Wednesday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was the Gaza war thread which is back on top after interest in the war was renewed due to Israel's repeated drone strikes on a convoy of World Central Kitchen aid workers, killing seven. Since I have already discussed that thread, I will move on to the next which was titled "UT Austin lays off DEI employees" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to an article in "The Hill" saying that in order to comply with a Texas law that bans Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives at public universities, the University of Texas at Austin has laid off 60 employees that were involved with DEI. The original poster, who is a proponent of DEI programs, asks if anyone is removing the university from their list of colleges to pursue. DEI is the lastest in a series of right-wing bugaboos following affirmative action and critical race theory (CRT) that have been hijacked by right-wingers to promote the idea that White people are the true victims of racism. There is a well-funded political infrastructure devoted to "exposing" DEI and generating opposition to it. That effort seems to have had considerable success in convincing White people, and to an extent Asians, that they are being discriminated against in favor of less qualified minorities. As such, a number of those responding express happiness that the DEI program is being eliminated and claim that they will move UT higher on their lists. To be sure, many DEI efforts are deserving of criticism. In many cases, especially in the corporate world, such programs are little more than window dressing that have no real impact other than to create frustration. Such programs are seen as a waste of money, which is one of the primary criticisms voiced in this thread. Similarly, many DEI programs are so poorly implemented that they have little positive impact. However, proponents argue that the response to poor DEI programs should be better DEI programs rather than the elimination of them. Moreover, because of the constant politically-motivated attacks on such programs, they are often misunderstood. As the original poster of the thread writes in a follow-up post, "Funny how the people so against DEI don’t seem to have an elementary understanding of the concepts." One of the most common complaints about DEI is about the large budgets often devoted to it. In addition, despite the often lucrative funding, the programs are not seen as contributing to the schools' academic mission. As a poster who is a college professor writes, "They hire consultants, have their own staff, host expensive events, and get paid probably twice what I get paid as a tenured professor." Ironically, even the successes of DEI programs are often used to disparage them. For instance, if a DEI program succeeds in increasing the percentage of minority students at a university, many will claim that these students are unqualified and that they took places from more deserving White students, regardless of whether that is true or not.

The next most active thread was posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum and titled, "Angie Harmon's dog shot and killed by Instacart shopper". The story here is that Angie Harmon, an actress with whom I am familiar from "Law & Order" but many may know from "Rizzoli & Isles", alleges that an Instacart shopper making a delivery at her home shot and killed one of her dogs. While she has a Ring camera, she says that it was charging at the time and, therefore, no video evidence of the incident exists. The police investigated and declined to charge the delivery person. However, Harmon further alleges that the man making the delivery was using a women's identity rather than working under his own name. The individual has subsequently been suspended while an investigation continues. The original poster appears skeptical of Harmon's version of events, a skepticism shared by many of those responding. Several of these posters note that many dog owners do a poor job of controlling their dogs and the possibility that the dog attacked or threatened the Instacart shopper is widely seen as plausible. Many posters are critical of Harmon for allowing her dog to roam when she knew a delivery was coming. On the other hand, some posters, while willing to concede that Harmon is a bad dog owner who failed to properly restrain her dog, contended that evidence did not demonstrate that the dog deserved to be shot. "I’m fully in support of someone defending themselves from an aggressive dog, but everything I’ve read about this scenario indicates that this was NOT that situation and I’m concerned that it’s more of a case of animal abuse" wrote one poster. Other posters are more fixated on the fact that the man was using someone else's identity. Apparently it is not uncommon for individuals to purchase delivery accounts from others. This allows them to avoid background checks and utilize an account that has good feedback. For many participants in the thread, this was the most eye-opening part of the story. One poster claimed, "Lyft, Uber, Doordash, and Instacart would likely collapse if they were forced to strictly police the accounts being used by undocumented workers or those who could not pass a background check." For many, the thought of an unknown man, working illegally, and carrying a loaded weapon while coming to people's homes was extremely troubling and is probably causing some reconsideration of using delivery apps.

The next most active thread was titled, "DCUM Roll Call... Where is your DC Enrolling?" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster requests that posters list the colleges that their children have chosen and the application round in which they were accepted. Threads like this that lack discussion are not easy or enjoyable to summarize. Some posters did try to engage in discusion in this thread, but that was not the point of the thread and such posts were diligently reported by a poster and, subsequently, removed by me. So, while the thread is very much on topic, it is not one that I am eager to discuss. Therefore, I am going to be brief. Most of those responding name very prestigious schools including Stanford, Brown, Cornell, and later in the thread, Harvard. This creates a bid of disgruntlement among posters who are a bit shy about naming lower-ranked schools. Several state universities are also named, however, including North Carolina State, Maryland, Wisconsin, and Virginia. When a poster pleaded for parents of kids with lower stats to post, one poster accepted the challenge and posted about her child with a 3.9 GPA. I guess that is what passes for poor stats on DCUM. There is really not much more to say about this thread. A variety of schools, most of them highly-respected, are listed. For many this thread was a well-earned chance to brag. But apparently some posters were discouraged from entering what might be viewed as a competition. Though, in most cases, even those with children entering lower-ranked schools have reasons for bragging.

The final thread that I will discuss today was also posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum, meaning that three out of today's four threads are from that forum. This one was titled, "Degrees where college prestige matters". Contrary to what the title says, the original poster lists three fields in which she does not believe the prestige of a college matters and one field in which she thinks it might matter but might be less important than other factors. As a result, this thread might better have been named "Degrees where college prestige doesn't matter". In the eyes of at least one poster, it would have been better to not have been started in the first place. "Must we keep doing variations of this ridiculous game?" asked the first poster to respond. But others were willing to go along. One poster suggested, "Any field where there are more potential employees than jobs and where image matters more than the quality of the work produced" and then listed academia, consulting, law, and finance as such fields. One poster argued that for lawyers the only thing anyone cares about is the law school and, as such, the undergraduate school doesn't matter. But another poster disputed this and argued that most of those accepted by top law schools attended top undergraduate programs. These points don't necessarily contradict each other, but they do offer different perspectives. Unfortunately, much of the thread from this point on was dominated by a debate about whether undergraduate school prestige or test scores and GPA are more important to getting into a top law school. To an extent, this is almost a chicken and the egg debate. Most people don't care about a lawyer's undergraduate school but a student wouldn't have been selected for a top law school without great stats and students with great stats frequently attend prestigious undergraduate programs. So there is an overlap of students with great stats and students who attended prestigious undergraduate schools. Moreover, before the first page was even completed, a considerable amount of the discussion turned to the importance of top schools rather than fields for which prestige matters.