Diversity? Or Not So Much.

I find it extremely interesting that our school, which has in recent years has focused on increasing diversity, despite Bullet headlines such as this one, and the overwhelmingly strong statistics which show us as an un-diverse society, chooses not to celebrate a holiday honoring perhaps the single most important man to increased diversity in American society. We are perhaps the only public institution in the State of Virginia open today; further, today is one of only 10 Federal holidays. So why doesn’t the University of Mary Washington give its students MLK day? Perhaps it’s because we live south of the Mason Dixon line, or perhaps it’s because there a few African Americans here on campus, but I think it goes further then that.  Perhaps it says something about us, the students. The Washington Post reports this morning in an article about MLK day, that many people, specifically college students, barely know who or what they are celebrating. For example, nearly 20% of students surveyed, suggested that Martin Luther King Jr. “I Have a Dream Speech,” was about abolishing slavery. We need to make an extended effort to celebrate MLK day, by actually celebrating civil rights, and MLK for what he stood for. “The survey, conducted by the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy for the nonprofit Intercollegiate Studies Institute, suggests that schools are not doing as much as they could to go beyond a cursory history lesson or holiday. More than 14,000 college freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges and universities earned an average score of 53.2 percent in the survey.” Our schools across the country need to do a better job, to insure that MLK day doesn’t become a holiday, without any understanding of what we are celebrating. Maybe the administration has some great reason for denying us MLK day, but perhaps they are just forgetting the significance of a great man, like so many others.

Test of Picture Posting…

Senior Picture

Originally uploaded by spdpierce.

Chafee Primary

There was a great report from NPR this morning about the upcoming Rhode Island primary.  Check it out here. This primary will make a big difference on not only this fall’s cycle, but also 2008.  I am and continue to be a big Chafee supporter based of course on my summer’s spent working in his Capital Hill office.  Lincoln Chafee is a good, honest, and decent man, and while my views are not perfectly in line with his, he is what I would consider to be the most righteous politican in national politics.