INSECURE IN THEIR CONVICTIONS? In what way is a tree falling over in a deserted forest like a holiday observance when the campus is closed? At Northern Illinois University, a re-enactment of a 1960s style civil rights march just doesn't have that swing unless people leave class to participate.

Willard Draper, adviser for the NIU chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and director of resident life for Student Housing and Dining Services, organized the march.

“We want students to remember how it is to march,” Draper said. “It is important for students to get a sense of what it’s like to be involved in something that changed the nation.”

The Center for Black Studies plans to cancel its classes scheduled during the march so students enrolled in those classes can participate.

LaVerne Gyant, director of the Center for Black Studies, is lending her support by canceling her own classes.

“The teachers here at the Center for Black Studies usually go to the march and the
celebration,” Gyant said. “We always cancel classes during the march to encourage our students to go as well.”

Let's take Mr Draper's suggestion seriously. Classes generally don't meet on Memorial Day. Isn't it important for students to experience the nation-changing events it commemorates? Why not invite people to leave class sometime in May to purchase poppies for the disabled veterans and to carry the flag in a parade? And many of our overseas students are out of country in July. Why not invite them to leave class on a warm April evening to watch a fireworks display and listen to a reading of the Declaration of Independence and a two-hour stem-winder from a Congressman. (Our Member of Congress is the Speaker of the House, and he's pretty laconic for a speaker, so we might have to modify that part of the script.)

(These observances strike me as more sensible than, say, encouraging students to miss their Tuesday evening classes in order to fill the football stadium. The administration spent the swimming pool repair money taking advertisements out in the school paper with that message.)

And then let's consider Ms Gyant's priorities. It's these misplaced priorities that cause me to claim there's a Diversity Boondoggle. One of the purposes of those real demonstrations was to end the cruel fiction of "separate but equal." Wouldn't the more fitting tribute to the civil rights demonstrators be to use that access to address some of the ways the dream has been deferred. La Shawn Barber has some good discussion topics.

King rose from obscurity proposing a radical idea — a colorblind society. While he knew he’d never see it in his lifetime, he gave his life for equal justice. King would surely be disappointed by liberal elites and career politicians who exploit his vision for their own gain. He’d be alarmed that his so-called successors consistently fail to address urgent matters in the black community, such as the cycle of poverty associated with black illegitimacy and the high rate of black-on-black crime. King would be dismayed to know that:

70% of black children are born out of wedlock.

85% of black children living in poverty are raised in single parent households.

94% of all black homicide victims are slain by other blacks.

Low-income black children are condemned to failing government-run schools because black politicians are beholden to teachers’ unions.

And I would add: condemned by the cruel delusion that anti-intellectualism is somehow "authentic."

Character consists of doing the right thing when nobody is watching. One wonders for whose benefit this public parading of one's civil rights credentials is intended. If a high university official attends a memorial service or a rally on the holiday Monday and nobody at the university notices, has that act of respect not taken place?