it comes in pints?

I tolja... "VT: The Musical" can't be far behind.

You called it, babe. I have no doubt you're right.

Not only is Julie right, but Cho will be the tragic anti-hero we are meant to identify with.

I will now toss myself into moving traffic.

Someone restrain Nightfly, lest [s]he read this, before [s]he reads this.

Why are all these juicy tidbits in furrin media, anyway?

Things like these are why I sometimes hestitate to reveal that I'm a professor when people ask what I do.

I mean, I love teaching. I love working with students. I love the job. I love being on campus. But I hate what some people have done to the image of the professoriate.

Okay, it's early, and I didn't read the thing through. But I still contend that some of my partners-in-crime give the professoriate, the academy, a bad name.

Look, maybe the guy's right. Maybe if other people had guns Cho would be the only one dead. But it's the wrong time to talk about it, so soon. It's not proper.

And as for the people who seem to be excusing away what Cho did because he was "troubled" and was "bullied and harassed as a schoolkid" - shut up. Shut. Up. I've known many "troubled" people and many "bullied and harrassed" people and they didn't have that dark spark of evil in them that would allow them to kill others. The blame for this still rests squarely on Cho.

Politics in a classroom are not proper EVER. Period. Left or right. I had enough of my education spoiled by professors who couldn't keep their UN-lovin', murderous left-wing dictator worshipping, woe-be-the-stupidity-of-the-Great-Unwashed pet causes out of their fucking classrooms. This guy shouldn't have been fired and I sympathize with him only because if he had come in and said something equally as inappropriate, but leftish, he probably would have been given a medal. But otherwise, shut up and teach.

The day after Columbine, I was working at the local high school near my university, and the teacher came in and spent half the class preaching to the kids about how "violence never solves anything" and the evils of tit-for-tat in one of the dumbest lectures I've ever heard in my life. Then again, what more can you expect from a guy who teaches the kids in his world history class that Winston Churchill was the "president of England" and when you try to correct him, explains to you "in their case, it doesn't matter anyway." Because they weren't college prep kids and were probably all going to wind up working in the local timber mills. Asshole. I wish I'd had the guts and the wisdom at the time to fucking report his student-teacher ass to his advisors.

Are all of the hyper-lefties that were carping on about the "stiffling of dissent" when they had to answer to nothing more than criticism at the height of the Iraq War listening now? Where are the diversity lovers on this?

I consider it a success if my students walk out of my class at the end of the semester not knowing what my politics are.

They're my politics. Mine. And I don't expect anyone in the class to agree with them (or not), especially if they're doing it solely because I think I will grade them better.

Besides...there's the whole "stifling opinion" thing. It's hard enough to get an 18 year old to express an opinion on anything (well, maybe other than the latest movie or some new make of car) without them feeling like, "I know she believes differently than I do so I should just shut up."

The whole politics-in-the-academy thing bugs me. I've heard more malformed, uninformed opinions being touted as Received Wisdom. So I just prefer to keep my mouth shut...what's that old saying about being thought a fool vs. removing all doubt?

Ricki, the thing for me is that, ultimately, opinions that aren't in some form shaped around a certain amount of knowledge are utterly useless. That's where the "school" bit is supposed to come in. If you selectively teach your students based on your own little pet politics, you aren't teaching, you're indoctrinating. It's frightening how many academics today seem to think that's okay - as long as your opinion is "correct," as this poor professor quickly found out.

Funny, nobody would think of tolerating the ignorant opinion of say, someone talking about a movie they'd never seen. Change the subject to politics, and everybody is suddenly "entitled," no matter how little they know or understand about the subject at hand.

Wha, Angie? I'm sorry, I was shaking hands with a brick wall. With my face.

Oddly, those articles aren't really something boil my blood. I see the need to forgive Cho; lest what ate him alive also destroys the survivors. I don't see the need to memorialize him along with his victims, however. Forgiveness does not require the official sanctioning of his actions, as the memorial stone would imply - in fact, you have to strongly condemn the act in order to have something to forgive in the first place. "Oh, I understand, he was suffering, it's not his fault," and other assorted Bravo Sierra is simply making excuses for evil.