BOYCOTT RUTGERS JOB FAIRS.

It's bad enough when universities treat composition as some sort of cost center, and they staff the courses in ways that would make the late Hunter "Precision Scheduled Downsizing" Harrison jealous.  The latest fad, though, is making the work of editing and grading easier by declaring standards to be optional.  "Students of all backgrounds managed to get admitted to Rutgers. But It would be absolutely insane and racist to actually expect them to write a grammatically correct sentence!"  Yes, that's Victory Girl Lisa Carr venting, and yet, she's on to something important.

Woke white, upper-middle-class, tenured professors in our university system honestly do not believe that Blacks, Hispanics and non-white populations entering their classrooms are capable of using proper grammar? That is insulting. That should cost them their jobs. But alas, their jobs will remain intact while they will continue to pump college students with this utter nonsense. This is coming from the same people who say President Trump is illiterate and cannot string a sentence together and because of this, we, as Americans look dumb.

But, what the hell? Why not change the English language so it’s not so raaaaaacist? We’ve already thrown out proper gender pronouns because they were not inclusive enough.

It's the latest manifestation of the soft bigotry of low expectations, notes Richard L. Cravatts, guest posting at Minding the Campus.

When did it become necessary for an English department in a public university to make as a central feature of its teaching social issues? This is not a social justice department, or a black studies department, or an institute or program that focuses on race, social issues, and activism. So the letter’s stated intention that the English Department will “stand with and respond to the Black Lives Matter movement . . . create and promote an anti-racist environment . . . and . . . contribute to the eradication of the violence and systemic inequities facing black, indigenous, and people of color members of our community” seems wildly inconsistent with what is, and should be, the role of an English department.

Not content with making a course in African-American literature a requirement in the English curriculum, every aspect of the pedagogy and instruction must be suffused with layers of obsessive victimology and racism, including sponsorship of workshops that seek to “cultivate critical conversations for Writing Program instructors around the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19; state power; racism; violence; white supremacy; protest and resistance; and justice.”

Particularly because we'd hope the professors and instructors of composition ought be conversant with topics such as close reading or point of view, and that might get in the way of getting the kind of deep understanding of political economy or sociology or even the martial arts.  Students will have even more reason to think of composition as simply another meeting of compulsory chapel to read from the Gospel of Intersectionality, and their understanding of Holy Writ might well be that of Tom Sawyer's knowledge of the apostles.  Take us home, Lisa Carr.

So much for getting your kids to dig in their heels and work hard. Meanwhile, Rutgers will provide more reading to upper-level writing classes on the subjects of racism, sexism, homophobia, and related forms of “systemic discrimination.” Don’t worry. Papers written on the subject matter in these classes will not be graded based on grammar. That would be racist. Subject? Predicate? Syntax? Agreement? They don’t mean a thing. Just axe Rutgers.

Amen.