have much cream in it.” The petition also called for the college to provide food-service employees “a guaranteed 40-hour work week, benefits for part-time workers, personal days, funding for job training, and increased wages.”

That protest came after the student newspaper, The Oberlin Review, reported on complaints by Asian students that Bon Appétit “turned out a cheap imitation” of banh mi that used the wrong bread — ciabatta instead of a miniature baguette — and pulled pork instead of grilled pork. The article also said that the company labeled as General Tso’s chicken an offering with steamed chicken, rather than fried, and a sauce one student called “weird.”

“If people not from that heritage take food, modify it, and serve it as ‘authentic,’ it is appropriative,” one student told the newspaper. A Bon Appétit representative said the food service did not intend to be disrespectful and might be better off just describing a dish “as opposed to characterizing it with a specific name.”

• Speaking of protests, two Republican state representatives in Missouri sparked an uproar with proposed legislation under which any student-athlete “who refuses to play for a reason unrelated to health” would have his or her scholarship revoked. The measure was suggested by State Reps. Rick Brattin and Kurt Bahr after more than 30 black football players at the University of Missouri joined protests against racism on the campus in November and said they would refuse to play as long as the system’s president, Timothy M. Wolfe, remained in office. He resigned two days later.

“We cannot have the student body, or in this case, the football team, going on strike and forcing out a school president,” Mr. Brattin told USA Today. “That cannot be allowed.” He withdrew the bill the following week, after it was lambasted by critics — including Ian Simon (above), a former player, who complained about people who “want to call us student-athletes” but “keep us out of the student part of it.”

Perkins, Revived

Early this past fall, the U.S. Senate allowed the Perkins Loan program to expire after more than 50 years of aiding low-income college students. But the big spending bill that Congress passed in December brings the loans back — at least for the next two years — albeit with new restrictions.

Going forward, Perkins Loans will be available only to undergraduates, and before resorting to the Perkins program, students will have to max out unsubsidized Stafford Loans, which currently have higher interest than the 5-percent rate at which Perkins Loans are capped.

The program had expired on October 1 at the insistence of Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who is chairman of the committee that oversees education and who has insisted that Perkins is outdated and unnecessary.

Plus This …

An investigation by The Washington Post found that athletic directors at universities with big sports programs “have seen their pay soar and have gone on hiring sprees, surrounding themselves with well-paid executives and small armies of support staffs.” One example: “From 2004 to 2014, UCLA Athletic Director Dan Guerrero’s salary increased from $299,000 to $920,000 to do the same job, and his administration grew from 97 to 141 employees, boosting UCLA’s noncoaching payroll from $9.1 million to $16 million.” … A former Amherst College lecturer alleged in a lawsuit that her supervisor in the Spanish department had sought to increase enrollment by hiring attractive teaching assistants and encouraging them to sleep with students.

Oratorio

The headline on this week’s lead item is part of a line of W.H. Auden’s that always comes to mind with the end of the holiday season: “Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree …" The line opens one section of a long poem, “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio,” that Auden meant to be set to music, though it never was. The section describes the return to ordinariness that when we find ourselves …

Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen,
where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account
for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists
because I scrub it.

Auden goes on at some length, dishearteningly:

There are bills to be paid, machines to keep
in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being
to redeem
From insignificance.

Stop there. “The time being to redeem from insignificance” — doesn’t that sound like the basis of a good resolution for 2016? Think about it.

Cheers.

Lawrence Biemiller writes about a variety of usual and unusual higher-education topics. Reach him at lawrence.biemiller@chronicle.com.

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