Thursday, December 04, 2008

The Highest Honors


Rioters don't make Academic All-Ivy teams


I talk a lot about football and academics on this blog, but sometimes I forget that the athletes at Columbia truly are students first.

So that's what makes the three football players who were just named to the Academic All Ivy team that much more impressive.

They are:

Alex Gross, LB Economics Major (3-time 2008 Jakey Award Nominee)

Lou Miller, DL, History/Economics Major (4-time 2008 Jakey Award Nominee)

Phil Mitchell, DL Biology Major

Columbia and Harvard were the only schools with three football players on the team. Everyone else had two or just one.

These guys and the other athletes from Columbia and all the other Ivies who made this academic team are a credit to their generation.

I can't think of any other group of students who bring anywhere near as much honor, pride, and sheer entertainment to their fellow students and alumni year in and year out.

Some of us may really swell with pride when students protest a war or something... but honestly, what kind of commitment does that take?

Face it, no one is pressed into serving and representing their schools as much as the athletes. The fact that criticism of the worthiness of these young men and women is even tolerated by anyone at any Ivy school is totally unacceptable.

But the time crunch these student-athletes deal with keeps them from being able to speak out more on campus, run for student office, etc. Thus, they are underrepresented in the campus and external news media time after time. And that's a shame, because I am often just plain ashamed and embarrassed every time someone sticks a mic in front of a Columbia student's face these days. Some of the things some of the kids said during this current debate about bringing the ROTC back on campus have been downright laughable.

49% of the Columbia student body did vote in favor of returning the ROTC to Alma Mater, but that was way down from more than 60% in 2003. The campus media, and many others somehow made the ROTC referendum, (that was non-binding anyway), about gay rights instead, which appears to have been a brilliant political maneuver by anti-military elements who successfully made the ROTC vote about something else. (For example, one of the current students who portrayed himself as an aggrieved gay man was actually a member of the radically anti-military SDS).

Of course 49% in favor is probably not a bad number when you consider that if the faculty were asked to vote, it probably would be 80-90% against ROTC. And when you consider that the current students HAVE to sit and listen to these professors for several hours per week and rely on them for good grades, these young people are showing a decent amount of independent thinking!

I'm not really sure how this can be even debated among sane people. Columbia gets federal funds and benefits, and has benefitted repeatedly for years, from the sacrifices made by our armed forces. To force off campus the handful of Columbia students who seek to give back to their country while finding some way to reduce the huge costs of attending this school is shameful and possibly insane. To do so to "protest" the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rules is almost a joke... especially when the U.S. military is currently confronting the world's most violent and murderous anti-gay regimes in the history of the planet. What's next? Will we exclude the military because we don't like the color of its uniforms?

It was the athletes who stepped up in 1968 and risked their safety to protect several Columbia buildings from the student rioters, (when will THEY be given the same recognition as the rioters by the way?). It's the athletes who follow strict rules of public respect and conduct that most American college students abandoned years ago. And it's the athletes who bring more honor and cash flow back to their schools as alumni than any other group.

Anyway, something tells me that the large majority of our student-athletes have not fallen victim to this insanity, or the insanity of professors who wish for "a million Mogadishus." And I echo the comments made on this blog by documentary filmmaker Erik Greenberg Anjou, who talked about how our athletes must find a way to become more visible and audible on campus as campus leaders. They must do so not to save athletics, but to save the schools themselves.

7 Comments:

At Thu Dec 04, 09:33:00 PM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well said Jake. I lived through that bleak period of the late 60s and was frankly disgusted by the creeps who were willing to burn down the university to serve their own narcissistic purposes. where is Mark Rudd today? What has he contributed to society? And the list goes on. Today the red diaper faculty is no different than the ayatollahs in their intolerance. And the Admissions Office must bear some measure of blame as well for not doing a better job in screening incoming students who are likely to start protesting before they have even unpacked their bags.

 
At Thu Dec 04, 11:58:00 PM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great stuff, Jake!

I couldn't believe the acclaim the rioters got in the recent CC Today piece. Totally disgusted me.

I also think no school should be able to qualify for any FED funding if they don't allow ROTC on campus, that is ridiculous.

Many thanks to all of our athletes. We will always be the biggest minority on campus

 
At Fri Dec 05, 02:31:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great news for these guys. You should be proud! We are.

Academic and Athletic. What a powerful combination.

The Neckman.

 
At Fri Dec 05, 03:37:00 AM GMT+7, Blogger cathar said...

I was responsible back in the 60's for my fraternity's booth at the spring carnival run then by Pamphratria. And one of my greatest ideas ever was to buy a whole bunch of photos from Spectator of athletes and protesters having at it. I titled the resulting darts game "Jocks vs. Pukes," and to the best of my memory 75% or more of the dart tosses were aimed at the "pukes."

Oh, and Spectator was outraged, and I do mean wildly, spittle-flecked outraged, over the ends to which I used their precious news photos. That was just an added dividend to the whole thing!

I really think that the current college student body has little or no understanding of ROTC, of how nice it is to send Ivy or Fordham-educated officers into the armed forces (which is not at all to disparage the service academies), let alone of how nice all those ROTC scholarships could prove to deserving students. How's that old saw go, something about cutting off one's nose to spite your face?

As for the acclaim the rioters got, well, they basically got it from each other, no? There are an awful lot of "old sweats" from the student movement of the 60's and 70's still hanging around besides Bill (he was called "Billy" back in my day and he looked like a twerp trying unsuccessfully to grow a beard by way of mock-aging, he looks even more ridiculous now with those two earrings) Ayers. And they remain resentful and, in many worse cases, tenured.

 
At Fri Dec 05, 08:22:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Couldn't have said it better myself, Jake. As a former player at Columbia I can personally attest to the rigors of balancing Columbia's academics with football. These three (and many others) deserve a lot of praise and admiration for what they have accomplished.

As for the self-aggrandizing protesters of the '60s and today, I find some comfort in the fact that 49% of current students at Columbia disagree with their hysterical nonsense. I attended graduate school at a public institution in California that had a robust ROTC program. You know what happened? A lot of hard working kids were able to pay off some of their college debt by serving our country, while picking up leadership and organizational skills in the process. Also, I never once noticed or heard of even the slightest negative impact on the large and vibrant gay community on campus. These anti-ROTC campaigners are bigots, simple as that.

 
At Fri Dec 05, 08:52:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

cornerback Casey Gerald, defensive tackle Kyle Hawari and fullback Shebby Swett were among 10 Yale student-athletes named Academic All-Ivy selections.

 
At Fri Dec 05, 08:20:00 PM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just curious. How can you do the all academic teams before the fall grades are in (and the semester is not complete) ? Are they based on the spring grades or are they based on midterm results?

 

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