Nice to see Governor Walker at the UW basketball game today.

Not that we were there. Meade took that shot from the TV. Walker's in blue not red, apparently in support of Marquette.

ExBadger, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson receives a handmade-from-duct-tape wallet from a young girl who needs a heart transplant.

A sweet story.

Student newspaper editor extensively explains decision to publish a letter questioning the existence of a "rape culture."

You have to try to imagine the criticism the editor (Katherine Krueger) must have heard. She goes on at such great length. On the blog yesterday, we talked about the letter, here. The newspaper is The Badger Herald, at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

Krueger begins with the assumption that we are living in something that deserves to be called "rape culture":

The existence of ‘rape culture’ on college campuses — the social conditions that allow for the normalization of sexual assault and violence — leads to one in four college women being assaulted before they reach graduation.  For evidence that rape culture is alive, well and thriving on the University of Wisconsin campus, look no further than David Hookstead’s letter to the editor.

So Hookstead is not only a denialist; his denialism is proof of the existence of the culture. There should be a name for the culture where there are articles of faith so strong that if you say X is not true, you are viewed as reinforcing the proposition that X is true.

Krueger condemns her fellow student in language so strong that I had to go back and reread his letter to try to figure out what was so inflammatory. Krueger calls it "morally repugnant, patriarchal... offensive... the embodiment of rape culture... horrifically misguided... repellent... reprehensible... hateful... infuriating... ugly."

Isn't that a little over-the-top? Is no one allowed anymore to muse about the location of the line between bad sex and the crime of rape? Must one become a social pariah for questioning whether the activities of some criminals means their crime is our culture?

As ugly as Hookstead’s version of reality is, this is an actual view held by more than a few UW students. 

"More than a few"... but is that enough to make it our culture? Anyway, Krueger says condemning Hookstead's views is not enough:

If you’re disgusted and angry, this is your starting point. It’s only by opening the dialogue and banishing topics like sexual assault from our list of cultural taboos that we can begin to affect [sic?] a lasting change on campus.

So... does that mean students are supposed to talk about it or not talk about it? I suspect the message to those who have anything even mildly challenging to say is: Shut up or we will ruin you.

Krueger ends by expressing regret for her failure to put a "trigger warning" on Hookstead's letter. Now, there's: "Editor’s Note: trigger warning for sexual assault."

ADDED: I see Hookstead got attention in Jezebel last August, here.

AND: As MadisonMan in the comments tells me, I actually did blog that at the time.

ALSO: I'd just like to say there are so many issues here: 1. I'm not sure who, if anyone, I feel sorry for, but I know I don't feel sorry for any members of my own generation that may have made Ms. Krueger feel she had to talk like that. 2. Young people: Break loose, be free, say new things, dare! 3. What is the meaning of "culture"? How do you define that term? If you use it loosely, but someone else wants to use it narrowly, why are you — especially in a university — fighting instead of having an intellectual conversation about what "culture" is? 4. Who is being repressed and who is repressive, and why doesn't everyone care? 5. In what might be called a "culture of repression," is it any surprise that people are drinking too much and having bad sex? 6. Can we talk about whether we have a "culture of bad sex"? If so, why? 7. Isn't the real rape question: What should be reported to the police for prosecution? And if we put that in a separate category, would we be able to talk about what bad sex is and why we're having it? 8. What about love?

"The Badger Herald printed a letter from a political science junior titled, 'Rape Culture Does Not Exist.'"

And we're told, it's gone viral.

“When I was consulting with our managing editor and our opinion editors about whether or not to publish it, we knew there would be a pretty strong response from the campus,” said [the newspaper’s editor, Katherine Krueger]. “I think it’s important to stare something ugly in the face every once in a while to be reminded that there’s still a lot of work to do.”

Okay. Stare at "something ugly" and do some "work."

ADDED: Here's the student's letter, with comments. Please read it and try to understand why it is stirring people up so much.

ALSO: Here's the full text of Krueger's response. 

Quelling an obscene chant by threatening to take away UW football's greatest tradition: the "Jump Around."

A proposal here at UW-Madison:

If the offending chant is heard at Camp Randall Stadium before the fourth quarter, then "Jump Around" won’t be played.

If, predictably, the profanities come to life after "Jump Around" is played, then one of the most iconic celebrations in all of college football goes away for the next game — or games.

A description of the chant and the "Jump Around" here. Reasons why this threat would not work:

1. Authorities telling a big group of free citizens what not to say is pretty much forcing them to say it.

2. You'd be punishing everyone in the stadium — including a lot of alumni who come to town for the games — for the yelling in the student subgroup.

3. You can only threaten not to play "Jump Around" over the stadium loudspeakers, but everyone there knows when the song is supposed to play, and if it didn't play, surely they'd sing it. There would be smart phones everywhere to play the song and boost the singing, making it more boisterous than ever.

4. You ought to be thankful you've got students who do yell. What if they didn't?

ADDED: From the scoreboard, October 2011:

"Highlights of Diversity Forum 2013: Day 1."

Highlights of the highlights:

1. UCLA Professor Sylvia Hurtado said — as paraphrased by the UW student newspaper — that universities "must place student identities at the center of diversity initiatives... revise their practices to accommodate students’ various identities, and employ more advisors and caseworkers whenever possible."

2.  Columbia University Professor Donald Wing Sue talked about "microaggressions" (which was a topic on this blog a few days ago here).  Sue said: "When you are unaware of what the dynamics are and you do not have a critical race consciousness, you can not facilitate a dialogue."

3. UW Diversity Planning Committee seeks to be "a resource for the state" and also to have "the people of the state be a resource for us."

4. How to get more "underrepresented students" to go into STEM fields? There are FIGs (First-Year Interest Groups) and Mathology Boot Camp and BioHouse and Bio-Commons.

5. Vice Chancellor Darrell Bazzell said: "If we are truly to be serious about diversity and creating a diverse environment... Then we must have a diversity plan.”

Tales of gender difference, the Socratic Method, and the hostile environment that is philosophy.

The story of one female University of Wisconsin-Madison student and the undergraduate club the Socratic Society:

“People were yelling and banging on the table to make their points,” [Macy Salzberger] says. “It was basically a free-for-all... The environment felt hostile, and often I was the only girl in the room”...

“I told women that I understood the problem, but that it was possible to balance out the combative tone if more of us came. The women who started coming were intentional, as well. They shared that goal.”...

“Macy has been an outstanding leader,” says Philosophy Department Chair Russ Shafer-Landau. “It’s absolutely vital that we enfranchise all who want to participate in philosophical discussion, and Macy’s efforts have been exemplary in this regard.”

Can we get some Socratic dialogue on what "enfranchise" means here? And nice as it is to feature some hard work by a UW student, do you really believe that if only more women came in at the intake level and "shared" a "goal" of inclusiveness, then some "tone" you view as exclusionary would be "balanced out"? What do you think women are? Are we some bland ingredient to be added to an over-spiced stew to make it more palatable for everyone?

And I say that as a female who went to law school, where the Socratic Method supposedly reigns, in 1978, and who has been teaching in law school since 1984, doing something that some people might call Socratic, but which got watered down long before 1978. ("The Paper Chase" is a cornball Hollywood movie, people.) Law school discussions are facilitated by professors who dearly want the participation spread around. It's in no way a free-for-all and there's nothing hostile about the environment, and the numbers of males and females are close to equal, and still — if you go on volunteers — the males talk more than the females.

Circa 1990, there was an uprising of female students who took the position that the Socratic Method was required in order to reach gender equity. The mellow, volunteer-based classroom oppressed women, we were told by earnest advocates. They demanded an authoritarian environment as the way to make women equal. That was perhaps the most surreal experience in my 30+ years inside law schools.

Oh, but enough of my memories. I need to keep reading this article:

 “I had been reading more about why women are less represented in philosophy,” [Salzberger] says. “One article documented the 'tapering effect,'which shows that even though a lot of women tend to major in philosophy as undergrads, there are a lot fewer in grad school and even less in faculty positions.”

And here's UW Philosophy Professor Harry Brighouse (who spoke on a panel on the status of women in philosophy):

“It is easy for people to think this is a male discipline.... there is a degree of aggression. Philosophers don’t act in ways that others might see as polite.”

Adjusting the heat from “boil” to “simmer” would go a long way toward improving the climate for all undergraduates, he says.

Ah, so they do have a cooking metaphor. I still have the question: Why would making things friendlier at the intake level solve the problem of failure to continue on to grad school and a professional (academic) career? If you've already got — as Salzberger says — "a lot of women" majoring in philosophy as undergrads, how would lowering the heat prepare them for the fighting they'll need to do when the competition gets tough?

This is a very old issue, and philosophy departments sound like they are where law schools were 40 years ago.

Bill Maher, anti-science?

"Stand-up comedian and television host Bill Maher called more than 100,000 Madison-area numbers Tuesday to warn University of Wisconsin-Madison students, faculty and the Madison community about animal cruelty in campus research labs.... But the university said in a statement Tuesday the claims have no factual basis...."

"This is the wave of the future in archeology."

The new archeology is the archeology of all the stuff that's accumulated within the collections of archaeology departments.

Like Hercules assigned to clean the Augean stables, curator Danielle Benden was hired by the UW-Madison anthropology department in 2007 to sort and systematize the final resting place for the department's collection of pots, bones, baskets, spear points, clothing, musical instruments, kayaks and effigies.

The collection in the Department of Anthropology repository was gathered on six continents by roving UW-Madison anthropologists for more than a century. Then it began gathering dust in a warehouse....

Today, at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, the law school presents a lecture by John Dean about Watergate, criminal law, and ethics.

That's later this afternoon. Meanwhile, here's a local media interview with Dean that engages him in some of the issues of the day. The interviewer Paul Fanlund invites Dean to attack today's Republicans with the prompt: "You wrote that book a few years ago and focused on politicians such as then-Vice President Cheney. But now the GOP looks ever more radical."

Dean says that 30% of Americans have a "personality trait" that some social psychologist he's talked to labels "authoritarianism," and that's now "the dominant force" driving Republican politics, which is why he and his friends — Dean lives in Beverly Hills — aren't Republicans anymore and also why Republicans are stuck with only 30% of the electorate. But Dean wonders "if the authoritarian people will ever get up to the 51 percent number because that would make a very different United States."

Unsuprisingly, Fanlund doesn't follow up with any questions about whether authoritarianism ever manifests itself in Democratic Party politics or whether some people with the authoritarian personality trait ever feel drawn into the hopes and dreams of left-liberal projects.

Fanlund's next question is a model of fawning and imprecision, the very opposite of what I'd want from a journalist: "You’ve done so much scholarship and have your first-hand experience. What do you think the future holds?"

Dean has just about nothing to say, so Fanlund proceeds to the topic of Wisconsin: "Last year I wrote about your assessment of Scott Walker, our governor, as a classic authoritarian personality." How did I miss that analysis? Dean says Walker is "so strikingly Nixonian that I cannot (turn away) out of fascination."

It’s kind of like the moth to the candle, I keep an eye on him. And I am likely to see pigs flying before he’s president.

So Walker is like Nixon, but somehow it's impossible for him to become President. Dean's not making a whole lot of sense in this phone interview, and Fanlund prompts him again: "Because of how Walker’s personality would play out with a national electorate?"

Dean picks up the cue:

Exactly. The country is not ready for him unless he skews far to the middle from where he is....

Isn't that easier than pigs flying? Dean blathers about moderation, and Fanlund offers some more help: "What struck us in Wisconsin, as much as anything, is how Walker, unlike governors I’ve known for three decades, made it clear from the start that he wasn’t interested in representing all of us, only those who elected him. Are you surprised?"

This is a telephone interview, and Dean is phoning it in. From Beverly Hills. And guess what? He is surprised. Frankly, he's surprised, but maybe he shouldn't be so surprised, because, after all, Joe McCarthy... blah blah... "maybe there are still people that kind of politics appeals to".... you know, the kind of people with that authoritarianism personality trait. Maybe they're still around out there somewhere in Wisconsin. Not Madison, of course, where it's worth flying in from Beverly Hills to speak to people who can't possibly be authoritarian.

"I am not in graduate school to learn how to encourage poor souls in their sexual experimentation..."

"... nor am I receiving generous stipends of taxpayer monies from the good people of the Great State of Wisconsin to play along with fantasies or accommodate public cross-dressing."

To all and sundry alike I explicate, as best I can, such things as the clash between the Taira and the Minamoto, the rise of the Kamakura shogunate, and the decline of the imperial house in twelfth-century Japan. Everyone is welcome in my classroom, but, whether directly or indirectly, I will not implicate myself in my students’ fetishes, whatever those might be. What they do on their own time is their business; I will not be a party to it. I am exercising my right here to say, “Enough is enough.” One grows used to being thought a snarling racist–after all, others’ opinions are not my affair–but one draws the line at assisting students in their private proclivities. That is a bridge too far, and one that I, at least, will not cross.

"How long did it take you to figure out they were playing 'Leader of the Pack'?"

It's the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, practicing this evening, as Meade and I try to figure out what they are playing. Watch for the "ARREST WALKER" sign. If you come down to Lake Mendota...

We're #2.

The #1 party school is West Virginia University... according to Playboy. The University of Wisconsin is #2.

The comics artist Lynda Barry joins the University of Wisconsin faculty as an assistant professor of interdisciplinary creativity.

Interdisciplinary creativity.

In addition to engaging with people of all ages in classes, workshops and projects, Barry says she looks forward to collaborating with experts across campus — ranging from the sciences to the creative writing program — to further study something she calls the "biological function of the arts." In other words, what makes us long to be able to sing, draw, write, dance or play music even after we've given up on ever being able to do these things well?...

"The metaphor for me is like a restaurant that serves food based on what's in season, what's fresh and around," she says. "If I find that there's an interesting rehearsal going on for a one-man or two-man show or there's some creative project going on campus that I can invite people to do here, I will. People won't always know what they're going to see when they come to the lab — kind of like the chefs that just go to the market in the morning and write the menu based on what they've found."

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/All hail to our old gold and black!"

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/Our friendship may she never lack/Ever grateful, ever true...."

On a beautiful fall Saturday morning, here in Madison, Wisconsin, the UW marching band can be heard practicing, which includes practicing the opposing team's fight song, and Meade — who grew up in West Lafayette — provides the lyrics, about gold and black and friendship and gratefulness.

I ask Meade if it's okay for me to blog that and he says, "I think you've already done it," which makes me think I'm being accused of posting first and asking permission later, but he really means I've already blogged — in some past year — about his singing along with the UW marching band playing the Purdue song. I go looking into the archives, and find, first, a post from April 2008, which can't be right, because I didn't meet Meade until January 2009, and the post in question shows New York City, where I was living at the time. The post, called "Morning fog update," shows what was my view of Manhattan. Meade arrives in the comments:

Simon said: "How much are you going to miss this view when your year's up?"

Meade said: "Yes, and how much we will miss these morning fog... updates!"

Ann Althouse said: "Great trees in NYC right now, and I'm about to get a new lens, so look out. Also remember that dead rat on the sidewalk in NY?"

There's a gap in the conversation where a commenter expunged her own comments, but apparently she said something that referred (possibly disparagingly) to things that could be photographed in Madison. And Meade says:

Yes! A marching band playing "Hail Purdue!"

And a dead rodent.

With fantasy fog...

...Where the Wabash spreads its valley,
Filled with joy our voices raise...

I find the old dead rat post — "Things that exploded in Brooklyn Heights recently" — where there's a discussion of how to buy a light bulb in NYC and a couple of commenters who never comment here anymore are advising me about shops in town, and there's Meade:

I hate to risk spoiling a New York hardware store bonding moment for you good folks but back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning -- where women (and a few unnecessary men) go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts -- and with no more brains than you have.... But! They have one thing you might not have! A Google!

I resist my future husband:

Thanks, Meade, but I actually have this other really odd halogen bulb to replace. I don't want to mail order it. I want to show it to some hardware store guy who will give me the right bulb.

Meanwhile, Meade responds to a commenter who said "Yes but do you have swarthy olive skinned counterm[e]n to flirt with attractive visiting professors. Telling her how she would light up when the proper bulb is inserted in her socket. So to speak." With the metaphor in play now, Meade writes:

"Yes but do you have..."

Even better. We have links. Lots of links. Links pointing to pages and pages of swarthy olive-skinned counter[people], if that's what you're into.

Disease-free links. Unambiguously gendered links.

("Unambiguously gendered links" refere to another commenter's wisecrack that some NY hardware store employee is "AC/DC.")

Organic free-range links. Links that would never even THINK of stalking fair-haired Professoras and trying to put their bulbs into sockets in which they don't belong. And links that, frankly, just don't have the nerve to ask, "'ey, YOU! Are you clickin' on me?"

Shy unassuming links just busy doing their jobs and quiet[l]y living their linky lives.

The other commenter says: "Yeah, but [can] you get a link drunk and walk her home and talk your way into her main frame?" And Meade says:

No, but if you give a link a nice slow neck rub, draw the link a sudsy warm bath, and serve up some browned baby-back ribs with a glass of Merlot, she just might let you take a look at what's on her laptop.

So to speak.

And here's a post from August 2009, the month we got married, noticing Meade's comments in a July 2008 thread:

Gee, I'm single now, happily single, and thought I'd just remain that way.

But considering all the benefits, I guess I'd really be a fool not to take a close look if Althouse were to, just out of niceness, propose to pity-marry me.

What could I offer in return? Let's see - I could prune those redbuds, take out the garbage, trap squirrels....

I could fetch her newspaper, scrape snow and ice off her car, shovel the front walk. Draw her bath. Pick her up at the airport. Rinse and dry her wine glasses. Form a circle-of-safety to protect her from Hillary Clinton-type madwomen who randomly come up to innocent people on urban sidewalks and punch them in the back. I make excellent salads, grill superb steaks and vegetables. Play a piano sonata. Pick up dry cleaning. Wait patiently while she shops for shoes....

Fry up some bacon... provide the vocal track when the UW marching band plays the Purdue fight song....

ADDED: Meade reads this post and admires his selection — back in April 2008 — of the Purdue song lyric "Where the Wabash spreads its valley/Filled with joy our voices raise." Subtly erotic, he observes now. Less than a year later, I would meet him in that Wabash valley....

"In celebration of the 100th anniversary of ecologist John T. Curtis' birth on Sept. 20, 1913..."

"... we share some moments from a recent early morning spent exploring Curtis Prairie at the UW-Madison Arboretum."

Today is the 19th, of course, but the idea of the linked photo essay is to inspire you to plan to visit Curtis Prairie tomorrow. (There's also this on Saturday.)

For old posts of mine featuring Curtis Prairie, see "A prairie walk" and "A prairie reverie."

"Republicans... are a bunch of dead white people. Or dying white people."

Said the college professor, secretly videoed by a student in the back row, now playing on YouTube, linked by Twitchy.

And I say: Look out all you professors. Anything you say may be taken out of context and posted on YouTube. Your hyperbole and casual humor and reenactments of the arguments of others will look quite different as the world looks over the shoulders of the captive audience you think you're talking at. The back row is no longer the back row. There are a million more rows behind that, full of people with no motive to act like they respect you.


And by the way, if you live in Wisconsin and are at least 60 years old, you have a legislature-given privilege to attend — free of tuition — classes at the University of Wisconsin.

Welcome to the future. Feel free to rant about the Panopticon wherein you find yourselves, but please at least notice you are here.

I feel like recording myself teaching and taking my own quotes out of context, as I paraphrase some argument that's made in a case, putting it in starker words to reveal problems lurking within the carefully framed language of lawyers and judges. I'd like to demonstrate how easy it would be to make me sound like a monster. (And I'm saying that partly to inoculate myself! I've got paraphrase paranoia.)

The man in the video — which I chose not to embed — is said to be a creative writing teacher. Who knows what he was up to? Maybe cranking the kids up, trying to get juices flowing. Come on, somebody, get angry. Look alive.

It's an old game. Waking up the students, but the professors need to wake up. Those students who look sleepy and blank to you all have videophones and they may be wide awake and 10 steps ahead of you.

"That ledge was just asking for it."

From my response — in the "Wreckage" post — to those who'd blame the University for not providing more trashcans.

Wreckage.

Post-game:



This was the scene at the base of the pedestrian bridge crossing University Avenue near the football stadium yesterday, here in Madison. Alternate view:




IN THE COMMENTS: Some people attribute the problem to a lack of trashcans, and I say:

As for the lack of trash cans, it seems to me that if people are going to tailgate before the game and appropriate a public space that isn't designed for picnicking, they need to carry out their own trash.

There are parking lots adjacent to this space, and anyone who partied at their car ought to have had their own trash bag at the car, left it in the car, and driven home with it.

But this place I've photographed is on the walk from their car to the stadium, so what happened here is, I assume, people didn't want to leave their containers at the car. They wanted to walk and drink, and then they didn't want to keep carrying the container, so they set it down on this ledge, which seemed convenient. Perhaps they sat there for a while, finishing their drink, before attempting the arduous haul up the steep stairway that you see in the picture.

That ledge was just asking for it.

But you'd like a trashcan there too, like an invitation to stage an entire party right here at the base of the bridge, where hundreds of people squeeze through during the prime times of going to and from the game. (Meade and I walked in the opposite direction both pre- and post- game, as we chose to walk downtown to the Farmers Market and in search of protests, and we could barely walk across, going single file, such was the crowd going to the game.)

And even if you can forgive people for setting their drink containers down on the ledge, in the absence of trash cans, do you not see the broken glass? There are shards of brown glass all over here, including some big curved points, here where hundreds of people, many in flip flops, many of whom have been drinking, will need to walk.

Sorry, this is wreckage.

Gov. Walker vetoes the effort to kick Center for Investigative Journalism off the UW-Madison campus.

We talked about this provision in the budget bill back last week, here, noting the opposition from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

I'm glad to see that Scott Walker is vetoing this.

Instead, he will ask the Board of Regents to review its policy on housing organizations such as the center, which gets office space from the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Communications in exchange for paid student internships and guest lectures.

“It’s appropriate for (the Regents) to look at it,” Walker said in an interview Friday with the State Journal. “But it should be done in the context of a larger policy, not just specific to one organization.”

Right. Otherwise, he trips over the very principle he ought to want to promote: Don't discriminate based on political viewpoint.