Tuesday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele — last modified Dec 11, 2024 12:17 PM

Yesterday's topics with the most engagement included redshirting, a troll thread about a boyfriend and his autistic brother, support for murdering CEOs, and college application "safety" schools.

The most active thread yesterday continued to be the thread about the murder of the UnitedHealthCare CEO. After that was a thread titled, "Enough is enough with the redshirting!" and posted in the "Elementary School-Aged Kids" forum. The original poster is very frustrated because there are two 10-year-olds in her child's 3rd-grade class. She wants to know when schools will draw the line with redshirting. As I assume everyone knows, "redshirting" is the practice of either starting a child later in school or holding them back a year after they started. I assume that the original motive for redshirting was to ensure that kids were placed in a grade that was more developmentally appropriate for them. However, it is now widely believed that many children are redshirted in order to gain academic or athletic advantages despite there being no developmental justification for doing so. In a subsequent post, the original poster said that over half the children in her child's class are redshirted. Redshirting is one of the most controversial topics on DCUM, and threads on the topic are always hotly debated. This is at least the fifth thread that has been among the most active threads that I have discussed. As such, I am well-versed in the two sides. To her credit, the original poster has nuanced views on redshirting. Despite her evident frustration, she is not against the practice and never really suggests clear limitations that she believes should be implemented. In many ways, this thread is just an opportunity for her to vent about her concern that redshirting has become too widespread. If I have a criticism of the original poster's views on redshirting, it is that she is too fixated on age. She supports redshirting for kids who just passed the cutoff and would be the youngest in their classes but questions it for kids with summer birthdays. Wouldn't an approach that takes each child's individual developmental progress, including academic and athletic abilities, into account be more appropriate? Essentially, redshirting has become another aspect of competitive parenting. For some parents, the road to an Ivy League university begins at preschool, and one aspect of that is gaining an advantage through redshirting. Those supportive of redshirting argue that age is an arbitrary metric that does not necessarily reflect the developmental stage of a child. Many of these posters support redshirting when a child's specific needs support the measure. Other posters, however, contend that children are not ready for school at 4 or 5 years of age. As one poster says, "it’s irresponsible and totally unsupported by science to put a 4 y/o at a desk all day...The best schools in the world start kids at six." While the original poster and several others with similar views are suspicious of the motivations of parents who redshirt, this poster turns things around saying, "*not* redshirting your kid is bad parenting." Based on the posts in this thread, it appears that in some schools there has almost been an arms race involving redshirting. A few kids are held back due to their level of development, some are close to the cutoff and their parents prefer for them to start school later, some are redshirted due to the belief that it will provide academic and athletic advantages, and at some point the number of redshirted kids reaches critical mass. Students who weren't redshirted and might have normally been among the oldest in their class find themselves among the youngest. This leads to some of their parents redshirting, resulting in the circumstances that have upset the original poster.

Yesterday's next most active thread was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum and titled, "Boyfriend dropped big news". The original poster says that she and her boyfriend have been planning a future together, but she is now questioning that idea because her boyfriend shared that he has an autistic brother with whom he plans to live after their parents die. The brother requires supervision and can't live alone. To make matters worse, the brother is currently going to court due to charges of having sex with a 14-year-old when he was 19. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the original poster is a troll. In the last few weeks, she has started at least 26 threads, many of them completely contradicting each other. Many follow the theme of this thread in which she has a long-term boyfriend, but something has come up that is causing her to rethink the relationship. In this one, it is an autistic sex-offending brother. In another, the guy masturbates too frequently, one guy dumped her because he was involved in a legal matter, another dumped her because he had previously experienced trauma, and another guy bothered her because he spoke about their future together. Interspersed among those threads are ones in which she is actively dating and not in an exclusive relationship. In fact, one thread celebrates her non-committed status. In one, she is upset because a guy canceled plans to go hiking, and in another, she is reluctant to have sex (perhaps making her compatible with the guy who masturbates too much). In even another persona, she is married but upset by her husband never admitting that he is wrong. In several other threads, she is divorced but sometimes getting back together with her ex-husband. She has basically covered all bases. The question I always have about these trolls is, "why?" Just why? As for the thread itself, responses were fairly uniform. Most posters believed that the — apparently fake — boyfriend was a standup guy for wanting to take care of his brother. His honesty in disclosing his plans to the original poster is laudatory. Both speak to his good character and suggest that he might be a decent partner. However, despite all of that, posters couldn't get past having a sex offender in their future home, potentially around their children. There was a bit of a kerfuffle due to many posters referring to the brother as a "pedophile". Another poster was very adamant that a 19-year-old with autism having sex with a 14-year-old was not necessarily pedophilia and should not be labeled as such. It was a different type of sex offense entirely. While some posters thought that this poster was a troll, or worse, it took until page 11 before anyone correctly identified  the original poster as a troll. By that time there had already been a number of posts that were offensive with regard to those on the autism spectrum. So, on the troll scale, I would probably give this thread a 9 out of 10.

Next was a thread titled, "S/o: Do you support murdering CEOs ?" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. This is a spin-off from the thread about the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson. The original poster links to two examples of what he claims are individuals supporting Thompson's murder and asks if others similarly support the killing of CEOs. First, the original poster has misrepresented the examples he provided. In the first one which involved a professor at Columbia University, the professor did not "celebrate" the murder as the original poster would have it, but rather suggested that he was not mourning the death. The second example was Taylor Lorenz, who the original poster mistakenly identified as a Washington Post columnist. Lorenz has left the Post and now runs the independent publication "UserMag". Lorenz, in a discussion with Piers Morgan, did say that she felt "joy" about the killing before quickly correcting herself and saying, "I guess I would say, maybe not joy but certainly not empathy". The point both of these individuals were making is that insurance executives like Thompson routinely make decisions that lead to the deaths of their customers. Tens of thousands have died so that Thompson and those like him can earn millions of dollars in income. As a result, Lorenz and those who feel similarly simply don't feel all that bad about Thompson's death. But that is different from actually supporting the murder. As Lorenz says, killing CEOs "wouldn't fix the system". When I first wrote about Thompson's murder, I was quite clear that I was offended by those celebrating the killing. However, I am much more understanding of those who simply don't feel a lot of sympathy. On the same day that Thompson was killed, two elementary school children were shot in California. Who knows how many beyond Thompson were killed by guns that day? Instead of expecting ritual mourning of Thompson, perhaps we should be asking why so much attention is paid to his death and not others? The importance given to Thompson's murder is emblematic of a reality that has spread throughout our country. There are people who matter and people who don’t, and most of us are in the second group. Whether it is the UHC customers who die in virtual anonymity, mourned only by their friends and family, or hard-working Americans who see their spending power decrease while billionaires get richer, this divide is growing and intensifying. Establishment figures in both major political parties rushed to condemn the murder and to criticize those who celebrated it, but there has been a groundswell among the rank and file of both parties pushing back. This should be a flashing red warning to those in power that people are losing patience with what is happening. I am dumbfounded that it was exactly this sentiment that led to the election of President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump, probably the individual least likely to address the growing inequity. I have no doubt, however, that he will attempt to exploit the anger for his own ends. On a final note, it was notable how many prominent figures demanded condemnation of Thompson's murder, but then immediately praised a New York jury's acquittal of Daniel Penny on charges of manslaughter in the death of Jordan Neely. Apparently, some deaths can be celebrated.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "Name the safeties your kids love", the original poster simply wrote, "What are they?". As I am sure everyone is aware, "safeties" refers to colleges by which an applicant is almost certain to be accepted. Traditionally, college applicants divide schools between "reaches", "targets", and "safeties". Reaches are colleges the student would like to attend, but probably has only a small chance of being accepted into. Targets are those schools that match up well with the applicant’s qualifications, but are so selective that even likely prospects will be turned down. Applicants develop elaborate strategies for distributing applications among the three categories. One problem with the original poster's question is that one person's "safety" can be another person's "reach". Simply knowing the safety schools for other students is not going to be much help to the original poster. Rather, she would benefit from knowing the safeties of students with stats similar to her own child's. Undaunted, however, posters responded with a series of posts naming schools that were their safeties. For the most part, this amounted to James Madison University, which seemed to be the safety of over half of those responding. One poster claimed that the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school with a 6% acceptance rate, was her kid's safety. This led to accusations that the poster was a troll, but it turned out that it was basically a non-standard use of the term "safety". The kid had multiple hooks but simply wasn't enthusiastic about attending the university. Eventually, reality set in, and the student chose Penn, but this isn't really how most people think of "safeties". Soon enough, posters gave up on listing schools and began talking strategy. Some posters thought no more than three safety school applications were necessary. Others argued for more, suggesting that it provided more opportunities to compare offers of merit aid. Some posters suggested that "safety" schools necessarily had to be defined by the student's attributes. As such, a fairly selective school might be a safety for a particularly strong applicant. Others, however, thought the designation was determined by the acceptance rate of the college. For instance, one poster argued that a safety school must have at least a 60% acceptance rate. There was one other topic that I expected to come up, and I waited and waited. On page 10, it finally came when a poster wrote, "For High stats kids, sometimes they are rejected from Targets and Safeties because ‘the school is yield controlling’." Ah yes, yield control. There is no DCUM college application thread into which that topic cannot be worked.

Add comment

You can add a comment by filling out the form below. Plain text formatting. Web and email addresses are transformed into clickable links. Comments are moderated.