It is a delight to see that a Bush Administration figure was not only invited to address a commencement exercise. But it was even more gratifying that Boston College, by and large, gave Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice some well-deserved respect.
About 50 students stood with their backs toward the stage as Rice was introduced to give her commencement speech, but they were quickly drowned out by a standing ovation.
Nice to see this, and is a promising indication that the majority of a major college's student body, whatever their individual points of view, respects the right to free speech, which is, of course, something that members of the academic and secular hard left, by dragooning student goons of like mind, always endeavor to prevent whenever a non-socialist is speaking.
Of course, the usual wackos needed their 2 minutes of dubious fame:
A half-dozen signs that said "Not in my name" were held in the air by students, who sat down by the time Rice started to speak. One banner that said "BC honors lies and torture" was held on the side of the stadium, away from where the students were sitting.
Typical egoism on the part of the mind-numbed lefties who seem to think that their own individual (and significantly minority) point of view trumps the elected national government. "Not in my name" indeed. Do these intellectual Bozos think they're demonstrating in HazZzMat's name? Get a life. Like Jesse Jackson, they can't stand it when someone else is getting face time in front of an audience, particularly if that someone is a Republican (who is therefore not authentically black).
But one part-time academic's reaction takes the cake when it comes to useless attention-getting:
Steve Almond, an adjunct writing professor, resigned from his post over the matter.
"I think Americans have lost sight of the idea of sacrifice," he said. "This is a relatively small sacrifice for me."
Let's have a pity party for Mr. A! What gratuitious gasbagging and inflated self-importance! We wonder if this gravely oppressed fellow has ever spoken to the family of a wounded or deceased veteran of any war—including this one— about sacrifice. Probably not. Making his fatuous remark disgusting, if not laughable, is his equation of his own dubious "sacrifice" to the very real one our service men and women are called upon to make every day.
Question is, what is he "sacrificing?" For the uninitiated, an "adjunct" professor is basically a slave-laborer in the leftist groves of academe, a non-tenure track instructor with no status and often no office who is underpaid, overworked, and often without a full or partial benefits package. Exceptions to this occur in professional schools where famous attorneys, for example, will serve as adjunct guest instructors who can give students hands-on experience and who burnish the marquee value of the institutions that hire them.
But in the humanities in particular, "adjunct" slots are where the tenured faculty can save money, eliminate courses they no longer wish to teach (like freshman comp) by dumping them on the adjuncts, and basically give themselves the smallest possible course load so they don't have to be bothered with grading too many undergraduate papers, most of which seem to be purchased nowadays anyway. Eager humanities postgrads, born down by an academic lifetime of stupid theories hanging about their necks like Marley's chains and unfit for any other kind of employment, are pastured here, hired as academic migrant workers, and often paid the princely sum of 2-3000K per course with a maximum, and ridiculous load of 4-5 courses a semester. (No joke. We checked with a few institutions recently.)
With no hope of achieving the coveted tenure track at a given institution, such "professors," who. as we've indicated are particularly common in the humanities, wherein reside the feeblest of disciplines, eke out a living on the basis of annual contracts which can be terminated at any time without consequence to the academic institution. One wonders if our bloviator above had already got his termination notice for the next academic year, had landed another adjunct contract in a warmer clime, or in fact, had decided to get out of this racket and find a real job. All of which adds to the odds that his "sacrifice" is nothing more than gratuitous preening.
So before you get too impressed with this magnificent gesture of empty symbolism masquerading as "sacrifice," we thought you'd like to know that it's essentially meaningless. Like most things done by most English department types these days, as they've sold out, one by one, to the Gramsci-inspired Marxist establishment that has done much to destroy our culture.
Meanwhile, our HazZzMat May 2006 Glass Navel Award goes to Mr. Almond. We're going to revive an old undergrad custom of ours by giving one out each month to the individual we adjudge to be the most extreme example of someone who has his or her head so far up the anal aperture that he or she needs a glass navel in order to discern the path ahead.
Meanwhile, a hat tip to Boston College for exhibiting the kind of courtesy that's all too rare on American campuses these days. And another hat tip to the Associated Press, which is the surprise source of the story.
