Posted on November 5 at 10:48 p.m.Suggest removal

It's not her fault that you're bad at performing cunnilingus, Travis.

Gratuitous information about your sex life (and gratuitous slangy sexual references generally) aside, though, I very much agree with the spirit of your column.

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Posted on October 15 at 3:56 p.m.Suggest removal

To briareus:

Loving your country is not believing that it is the best because God made it so. Loving your country is not believing that it is the best because it is built on higher rhetorical ideals than any other country.

This is the falsest, most superficial, most ultimately destructive form of patriotism there is. If you love your country because you believe that it is great as a condition of its existence, you discount entirely the agency of the government and, most importantly, the people, in making the country great. You leave yourself no room to look to your neighbors or to the future -- because if your country is already the best, then what could anyone possibly want, much less need, to change about it?

To believe that America's greatness is a static, God-given, a priori characteristic of its existence is not only ignorant, short-sighted, and utterly wrong, it is dangerous. It's impossible, briareus, to say that you love your country until you can take a critical perspective on how it has borne out its high ideals -- until you know what makes it worth loving.

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Posted on April 28 at 6:10 p.m.Suggest removal

For those of you who clearly did not read the link to the OUSDS statement above (here it is again: http://oklahomasds.wordpress.com/):

...we believe that the donation of $5.5 million, which includes funding for four new endowed chairs, represents a significant remodeling of our Honors College, which currently has only ten full-time faculty members. Given that this donation has the potential to dramatically reshape the Honors College curriculum and mission, we believe that OU faculty, staff, and students should not only have access to information regarding the proposed additions, but a voice in deciding how this money can be most productively put to use.
...
Although the SDS greatly appreciates this generous contribution... we firmly believe that it is necessary for the administration of the Honors College and the University to facilitate an open dialogue regarding the use of the donation, taking into careful consideration input from faculty, staff, and students, and guaranteeing the freedom to speak without fear of reprisal for all parties involved in the discussion.

So yes, the issue really is transparency; SDS members' political beliefs are secondary. (And as someone who knows several of them personally, I can tell you that they're smart, reasonable students with liberal political leanings, not the radical leftist revolutionaries some of you seem to be envisioning. I'd encourage you to figure out who you're attacking before you do it, especially since SDS only became an officially recognised campus organisation about a month ago.) SDS began circulating the petition in an attempt to spark debate, or at least curiosity, about how this donation will change and reshape the intellectual life of OUR Honors College in particular (for good or ill). Unfortunately, personal attacks directed at Mr Hughes and shoddy and confusing reporting on the issue seem to have prematurely silenced any possibility of such a constructive conversation.

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