Free Republic

Do people need tutorials on masturbation? Apparently at Harvard they do. Students at the Ivy League institution are set to host their annual Sex Week celebration, slated for the first week of November. On tap this year? A “BDSM and Kinks” workshop and a “Touch, Techniques and Tools” seminar, according to the scheduled of events posted on social media. Another event will feature a “queer and trans sex educator,” co-hosted by the Harvard Undergraduate Queer Advocates group, a promotional flier states. There will also be a “condoms and lubricant 101” event, sex trivia party, and “Sensual Strokes: Painting Your Pleasure”...

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced a reorganization of its Federal Student Aid (FSA) ombudsman’s office into a broader “Office of Consumer Education and Ombudsman.” The aim is twofold: to provide clearer, more proactive information to prospective borrowers and their families before they sign promissory notes and to issue a new “common manual” for loan servicing and collections that standardizes practices across vendors. At first glance, the reform seems sensible. After all, with federal student-loan debt at $1.8 trillion and millions of borrowers delinquent or in default, something must change. Yet a closer look reveals that, while better information...

Picture this: You’re a high-school senior who just scored early admission into your dream university. You’re elated … until you realize you’ve also locked yourself into whatever financial-aid package the school decides to offer, with no ability to shop around or negotiate. Congratulations, you’ve just become Exhibit A in a new class-action lawsuit (well, not literally) that accuses America’s most elite universities of running what amounts to an admissions cartel. Four students filed a federal lawsuit in a Massachusetts federal district court in August, targeting Duke University and other top-tier institutions, as well as the Consortium on Financing Higher Education....

Down on the bayou, they’ve got a sayin'. C’est tout! It’s pronounced SAY-too and it’s Cajun French for, “That’s all.” And that is all. For Brian Kelly. Sunday was a busy day in Baton Rouge. Meetings. Phone calls. Zooms. Even a drafted resolution for a multi-million-dollar buyout for the school’s 64-year-old, fourth-year head coach. Shall I put it in south Louisiana terms? With the arrival of gumbo weather, things got quite spicy on the bayou (I’ll see myself out).

For over 75 years, geography departments have been nearly nonexistent at so-called elite colleges in the United States. Most Ivy League schools, as well as Stanford and the University of Chicago, once had geography departments. Now, the only one with a geography department is Dartmouth. Having taught college geography for over eight years, I can attest that most American college students never take a geography course. They graduate without ever having to demonstrate that they know anything about the physical or cultural landscapes of other countries, let alone their own. American geographic education took a massive step backward in the...

Stop me if you've heard this before: Week 8 of college football was very entertaining. Between four top-10 teams going down across Friday and Saturday in Miami, Ole Miss, Texas Tech, and LSU, Diego Pavia proclaiming himself a Heisman Trophy candidate, Curt Cignetti becoming a meme, and both Lane Kiffin and Kirby Smart throwing friendly jabs at one another, we had ourselves some electric television to watch all weekend long.

The controversial President-elect of the Oxford Union has been dramatically sacked following outrage over his remarks over the death of right-wing US influencer Charlie Kirk. A resounding vote of no confidence by the membership of the prestigious debating society in George Abaraonye resulted in a more than 2:1 majority, with 1,228 votes in favour and only 501 against, well beyond the two-thirds majority needed to force his resignation. The 70 per cent no confidence majority means he will be deemed to have resigned, effectively having been sacked after calling the vote himself to try and shore up his support.

If you really want to understand the horrors of war, don’t just read accounts written years after a battle, but instead read first-hand accounts by soldiers who were on the front lines. Similarly, to understand what has happened in the hostile takeover of American college English departments, it’s best to read a description by a professor who fought to preserve them as places where students are taught to write well by studying books by great authors. Fought and lost. His story is at once enlightening and depressing. The book at hand is Broken English Departments: The Repair Manual by Reynolds...

The group of unbeaten teams in college football shrank significantly in Week 8. Just six teams remain undefeated after No. 2 Miami, No. 5 Ole Miss, No. 7 Texas Tech, No. 22 Memphis and UNLV all lost over the weekend. Miami was the first team to fall as the Hurricanes lost to Louisville on Friday night. Ole Miss scored TDs on its first five possessions against No. 9 Georgia before being unable to move the ball in the fourth quarter and Texas Tech took a late lead against Arizona State before the Sun Devils scored the game-winning TD with 34...

This past weekend of college football was chock full of drama. For starters, Curt Cignetti led the Indiana Hoosiers to their highest AP Top 25 ranking in program history with an upset win over the Oregon Ducks, while Arch Manning finally started looking like a quarterback in Texas's win over Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry.

For most of us, we look back on our younger years, whether they were spent as college students, broke twenty-somethings, or something else, usually fondly. It's that time period where you leave home to get your foot in the door of life and learn how to support yourself, not just financially, but in many other ways as well. But we still carry some of that old high school baggage of just wanting to be "cool" and fit in with our friends, for whom many of us become our second family. But as our lives evolve, so do the things we...

Over the past several years, a common refrain in education has been that educators need to “meet students where they are.” Equally common is the promise to do just that—and we’re hearing it more and more in North Carolina. The idea of “meeting students where they are” is most commonly invoked in non-academic contexts. For example: DeVetta Holman Nash, assistant director of student wellness services and coordinator of student academic success at UNC, proclaims, “I meet students where they are individually.” UNC Charlotte touts a new “all-pathways [‘collegiate recovery’] program model to meet students where they are.” After partnering with...

Oxford Union alumni plan to descend on the university city this weekend in an attempt to oust the president-elect. Former members of the debating society are considering travelling from as far afield as Hong Kong and New York to vote against George Abaraonye in a poll on his leadership on Saturday, sources told The Telegraph. University alumni have been encouraged to attend the in-person vote in order to preserve “the reputation of Britain’s historic institutions”. It comes after Mr Abararaonye took the unusual step of triggering a no-confidence motion in himself on Monday, following widespread anger over his remarks about...

Yet another slate of college football came and went this weekend, and it was pretty brutal for some of the nation's most notable programs. The preseason's No. 1 and 2 teams—Texas and Penn State—both fell out of the AP Top 25 rankings after losses to Florida and UCLA. Elsewhere, Bill Belichick and UNC were once again embarrassed to start ACC play, Kalen DeBoer seemingly has Alabama back on track thanks to a comfortable win over Vanderbilt, and the Miami Hurricanes have jumped back into the top two after taking down Florida State in Tallahassee.

If contrariness were an academic discipline, American colleges would lead the world in its study. Such is the lesson of the Trump administration’s higher-ed “compact,” a 10-point bargain offered to nine elite universities earlier this month. Citing American colleges’ “extraordinary relationship with the U.S. government,” the document asks universities to practice admissions fairness, encourage civil discourse on campus, tackle grade inflation, and undertake several other modest but conservative-coded reforms. In exchange, signatories would receive “priority access to federal funds and looser restraints on overhead costs,” as the New York Times and other outlets have reported. Trump might as well have...

So strong is the desire for “diversity” (at least racial diversity) in higher education that school and college officials often turn a blind eye to the law against racial discrimination in employment. The 1964 Civil Rights Act forbids racial discrimination in employment. It does not read that racial discrimination is illegal unless you think you have a good reason for doing so. Unfortunately, education leaders often act as if it does, engaging in blatant discrimination against candidates who don’t have the desired ancestry. A complaint recently filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Cornell University shows how audacious its...

With a Georgetown University degree and several internships under her belt, Christina Salvadore thought she’d be starting a career in New York City’s fashion or beauty industries around now. The problem: She can’t find a job. The 23-year-old hasn’t been able to land a full-time role despite filling out hundreds of applications and taking dozens of networking calls since graduating in the spring. She’s currently applying to part-time gigs to tide her over financially. “It definitely sucks when people are like, ‘So what are you doing now?,‘” Salvadore, a Florida native, told CNBC. “I’m sitting in my parents’ house on...

The Los Angeles Film School is caught up in a scandal over its alleged efforts to trick students into believing that its graduates do extraordinarily well in the Hollywood job market. The accusation comes from two former executives of the school, wherein no doubt there is the plot outline for a noir-ish movie about double- and triple-crosses in the shadows of Sunset Boulevard. Happily the Los Angeles Film School sits at 6363 Sunset Boulevard, and it is a private, for-profit entity, just like a movie studio or a casino. I admit that the troubles on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams...

Were the playoff hopes of Penn State and Texas dealt a fatal blow on Saturday? The No. 7 Nittany Lions fell behind by 20 in the first half on the way to a 42-37 upset loss at previously winless UCLA while No. 9 Texas lost 29-21 at Florida as the Gators snapped a three-game losing streak. Texas and Penn State entered the season as the top two teams in the preseason AP Top 25. Texas was ranked No. 1 before the season for the first time in school history while Penn State opened in the top two for the first...

The Cowardly Lions despite being an over three touchdown favorites lost to UCLA, which was the worst team in a Power 4 conference. At that the same time another overhyped and underperforming QB in Arch Manning threw 2 picks with only as 55% completion rate leading Texas to lose to the Gators. HORNS DOWN!!!