Therapeutical correctness runs amok at Iowa college

Iowa Central Community College is as egregious as one of my alma maters - Northern Kentucky University - in giving special favors to athletes while overreacting to mere suggestions of wild behavior by the school community in general.

A few years ago, ICCC president Robert Paxton was charged with tampering with public records in a scandal in which student athletes were awarded false grades. Three other college employees pleaded guilty to changing athletes' grades to benefit them. Despite the fact that these 3 employees had changed students' grades, they were allowed to keep their jobs.

This is more evidence that the American education system not only gives athletes special treatment but also coddles those who allow it to go on. While hate papers like Campus Report cried about grade inflation benefiting students in general (which was a hoax), the right-wing media never raises a peep about real grade inflation and outright fraud that benefits only athletes.

Paxton accepted responsibility for the transcript fraud going on at his school, and the charges against him were deferred. Frankly, he should have been fired on the spot, but he too kept his job.

Now Paxton has made the news again. In the grade fraud scandal, he got off easy after accepting responsibility for the deceit taking place under his watch. But now the opposite has happened: He's been forced to resign over a party that occurred on his own time and where (as far as I know) he did nothing illegal.

Paxton went to a Fourth of July boat party and was photographed appearing to pour beer from a keg into a young woman's mouth. By all accounts, everyone at this party was an adult, and the keg was actually broken (thus no beer could come out). Also, because the people at this gathering were adults, they were old enough to be responsible for their own actions.

Also by all accounts, this was not a school-sponsored event. It was Paxton's personal life.

But when the photograph of Paxton pouring the keg got out, his bosses at ICCC forced him to resign.

Why?????

Much clatter is generated about political correctness, but there's a flip side, which I've long referred to as therapeutical correctness. I call it that because of the Far Right's worship of Big Medicine. It is quite literally political correctness by the right wing.

The college's excuse for forcing Paxton out? The president of the school's board said the party "reflected poorly on the college."

It wasn't a college-sponsored event, smartypants. So who the fuck cares?

Paxton himself appears to be mighty conservative: He donated to a Republican congressional candidate's campaign. The irony is that he got forced out by a college that's so right-wing that it tries to police what employees do off-campus when such actions harm nobody.

As with NKU, this policy of trying to keep members of the school community in suspended animation is amplified when anything connected to beer is involved. When I went to NKU, the mere mention of beer - even by someone who was at least 21 - was the #1 taboo. At NKU, everything was refracted through the "evils" of drink. If someone wanted a serious discussion about a totally unrelated topic - like parking or the student radio station - campus officials would quickly corrupt the issue with their paranoia about beer.

To school officials, every student was considered a drunk by default - and if a school employee didn't toe the line, they'd catch hell. I guess ICCC is no different. And I'm sure this is also true of countless other campuses these days.

Another irony is that Paxton gets $400,000 in severance pay under his new contract. So the college is really costing taxpayers by forcing him out.

I don't know if there's anything else to this story. As always, there could be. I know how deep corruption runs in schools and governments, especially when there's no accountability and when schools fall over themselves to mimic the corrupt corporate world. But based on the facts I know, Iowa Central Community College clearly can't get its act together: The school allows athletes to cheat and won't fire those who help them cheat, but the school throws a screaming fit when someone is seen with a beer keg at a party on their own time.

Just like NKU.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080829/ap_on_re_us/college_president_photo;
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080828/NEWS/80828006)