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Wednesday, January 05, 2005

The Bottom Line and Did Anarchy Sell Out?

Lately I've noticed the increased use of the phrase "The Bottom Line Is This is a Business." This especially bothers me when it is applied to altruistic things such as education. Teaching in the Theology Department, it would seem that we need to recruit more and more majors to avoid having our department cut. We need to prove to the administration that we are cost effective, and that we bring money into this institution. We want lower class sizes because we can be better teachers, the administration wants much larger class sizes because it would cost them less. This country's newest federal budget is increasing defense and homeland security spending and cutting funding for education across the board. Now when the president of our university tries to raise funds, more and more the people loaning the money want to know what exactly is in it for them. I believe that all aspects of education are vitally important to this country and the world. Increasingly when I ask Freshmen why they are here at a university they say they want to be a doctor or a Pharmacist so they can get rich. People often ask students majoring in the humanities "what are you going to do with a degree in that?" I believe that being an educated critical thinker has merit no matter what vocation someone might choose.

Then last night I was watching the FedEx Orange Bowl, which featured Aflek Trivia questions, air shots from the Goodyear Blimp, the ADT Championship trophy, and during the Pontiac High Performance Halftime show I watched some terrible band sing (I think it was lyp syncing Ashlee Simpson) with an anarchy A in the background. That seemed to me to represent that anarchy has sold out and went corporate. Will we soon see the trademark or copyright logo next to the anarchy A, and will Donald Trump soon be wearing Sex Pistols buttons? This society's role models seem to be chosen by wealth and greed. Could somebody please let me know when the revolution is coming? I want to rescue anarchy from the Pontiac High Performance Halftime show.

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