Confusing Messages from the Catholoepistemiad
So, are universities inclusive as they say they are?
It’s tough to be everything to everyone, especially in an Age of the Easily Offended, or, as some might say, the Age of Absolute Narcissism. And yet, that’s the ostensible role of modern massive university systems, with the seeming exception of banning conservatives from speaking on campuses. Where’s truth fit in? Certainly, some universities, like the University of Michigan, make “truth” (veritas) part of their mottos.
And in an age of political correctness that views “white privilege” as a crime against all humanity—even, strangely, white humanity (particularly poor or middle class white humanity)—one might think that the University of Michigan’s marching band needs some lyric politically correct rewrite for “Yellow and Blue” to comply with the principle of inclusiveness. The song contains the stanza:
Here's to the college whose colors we wear,
Here's to the hearts that are true!
Here's to the maid of the golden hair,
And eyes that are brimming with blue!
Garlands of bluebells and maize intertwine,
And hearts that are true and voices combine;
-Hail!
Hail to the college whose colors we wear;
Hurrah for the Yellow and Blue!
Woah! “…the maid of the golden hair,
And eyes that are brimming with blue”?
Really? Golden hair and blue eyes? I know the Upper Midwest has many Scandinavians. About four percent of Michiganders (c. 400,000) have Scandinavian ancestry, but the Norse stereotype of blue-eyed blonde isn’t much more than a myth as anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn pointed out long ago in his Mirror for Man. * Michigan is also home to many Africans, Asians, Native Americans, and Middle Easterners. Is there a bias at the University of Michigan in favor of blue-eyed blondes? Are only the blue-eyed blondes worth a line in the lyric? And could it be that the University discriminates in other ways? Aren’t universities safe places for every race, gender, and creed?
Most likely the folks at the former Catholoepistemiad are caught in the web of conflicting needs, desires, and purposes that makes being “catholic” difficult, if one considers the term’s definition as “universal, all encompassing, and broad in sympathies, tastes and interests.” The University of Michigan began as such a “catholic” place, supposedly open to the wide swath of “universal” epistemology driven, it seems, under French Catholic influence harking back to the eighteenth century and first decades of the nineteenth century. That song? Well, no one among the easily offended appear to have noticed the exclusive message of those words. The words are probably well off the radar of any Snowflakes who are easily offended not only by commissions of politically incorrect sins, but also by omissions of politically correct virtues. Why has the University omitted the description of every human being now alive, including especially, those who aren’t blonde blue-eyed cisgender females. Quick! What campus building houses the cry room? And do they play “Yellow and Blue” with revised lyrics there?
But do those exclusionary lyrics tarnish Michigan’s reputation as a “university devoted to arts, sciences, and truth? Including every human descriptor in “Yellow and Blue” is just not possible for a song played either at commencement or at special university events. And maybe they aren’t off the reality of Michigan’s student population: Fifty-five percent of Michigan’s students are white; 16% are Asian; 7% are Hispanic; 7% are foreign nationals; and 5% are Black (in a state that is 13.8% Black). Ten percent are listed as “other,” which could mean people from the Pacific islands, Aborigines, and Native Americans (See, it’s impossible to list everyone—I forgot, for example, the possibility of Inuits and Tierra del Fuegians in the student body). And 82% of its students are listed as “affluent.” Hey, where are the poor kids? Just 18%? And why is the Black student body not 13.8%?
But the song? Maybe maids with yellow hair and blue eyes dominate the crosswalks.
Impossible Inclusion Isn’t Michigan’s Only Problem
What if the business of a university is to make money and not students proficient in the arts, the sciences, and truths?
The University of Michigan whose motto is Artes, Scientia, Veritas (Arts, Sciences, Truth) now has a problem other than inclusiveness. It’s accused of cheating. Seems that the Board of Regents needs to consider adding another word to the motto: Ethica (or Ethicae, plural). Or, at least the Athletic Department needs to add it.
Universities: Formerly Happy Party Places Known for their Young Drunks, Class-skippers, and Nerdy Students Serious about Artes, Scientia, and Veritas, many schools have become such big businesses that the crass needs of humanity have insidiously crept into the recesses of gyms and football stands. Cheating on tests and reports? Old stuff and even more common in an age of AI’s Chatbot writing student essays in seconds or minutes than in days gone by when quill met parchment.
Now, it’s the football team, the Wolverines, who are embroiled in alleged spying on rival football teams to secure an advantage in the big business of national championships. And just before a big game! Michigan’s coach was suspended right before the football team, ranked in the top four, was about to play Penn State, ranked in the top ten. Fortunately for the Wolverines, they outplayed the Nittany Lions.
But should we make a fuss over a little cheating?
Will We Ever Return to Those Simple Days of Yore?
In fact, there’s probably little difference in kind, just a difference in degree in cheating on school papers and in various sports venues. Sign-stealing, the offense the football program is accused of doing, has always been part of sports. Baseball coaches and players attempt it in every game by watching the third base coach’s gestures. Maybe there never was a time when ethics dominated sports. Maybe “sportsmanship” is a myth and a practice constrained only under the watchful eyes of referees and umpires. Without them, games become gladiator events in the midst of screaming, blood-thirsty onlookers.
College football is big business; it became so in the Midwest with the success of Knute Rockne, one of those Scandinavians and the head coach of Notre Dame. The business is governed as much by the dictates of running a multi-million dollar enterprise as it is by the needs of the game and players and the desires of fans. According to one report on that business, the University of Michigan football program had a gross revenue of $125,773,306, $44,684,585 in expenses, and a profit of $81,088,721 if one considers only the football program. The University releases a different report, one with and Athletic program’s $168,244,643 gross, $156,682,998 in expenses, and a profit of $11,561,645. It pays 29 head coaches and assistant coaches almost too numerous to count (football alone has a dozen coaches). The numbers are not Amazon, Walmart, or Apple numbers, but those revenues, profits, and employees make the athletic program a “big” business. And that football business at Michigan has a CEO who makes a reported ten million bucks per year. As I wrote above, it’s big business. And like every big business, it has to survive in a competitive world.
The Logic of Children
“Why are you punishing me? Sammy did the same thing, and you didn’t punish him.”** That is one of the defenses against the accusation of sign-stealing offered by Michigan’s and Coach Harbaugh’s attorneys. Yep. The argument is that cheating is okay because everyone does it. Ethica. See, it’ll never be added to the motto. Catholoepistemiad’s first President, the Presbyterian Rev. John Monteith and the first Vice President, Rev. Father Gabriel Richard, a Catholic priest, are probably turning over in their graves if they’ve been following Wolverines’ football.
But the University’s representatives did not deny the accusation according to Big Ten Conference Commissioner Tony Petitti. No, the argument offered was that “others did the same.” Ethica. It’ll never become part of the motto.
Total inclusion and “catholic epistemology” will never manifest itself as every “special interest group” vies for recognition and seeks to deny recognition to some other special interest group. The logic of children will prevail in an age of political correctness and campus activism over a wide range, a catholic range, so to speak, of topics. The University of Michigan, like so many other universities, will struggle to balance a booming business in the context of constant desires of those who seek rewards without catholic ethica. But that might be an unfair assessment.
It is possible that the original intent of the University’s founders to make a catholoepistemiad was an unattainable Norse eplepai in the sky.
*1963. A Premier Book. Kluckhohn was a professor of anthropology at Harvard.
**https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38864724/sources-big-ten-ban-michigan-jim-harbaugh-field
So, are universities inclusive as they say they are?
It’s tough to be everything to everyone, especially in an Age of the Easily Offended, or, as some might say, the Age of Absolute Narcissism. And yet, that’s the ostensible role of modern massive university systems, with the seeming exception of banning conservatives from speaking on campuses. Where’s truth fit in? Certainly, some universities, like the University of Michigan, make “truth” (veritas) part of their mottos.
And in an age of political correctness that views “white privilege” as a crime against all humanity—even, strangely, white humanity (particularly poor or middle class white humanity)—one might think that the University of Michigan’s marching band needs some lyric politically correct rewrite for “Yellow and Blue” to comply with the principle of inclusiveness. The song contains the stanza:
Here's to the college whose colors we wear,
Here's to the hearts that are true!
Here's to the maid of the golden hair,
And eyes that are brimming with blue!
Garlands of bluebells and maize intertwine,
And hearts that are true and voices combine;
-Hail!
Hail to the college whose colors we wear;
Hurrah for the Yellow and Blue!
Woah! “…the maid of the golden hair,
And eyes that are brimming with blue”?
Really? Golden hair and blue eyes? I know the Upper Midwest has many Scandinavians. About four percent of Michiganders (c. 400,000) have Scandinavian ancestry, but the Norse stereotype of blue-eyed blonde isn’t much more than a myth as anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn pointed out long ago in his Mirror for Man. * Michigan is also home to many Africans, Asians, Native Americans, and Middle Easterners. Is there a bias at the University of Michigan in favor of blue-eyed blondes? Are only the blue-eyed blondes worth a line in the lyric? And could it be that the University discriminates in other ways? Aren’t universities safe places for every race, gender, and creed?
Most likely the folks at the former Catholoepistemiad are caught in the web of conflicting needs, desires, and purposes that makes being “catholic” difficult, if one considers the term’s definition as “universal, all encompassing, and broad in sympathies, tastes and interests.” The University of Michigan began as such a “catholic” place, supposedly open to the wide swath of “universal” epistemology driven, it seems, under French Catholic influence harking back to the eighteenth century and first decades of the nineteenth century. That song? Well, no one among the easily offended appear to have noticed the exclusive message of those words. The words are probably well off the radar of any Snowflakes who are easily offended not only by commissions of politically incorrect sins, but also by omissions of politically correct virtues. Why has the University omitted the description of every human being now alive, including especially, those who aren’t blonde blue-eyed cisgender females. Quick! What campus building houses the cry room? And do they play “Yellow and Blue” with revised lyrics there?
But do those exclusionary lyrics tarnish Michigan’s reputation as a “university devoted to arts, sciences, and truth? Including every human descriptor in “Yellow and Blue” is just not possible for a song played either at commencement or at special university events. And maybe they aren’t off the reality of Michigan’s student population: Fifty-five percent of Michigan’s students are white; 16% are Asian; 7% are Hispanic; 7% are foreign nationals; and 5% are Black (in a state that is 13.8% Black). Ten percent are listed as “other,” which could mean people from the Pacific islands, Aborigines, and Native Americans (See, it’s impossible to list everyone—I forgot, for example, the possibility of Inuits and Tierra del Fuegians in the student body). And 82% of its students are listed as “affluent.” Hey, where are the poor kids? Just 18%? And why is the Black student body not 13.8%?
But the song? Maybe maids with yellow hair and blue eyes dominate the crosswalks.
Impossible Inclusion Isn’t Michigan’s Only Problem
What if the business of a university is to make money and not students proficient in the arts, the sciences, and truths?
The University of Michigan whose motto is Artes, Scientia, Veritas (Arts, Sciences, Truth) now has a problem other than inclusiveness. It’s accused of cheating. Seems that the Board of Regents needs to consider adding another word to the motto: Ethica (or Ethicae, plural). Or, at least the Athletic Department needs to add it.
Universities: Formerly Happy Party Places Known for their Young Drunks, Class-skippers, and Nerdy Students Serious about Artes, Scientia, and Veritas, many schools have become such big businesses that the crass needs of humanity have insidiously crept into the recesses of gyms and football stands. Cheating on tests and reports? Old stuff and even more common in an age of AI’s Chatbot writing student essays in seconds or minutes than in days gone by when quill met parchment.
Now, it’s the football team, the Wolverines, who are embroiled in alleged spying on rival football teams to secure an advantage in the big business of national championships. And just before a big game! Michigan’s coach was suspended right before the football team, ranked in the top four, was about to play Penn State, ranked in the top ten. Fortunately for the Wolverines, they outplayed the Nittany Lions.
But should we make a fuss over a little cheating?
Will We Ever Return to Those Simple Days of Yore?
In fact, there’s probably little difference in kind, just a difference in degree in cheating on school papers and in various sports venues. Sign-stealing, the offense the football program is accused of doing, has always been part of sports. Baseball coaches and players attempt it in every game by watching the third base coach’s gestures. Maybe there never was a time when ethics dominated sports. Maybe “sportsmanship” is a myth and a practice constrained only under the watchful eyes of referees and umpires. Without them, games become gladiator events in the midst of screaming, blood-thirsty onlookers.
College football is big business; it became so in the Midwest with the success of Knute Rockne, one of those Scandinavians and the head coach of Notre Dame. The business is governed as much by the dictates of running a multi-million dollar enterprise as it is by the needs of the game and players and the desires of fans. According to one report on that business, the University of Michigan football program had a gross revenue of $125,773,306, $44,684,585 in expenses, and a profit of $81,088,721 if one considers only the football program. The University releases a different report, one with and Athletic program’s $168,244,643 gross, $156,682,998 in expenses, and a profit of $11,561,645. It pays 29 head coaches and assistant coaches almost too numerous to count (football alone has a dozen coaches). The numbers are not Amazon, Walmart, or Apple numbers, but those revenues, profits, and employees make the athletic program a “big” business. And that football business at Michigan has a CEO who makes a reported ten million bucks per year. As I wrote above, it’s big business. And like every big business, it has to survive in a competitive world.
The Logic of Children
“Why are you punishing me? Sammy did the same thing, and you didn’t punish him.”** That is one of the defenses against the accusation of sign-stealing offered by Michigan’s and Coach Harbaugh’s attorneys. Yep. The argument is that cheating is okay because everyone does it. Ethica. See, it’ll never be added to the motto. Catholoepistemiad’s first President, the Presbyterian Rev. John Monteith and the first Vice President, Rev. Father Gabriel Richard, a Catholic priest, are probably turning over in their graves if they’ve been following Wolverines’ football.
But the University’s representatives did not deny the accusation according to Big Ten Conference Commissioner Tony Petitti. No, the argument offered was that “others did the same.” Ethica. It’ll never become part of the motto.
Total inclusion and “catholic epistemology” will never manifest itself as every “special interest group” vies for recognition and seeks to deny recognition to some other special interest group. The logic of children will prevail in an age of political correctness and campus activism over a wide range, a catholic range, so to speak, of topics. The University of Michigan, like so many other universities, will struggle to balance a booming business in the context of constant desires of those who seek rewards without catholic ethica. But that might be an unfair assessment.
It is possible that the original intent of the University’s founders to make a catholoepistemiad was an unattainable Norse eplepai in the sky.
*1963. A Premier Book. Kluckhohn was a professor of anthropology at Harvard.
**https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38864724/sources-big-ten-ban-michigan-jim-harbaugh-field
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