Wow! Who can afford that? No wonder students rack up thousands in debt.

© 2011, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

1. MOAA News Exchange, April 6, 2100

© 2010, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

1. published in the Ivy Jungle Network Newsletter, August 2010

Ya think?

Is it today’s cultural influence that causes someone to even ask that question? Or are today’s college students just dumber than they were decades ago? Or was it just this one?

© 2008, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

Over the last few decades, single gender dorms have become hard to find on a college campus.  Many moved to coed floors, coed suites, and coed bathrooms.  Now a number of schools have instituted coed rooms.  Approximately 30 campuses now have rooms that are officially shared by male and female roommates.   Schools who have made the switch say that gender-blind dorm rooms are more inclusive and acknowledge modern realities.  Most of the schools discourage romantically involved students from rooming together, but maintain that such choices are up to the students.  Critics say coed rooms are one more indicator of the eroding morals on the college campus.  

So do I.

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” -Abraham Lincoln

© 2008, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

Religious People Give More:  Religious Americans give more money and time to charitable causes than their non-religious neighbors.   A new book by Arthur Brooks, Who Really Cares, analyzed ten data sets, concluding that religiosity is one of the best predictors of charitable giving.  Religious citizens give 3.5 times more money, volunteer with organizations twice as often, are 57% more likely to help the homeless, and 66% more likely to donate blood than those who are not religious.   The findings also paint an unexpected political picture as those who are more religious also tend to be more conservative in social and political issues.  In fact, of the 25 states with above average charitable giving, 24 voted for George Bush in the last election.  In Arkansas, citizens donate an average of 3.9% of their income, while in Massachusetts it is only 1.8%.   Good news for religion, however, among religious people, the data showed nothing distinctive about those who consider themselves evangelicals.  (Books and Culture January/February 2008 p. 11)

© 2008, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.

• Born the year the Berlin Wall fell.
• Humvees have always been available to the public.
• Have never “rolled down” a car window.
• Have grown up with bottled water
• Nelson Mandela has always been free and a political force in South Africa
• Pete Rose has never played baseball
• Russia has always had a multi-party political system
• The year they were born a Harvard Law Review editor named Barack Obama announced he might some day run for office.
• U2 has never brought to mind a spy plane
• They first met Jack Nicholson as “the Joker”
• Fox has always been a major network
• Time has always worked with Warner
• MTV has never featured music videos
• They are more informed by John Stewart and Stephen Colbert than the newspaper
• The world wide web has been an online tool since they year they were born
• Dilbert has always been ridiculing cubicle culture
• They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcom X from Spike Lee
• Class mates include: Michelle Wie; Jordin Sparks; and Bart Simpson

© 2007 – 2009, J. M. Erickson. All rights reserved.