Note: To listen to this blog on KWON/KYFM radio go http://www.bartlesvilleradio.com/caffeine/uploads/files/ON%20Demand/Ideas%20Matter/Ideas%20matter%2041%20complete_1.mp3
Do you remember your first day of college? You showed up with so many hopes and dreams
and with all your worldly processions packed in the trunk of your car. Many of us were pretty innocent and all of us
were quite naïve. Where do I register?
Where is my dorm? Where are my classes?
New Student Orientation stood ready to give at least some answers and to
help us navigate college life successfully.
Well as the saying goes: That was then and this is now. At many universities today, freshmen
orientation is no longer simply a time to become acquainted with friends, learn
about college life, and receive instruction on how to succeed in class. At
Columbia University, for example, orientation is now designed to give students
the chance to "reevaluate and . . . rid themselves of their own social and
personal beliefs that foster inequality."
In other words, orientation is not just designed to help your son
find his advisor but it is crafted to help him lose his faith - to "rid himself",
if you will, of his Judeo/Christian worldview and all the unwelcome ideas that
according to Columbia foster "inequality."
So - Rather than just helping you kids move their junk into their dorm
rooms today's orientation is designed to help our sons and daughters move junk
into their souls.
Students are
encouraged to be "tolerant" of all worldviews except those that the faculty and
administration deem intolerable.
Does this
sound more like re-orientation than an orientation program? Do you sense that
you are looking at the guard tower of a re-education camp more so than the
ivory tower of an educational campus? If so perhaps you should think twice
about where your kids will go to school this fall. Their very "orientation" may depend on
it.