Just got my first rejection notice from a firm I interviewed with this week. It was a reasonably large New York firm, and I can't say that I'm either surprised or disappointed.
There's one I don't have to worry about. Woot!
Now it's a rich dentist in Florida who's saying she doesn't have to pay taxes because... she isn't a US citizen. Apparently getting a valid passport is simply a bureaucratic convenience and doesn't actually indicate citizenship. Also, writing "all rights reserved" on legal documents means you don't have to agree to the stipulations indicated therein.
This is eye of newt and toe of frog jurisprudence. The courts dispensed with this a long time ago. They've little tolerance for lawyers attempting to pull stunts of this sort, and just about none for laymen.
Bonus: her husband, who previously represented her in similar cases, is not representing her in this case because he has been banned from the federal courthouse.
No respect or sympathy for these people. None whatsoever.
As Randy Smith points out, Covenant's IRS Form 990s are all available online at Guidestar. I won't link directly to any documents, because registration is required, but they're all up there.
The college had gross revenues of $28 million and seems to have had expenses of $23 million in fiscal year 2006. I've only done a cursory reading of the form, which is quite long, but let me start by saying that the difference there is not an indicator that the college should cut tuition. A good educational institution shouldn't be spending its entire budget every year. Though the stock market went gang-busters last year, it sure doesn't look like it's doing that this year, so having that buffer is an entirely responsible thing to do. Save in the fat years so you don't starve in the lean years, etc. I may not like the policy choices the administration is making, but their financial planning, on a cursory examination anyways, seems unimpeachable, and I'm quite pleased to learn that the college is in as good a shape as it seems to be.
Let me also say that no one can possibly criticize the administration of Covenant for using their positions for unreasonable personal gain. President Nielson seems to be the highest-compensated person at the college--which seems appropriate--and he's simply making a reasonably-comfortable upper-middle-class living. No one's getting rich here. So even as I criticize the administration for its decisions, I cannot but laud their willingness to work for far less than they could elsewhere. Income from personal investments doesn't seem to show up, but that's of no consequence for our purposes, and they're obviously able to invest their funds as they see fit (subject to certain technical, ethical considerations resulting from their employment situation). The only way they could be compensated more than what the Form 990 indicates involves illegalities that I refuse to even consider as possibilities. I may not agree with them, but they're all honorable men.
Having said that, I'll say again that attempting to restrict one's giving to the school as a way of effecting institutional change is utterly futile, and now I've got the numbers to back it up. Covenant is required to break down its expenses by category, and the smallest major category is the library, but even that gets almost $1 million. This means that if you wanted the college to spend more than that on the library you'd have to earmark more than $1 million to make any changes. One of the larger categories, direct academic expenditures, is in excess of $7 million. Increasing the size of that by earmarking is just unfeasible.
So let me finish by saying that the college, to my non-accounting, five-minute examination, seems to be in reasonable financial health (they always need more money, but don't seem in immediate danger), but is large enough that earmarking is just a gesture at best. But because direct giving makes up almost 25% of their budget, a boycott does have the potential to create a bit of a pinch. Probably not so much that the college would be in financial danger--they've independent sources of funding--but potentially enough to be annoying.
A number of people have suggested that an outright boycott of alumni contributions to Covenant is inappropriate. There is certainly an argument to be made there. It's a rather drastic step, and does bring up issues of potentially hurting faculty by reduced alumni giving.
But earmarking contributions for a particular line-item is not an effective means of encouraging institutional change. Say, for example, that an organization receives a total of $1000 in contributions . They're going to spend a fixed percentage of that--say 25%--on balloons. Okay. Then say you give $100, and say that it has to be spent on balloons. You might think that instead of $250, the group will now spend $350 on balloons, but that's not what's going to happen. They'll still spend 25% of the budget on balloons, they'll just put your $100 in that 25% and reallocate funds. They'll wind up spending $275 on balloons, which is more than if you hadn't given anything, but not affecting institutional goals in the slightest.
The same goes for giving money and earmarking it for faculty. The faculty are all salaried employees, whose annual income is fixed. Giving money earmarked for them simply means that they'll pull funds from that account and put them elsewhere.
Though a boycott might be a step some are unwilling to take (and I totally understand and respect that), the of "restricted" giving is just ineffective.
It seems that a 17-year-old New Jersey high school student has unlocked the iPhone. It was only a matter of time. See, it's one thing to try and get hardware and software to do something it's not supposed to do. But the hardware and software is always designed to work, and locking mechanisms--including DRM--is simply trying to unleash underlying functionality.
Let me start by saying that I have the utmost respect for the faculty at Covenant, and highly value the education I received from them while I was there. None of my complaints about the college are directed at them.
But if the administration at a major research university or state school--heck, even a liberal arts school worth its salt--attempted such a blatant power grab as has been made by Anderson et al over student publications, the faculty would be up in arms before the order was finished printing. Though while I was on campus there was a general feeling that the faculty was frequently less-than-pleased with administration policies, nothing was said publicly and no real opposition consolidated, and I think I've figured out why.
Covenant professors don't have tenure.
The best they can home for is something like a five or seven year contract--the maximum length escapes me--but they are always subject to removal at the end of their contract if they piss off the wrong people. Faculty at other institutions are more or less permanent and may only be removed for cause, a la Ward Churchill, so it takes actions as over the line as his to put one's job at risk.
As such, though I do wish there was more the faculty would do, I don't think I can in good conscience ask them to stand up to the administration. They've mostly got families and kids to take care of, and they've made sufficient sacrifices working at Covenant--research output is nothing like it would have been elsewhere because of the nature of the school--that getting hired elsewhere is not guaranteed.
The system has been this way for as long as I can remember, and has probably been this way since the college was founded. I'm not sure whether this was designed primarily as a method for institutional control or simply a financial necessity, but it can certainly be used as the former, and I can see it going down that way in this case. This policy cannot be attributed to the current administration, as they were not its authors, though it certainly helps them.
So my sympathies go out to the faculty. Their hands are tied.
I have just engaged in an email exchange with Wallace Anderson, Covenant's VP for Enrollment and Student Development. I believe the exchange is quite telling, and have reproduced it below.
Me:
***
This is Ryan Davidson, a Covenant alumnus of the class of 2004, now at Notre Dame Law School. I have watched the way you and Ms. Gosselink have handled various issues on campus with increasing dismay, but your recent usurpation of the Bagpipe's last vestiges of independence is really the last straw. Know that it is principally your actions, as well as those of your allies in the administration, which have convinced me *never* to contribute to Covenant monetarily.
I am attempting to convince other alumni to take the same position. You may not like what Covenant was when you arrived, but we valued it highly, and just because you want to take away everything we did value about it doesn't mean we have to go along.
***
Anderson responds with a form letter, in which he quotes VP Jeff Hall:
***
I welcome this opportunity to share with you our policy and I think you will see how much we too respect and value the editorial and journalistic integrity of the Bagpipe while at the same time accepting our responsibility for teaching and mentoring throughout the entire process. Actually I just read a response on this issue from Jeff Hall who expresses the issue much more clearly than I. I will copy his thoughts here:
"Thank you for your concerns regarding the Bagpipe. I greatly value the student newspaper and believe that it should be an integral part of campus. Our simple hope for the Bagpipe is that it is a part of the college - a place where true learning and thoughtful journalism can flourish. We believe that the use of a sponsor as a mentor is an important component of college activities. It is not our hope to make the Bagpipe into a brochure of all that is good at the college; rather, we want it to be reflective of the best student journalism possible. We believe that this happens most effectively when mentoring is given in all aspects of the paper from reporting through layout. We do not want the paper to avoid criticism or the covering of stories relevant to our community life. We are called to bring our faith and our response to the gospel into all of life, and we simply want the student writers and editors to use the best practices of journalism in the process as they engage this calling. We do believe that the newspaper represents the work of the college in a very public way and want to make sure that we are careful to review publications for quality, integrity, and fit with the college mission prior to distribution. We believe that this can be accomplished with the thoughtful help of a good mentor.
I have attached the document concerning the role of advisors at Covenant
College. It also includes the statement regarding publications.
***
The relevant portion of the statement is reproduced here, and I believe this statement directly contradicts the stated intentions above:
***
PUBLICATION REQUIREMENTS. The advisor for any publication (Tartan, Bagpipe, Thorn, Drama and Musical Theatre productions, and WKLT) will be involved in determining the appropriateness for publication, distribution and performance of all material prior to public dispersal. Covenant College is the responsible publisher of all publications. In this capacity, the college, through the advisor, will give direction and determine policy. Although the college will seek to avoid prior restraint when possible, it is acknowledged that the college, through the advisor, has the right to act in the interests of the college and delay publication and distribution when necessary. This policy would also apply to any publication or production whose primary objective is satire or caricature.
***
The administration is effectively arrogating the authority to prevent the publication of anything on campus if they don't like it. They can veto the performance of a play if they don't like it. The Windbag is now subject to administrative veto. And note that the advisor isn't the one who makes this call: the advisor is an instrument of the administration. So if Anderson or any other member of the administration doesn't like it, it can't get out.
Here's my response:
***
I expected a response along these lines, but to be perfectly honest, I don't buy any of it. If the college were only or even mostly concerned about the quality of learning and journalism at the paper, there are much better ways of improving that without making it an official organ of the college. In fact, the response you've quoted could have been said about the paper as it was. It is my understanding that Dr. Foreman played the role of advisor already. Whether or not the administration was satisfied with the job he is doing should not be grounds for essentially changing the constitution of the paper.
Furthermore, the statement on publications is completely and utterly out of place at any institution that even pretends to provide a liberal arts education. You have essentially created an Office of Censorship, and prohibited any independent publications, and the only assurance you offer is essentially "trust us."
Mr. Anderson, I, for one, do not trust you, and I don't think many others do either. I am completely unsatisfied with your explanation, and if anything, it confirms my fears. I will continue my efforts to prevent contributions to the college until you reinstate the independence of student publications.
***
We will see what happens, but I'm not optimistic. Anderson makes James I look downright democratic.
This author is upset by the discrimination against single people on a societal level.
I'm not sure why she's surprised. Marriage has demonstrable social and economic benefits and it makes sense on a cultural level for social and economic institutions to prefer married people to single ones. Christianity is the only perspective that views singleness as a viable lifestyle, complete with advantages and disadvantages, just like being married. Every other perspective tends to emphasize marriage, viewing unmarried people as second-class citizens at best.
As was made public by Josiah yesterday, Wallace Anderson, Covenant's VP for Enrollment Management, has effectively seized control of the student newspaper, the Bagpipe.
Anderson showed up just after I graduated, so his draconian and ill-conceived policies never directly affected me while a student, but his influence is disastrous. Josiah has good links to his conduct in the above link, so I won't reiterate them here.
I propose that concerned alumni officially boycott alumni contributions until Anderson changes his tune. He can start by reinstating student control of the Bagpipe, and continue by radically reforming his handling of student discipline. If he refuses to make concessions, I will continue my boycott until such time has he resigns.
Covenant College has the opportunity to be part of a truly unique group of colleges in this country as a representative of the genius of the Reformed tradition. But instead of playing to its strengths, potentially creating a magnet for some of our generation's best and most interesting students, Anderson has chosen to play to everyone else's weaknesses, instituting policies which would appear unsavory at a fundamentalist Baptist school.
Join me. Chattanooga has one Tennessee Temple already: it doesn't need another.
This just gets better and better. I fire up the Acer to check it out, and see if I can copy the restore image before I wipe the thing. Vista, while sitting idle, is using a full 75% of its physical RAM. Without a single program other than the task manager loaded, Vista is consuming about 550MB of physical memory.
Though the laptop isn't DOA, the OS is.
In the course of getting from Edinburgh to Dublin, the screen on my laptop was damaged, i.e. cracked and completely unpowered. This is somewhat less than ideal. As the warranty has expired, I didn't shell out $250 for the accidental damage plan, and the facts are such that I can't prove that RyanAir actually broke it--not that they'd be likely to give me anything anyways--that's pretty much just a cost I have to eat.
So I bought a laptop today. Looked around online first, starting with Dell, but abandoned them for two reasons. First, configuring a system was starting to look like the $600-700 range before protection plans--I'm transferring that risk elsewhere from now on--even with an educational discount. Second, even if I'd configured a system I liked, it wasn't going to ship for two weeks, and I kind of need it before then.
So I hit the retail outlets. A local parts shop I frequent had a few Acer models, but after a little shopping around they turned out to be overpriced. BestBuy had a model I quite liked, but they wanted $550 before protection. I wound up at CircuitCity, which had a great Acer Aspire model for $500. But the staff there was so unhelpful--I stood around for almost ten minutes before someone even said hi--that I walked out.
I tried to buy that model online, but not only did no one else seem to have it, similar models were at least $650 and CircuitCity wasn't selling it online, only in stores. So I grudgingly went back to them and bought it. Again, the sales staff were dramatically unhelpful, and if I hadn't been in a bind I'd have gone to a different store. But one thing I did figure out online that the sales staff didn't even mention--what kind of sales job is that?--is that they were having a promotion for a printer, router, and Internet security suite for 100% mail-in rebates with the purchase of that laptop. I'll never touch the software, and probably only use the printer a few times in the next nine months, but I could kind of use a new router and hey, it winds up being free, right?
Turns out that there are actually six rebates here, one from each manufacturer and one from CircuitCity for each product. Whatever, it's still $200 in rebates. I sit down to fill them out, and what do I find? One of the forms has two addresses to which I'm to mail that form in its entirety. This isn't particularly helpful. To make matters worse, neither seems to be for that rebate program, as both addresses are on other forms, and every other form has a unique address. So I'm going to have to go back to that blasted place and have them figure it out, because they hadn't a clue when I called them.
Then we come to software. The computer came with a single disk. No system disks, no driver disks, nothing. The one disk? A Windows Vista Anytime Upgrade disk with a nasty seal saying, and I quote, "Attention! Separate Purchase Required. Do not insert and run this software until you have purchased a separate upgrade license. See instructions inside." Great. Perfect. Let's see what's in it.
It's a list of features, comparing Vista Home Basic, which comes with my computer, to the other three versions of Vista. Home Basic doesn't include the "Complete Backup and Restore" feature, doesn't include multilingual interfaces, and doesn't include file system encryption. It doesn't even include freaking Remote Desktop! This has fewer features than WinXP!! Bastards! The first thing I'm doing is burning the backup image that's bound to be on the hard drive to a DVD, just in case the second thing doesn't work. The second thing I'm doing is reformatting the hard drive and installing XP. But seriously, this is just awful. If I weren't so pressed for time...
The way things are going I'm making my next computer either OSS or MacOS, probably the former. This laptop is insured until Aug. 2009, after I graduate from law school, so I'm good until then, but then I'll have a real job and will be able to afford a Mac or to have someone else set up a Linux system for me.
1) Evangelical Sabbitarianism may actually be a remnant of 16th century economic realities that reflect the transition from agrarian to production society, and not necessarily deeply reflective of Scripture. What the implications are for the transition from a production to a service society are unclear.
2) The state is only concerned with outward obedience. It cares nothing for intention or inward righteousness, provided the laws or obeyed. Yes, intent can be a factor in contract disputes, and intent is an element of many offenses, but while the state does make some allowance for good intentions accompanied by bad actions, it cares not a whit for bad intentions by themselves. The church, on the other hand, cares largely for inward righteousness and intention treats--or ought to treat--outward actions as merely indicative of inward virtue or vice. The church is not a system of social control, despite almost two millennia of attempts to make it into such a thing.
3) Digital music sales, when balanced against declining CD sales, may actually reflect a constant demand for music over the past few years. The difference can probably be explained by the fact that most people only want one or two songs of any given album, whereas the CD requires you to by all of them. I'm sure the numbers are out there, but I'd be very interested to know the percentage of all legitimate digital music downloads that are individual tracks v. albums. I'm sure the former are much larger. If we count each of those--or even only half of them--as representing a CD sale, I suspect that the numbers will match, or close to it. The fact is that the record labels have gotten rich by forcing us to by lots of stuff we don't want for the 15% of stuff we do, and now that we can get what we want, we're no longer paying for the junk.
4: Europe can't do street signs worth a damn.
5: Eight weeks is a long time to live out of a suitcase.
6: I'm ready to go home.
BoingBoing has a link to NewsInitiative, which though it does have some truly fascinating projects, is, in my opinion, a poor use of the web as a medium.
By way of intro, NewsInitiative is apparently a student journalism project co-sponsored by Berkeley, Northwestern, Columbia and USC. It's quite impressive for student work, as far as I've been able to tell. But that "as far as" turns out to be rather limited, because a good chunk of the information presented there is in video form, and I find myself instinctively refusing to watch videos to get information as the medium is inherently low-bandwidth. I can read several times faster than any person can talk, and if I'm surfing the web, I'm looking for information, not conversation. Unless--like YouTube--the medium is inseparably related to the message being communicated, putting in video form what can just as easily be communicated via text is going to lose a huge chunk of potential audience right off the bat.
Additionally, the site uses way too much Flash for things which totally don't need Flash. There isn't a single thing on the site that I saw on there that couldn't have been conveyed just as well with a static image. Sure, the sliding topic windows are kinda cool, but they're ultimately just annoying, and they slow down my progress through the site.
Say what you like about the content of Drudge, it makes excellent use of the web as a news medium. By displaying only headlines in only text format, I can finish a complete scan of the page in little more than a glance, without using any input tools other than the occasional pageup/down, and only if it's a big news day. If I want to read an article, I can click, or if I'm not in a mouse kind of mood, use Firefox's quicksearch to jump directly to a link. If the site were in Flash, this would be impossible.
Maybe I'm just being a tech snob here, but I really think that sites designed as inefficiently as NewsInitiative is will fail to reach their potential if they insist upon gimmicky Flash interfaces which don't add anything to the experience. Even if most users won't be able to tell you why or how, they're still going to find the site annoying.
It's pretty clear who the LA Times is responsible for yesterday's events, but any way you slice it yesterday marked a low point in the federal legislative process. What strikes me is just how ineffective the Democrats seem to be, even as a majority party and how effective the GOP is, even as a minority. No one is playing nice here, but as the Democrats are at least nominally "in charge" of the House and Senate, they get to take the heat. With Congress support-levels riding at around 3 percent, one wonders if we're starting to see the final disintegration of the party.
Or, more ominously, are we seeing the end of the political process? Thus far, despite much rancor on both sides, the federal system seems to keep rolling along, even if only by inertia. What happens when the wheels fall off?
Some wingnut group is planning on distributing Bibles with newspapers as a way of spreading a Christian message. They're planning on spending several hundred thousand dollars on the project.
Which goes to show just out out of touch the organizers are if they still think that the newspaper is an effective way of communicating a message these days. No one reads that stuff anymore, and the idea that someone could be converted to Christianity through a newspaper insert is downright silly.
Apparently, one of the latest developments in the vegan community--in New Zealand anyways--is abstaining from sex with meat-eaters.
Now granted, this group isn't refusing to have sex entirely, but as current estimates of vegan incidence in the general population are generally at 1% or less, that kinda makes hooking up a non-starter.
Any group/organization/trend/etc. which includes voluntary limitation of procreative activity on such a drastic scale has signed its own death-warrant. Happened to the Shakers a while back (down to four members as of 2006). The only reason the Roman model of celibate priests survives is because the rest of the Roman church has plenty of babies.