THE PROBLEM WITH AMERICAN COLLEGES

While there has been much hullabaloo about American colleges and universities as of late – questions of pedagogy, efficacy, funding and expense – little has been said about what is perhaps the most evident problem [at least from the perspective of this academic]: the slipping standards of admissions.

I know. Any number of administrators and/or admissions people can give me evidence that test scores and GPAs are up for their school, that it is more competitive than ever. I also know that statistics are as profoundly malleable as that Silly Putty I used to lifts comics with when I was five.

But I am not here to get into a statistical battle. I bring you evidence from this weeks news. Incontrovertible proof that we are letting far too many people that do not have the intellectual capacity for the advanced thought that should be required for college. I bring you Russell Debusk, Jr., Benjamin Mosely, and Matthew Cloyd…

For those of you who don’t know these names, they are the Alabama Church Arsonists, two were students at Birmingham-Southern College and the third a pre-med student at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.

My argument is not so simple as those who commit crimes shouldn’t go to college, even those who burn churches. No, no, no, no…. There is a much richer and academically relevant issue at stake here. These three rising stars of their respective institutions – according to what the press is telling us – originally decided to burn a couple of churches, and I quote here, "as a joke."

Yes indeed. So either these students are rather insane – which the evidence does not point to – or they do not even have the most basic grasp of common English words. According to my handy-dandy Oxford American Dictionary Widget, joke is defined as 1] a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, esp. a story with a funny punchline, 2] a trick played on someone for fun, or 3] a person or thing that is ridiculously inadequate.

Definition one is right out; I think we can all agree on that. Definition two would require a rather significant stretching of the definition of fun leading us to situations like the rapist had fun therefore the rape was just a joke. I don’t think we can accept that, therefore definition two is goes in the dumpster too. So… perhaps definition three…

Well… If the entire going-drinking, deer-hunting, church-burning thing was really an elaborate ploy to reveal their own inadequacy as males, college students, societal participants and humans in general, thus revealing that they are – as individuals and collectively – jokes; then perhaps it fits this definition of the word, but based on their actions I don’t think so.

Further, let us examine these students’ justification for the later church burnings, those that followed the initial joke stage. After sobering up and realizing that what they had done was, at the least, probably not a very good joke, one of these college students suggested the following course of action as the best way to deal with their situation – that of being arsonists: burn some more churches to, and again I quote, "as a diversion to throw investigators off."

Here I am not quite sure which is remarkable: 1] that a supposedly intelligent college student forwarded this as a reasonable, appropriate and effective strategy or 2] that two other purportedly bright college boys agreed to said plan of action. Either way, that is what followed.

Certainly this seems to me to be evidence that there were some fundamental tools missing for the toolbox. I find it hard to believe that this is college level deduction and conclusion-reaching. Logic, critical evaluation and analysis seem to foreign concepts to this situation. Yet worst of all – at least for me – may still be that fundamental lack of understanding of the language.

Perhaps we should adopt a new admissions standard for colleges and universities across the country. From now on students should be required to visit campus and in front of a panel of faculty members give and example of a joke. New admissions minimum: no felonious jokes.