Call and Response; Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/1/15

Tamara Venit Shelton, Chronicle of Higher Education; Call and Response:

"The Call to Action, its list of grievances and demands, has received a mixed response from the faculty here at the college. The majority, including me, have proffered support, but some professors worry that the student movement threatens academic freedom. Will new administrators, additional academic resources, and diversity training lead to more invasive measures that undermine our authority as experts and constrain our freedom of speech?

Those concerns are real. So are the concerns of marginalized students.

As Claremont McKenna rebuilds and moves forward, our faculty, administrators, and students will have to overcome resentment and skepticism. We will have to comprehend one another with humility and empathy.

As professors, we may have to rethink the space of the classroom — from a place under our authority to an environment that we co-create with our students. From my corner of campus, I find myself with a renewed commitment to teaching history and, through history, empathy.

I will not shrink from difficult conversations about race and power."

Gaming the College Rankings; New York Times, 1/31/12

Richard Perez-Pena and Daniel E. Slotnik, New York Times; Gaming the College Rankings:

"[S]everal colleges in recent years have been caught gaming the system — in particular, the avidly watched U.S. News & World Report rankings — by twisting the meanings of rules, cherry-picking data or just lying.

In one recent example, Iona College in New Rochelle, north of New York City, acknowledged last fall that its employees had lied for years not only about test scores, but also about graduation rates, freshman retention, student-faculty ratio, acceptance rates and alumni giving."

College Says It Exaggerated SAT Figures for Ratings; New York Times, 1/30/12

Daniel E. Slotnik and Richard Perez-Pena, New York Times; College Says It Exaggerated SAT Figures for Ratings:

"Claremont McKenna College, a small, prestigious California school, said Monday that for the past six years, it has submitted false SAT scores to publications like U.S. News & World Report that use the data in widely followed college rankings."