The American Spectator

Another Perspective

The University of California's pursuit of egalitarianism over excellence has reached a new level of lunacy.

At UC Berkeley -- that nest for Nobel Prize winners -- students can get credits toward their diploma in a student-taught program called "De-Cal"(meaning Democratic Education.) The program boasts such liberal arts courses as "Blackjack" and "Copwatch," a primer for students on "how to safely and effectively assert their rights when interacting with police."

UC Berkeley's "Democratic Education" extends also to orgies and field trips to the Garden of Eden strip club. The Daily Californian, a UC Berkeley campus newspaper, reports that the program's male sexuality course included a sex party at which students took Polaroid pictures of each other's "genitalia" (the game was to match photo to person) and an outing to a homosexual strip club where "student instructors" performed on stage.

"It was a class bonding experience," explained one student to the Sacramento Bee.

UC Berkeley officials suspended the course this week, but only and obviously because their stupidity is now common knowledge. UC Berkeley spokeswoman Marie Felde professes shock at the course, telling the San Francisco Chronicle that the course's activities "are not part of the approved course curriculum." But in fact the "male sexuality" course received the blessing of -- get this -- Caren Kaplan, chairwoman of the Woman's Studies Department. Kaplan told the Daily Californian that she "doesn't police the content" of the course.

And what exactly would an "approved course curriculum" for a student-run male sexuality course look like? The orgy and strip club field trip certainly conform to the course's description on UC Berkeley's Web site: "[a course] intended to provide a safe environment in which men may learn about their own bodies and male sexuality. This course aims to create a greater community of men and women who are empathetic, understanding, and supportive of each other's sexuality."

The female sexuality course in UC Berkeley's De-Cal program even announces on UC Berkeley's website that students can go on a "possible trip to a strip club" and hear a lecture by porn star Nina Hartley.

The UC Regents are either paying no attention to their once-renowned campuses, or they just don't care (except when embarrassing press inconveniences them). Probably the latter.

A diploma from a UC school used to mean something. Now, after decades of 1960s depravity, it means almost nothing. UC Berkeley is no different in its curricular aspirations and ethos than no-standards Cal State San Francisco.

UC's drive to the academic bottom is accelerating not just in its ludicrous courses, but also in its admissions policies. UC President Richard Atkinson frequently whines abut the injustice of the SATs, which he hopes to abolish and replace with a more "holistic" standard.

Applicants are now judged according to a "personal achievement score," which prizes not achievement but accidents, such as socio-economic background.

And most recently the UC system approved a plan to offer illegal aliens tuition at the low in-state rate --meaning an illegal alien from Mexico City can now pay $10,000 less than an American from Phoenix.

Perhaps the UC system is educating students for democracy. But it is a democracy the Greek philosophers would have called insanely coarse and lawless -- a democracy that devours itself.

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