David Fleming
It's All Academic   www.davidflemingsite.com   
Skin Game

July 30, 2014

Foreword: Be forewarned.  You have been foretold.  This blog will almost certainly be full of foreworn jokes usually shared by 15-year old boys (seeing I just spent a day with three of them at an amusement park, I should know).  Thankfully, I know nothing about heavenly measurements, so I painfully must go without a forestaff crack.

A man has dropped out of college because of his disbelief in circumcision.  Yes, this is true, and, yes, you should have foreseen this blog coming. 

Why is the student, Evan Roman (you can't make this stuff up!), so upset at Colorado State?  A professor positively referenced infant circumcision in a lecture and apparently it went to Mr. Roman's head.  And now Mr. Roman is being a dick about it.  (I see no reason to come up short on any appropriate joke.)

I didn't even know there was a group of non-infant circumcision critics called "inactivists."   Anyone who thinks, by the way, that my infantile jokes about the procedure are disrespectful, note that the inactivist site proudly puns for its website banner: "Will you join the Intact American Revolution?"  Everyone has some skin in this silly game.

You know what really bothers me, though?  As a result Colorado State is less one more student, one more non-completer, dealing with one more hit to their retention rates.  With government rankings tied to financial aid looming more and more in the future, a place like Colorado State may not be able to afford this painful severance from its institution. 

All joking aside, if colleges and universities have to keep taking a safe middle ground for its teaching, to avoid the loss of students, then why bother educating? I have previously ranted about trigger warnings, concluding with the observation that college needs to come with one big trigger warning: subject material may offend you. Listen, incorporate, and form educated opinions, even if not the ones your professor tried to indoctrinate you with.  News flash: your professor isn't the only one trying to shape your beliefs.

One can tell by a glans, that this is not news.  This is making something out to be much larger than it really is.

And with that, I will forego any more jokes.  Some things are really not funny.