alumni Digest, Vol 39, Issue 15

Sat Apr 21 14:20:21 EDT 2007

"You may be embittered by the biases you encounter and the place you
started in life, but, hell, you could have been born in Botswana. Get
over it, or be prepared to listen to people quote 'Invictus' to you
until you do."

I'm not at all embittered by where I started in life – largely because
I am happy where I am now and I feel I am a better person for having
lived my life.

However you are correct that I am quite angry about the social
injustice in our society. This past week I had a new patient
appointment with a young man from a pretty small town in Texas. About
a month ago his father found out about his sexuality and put him out
on the street. As he'd just turned 18 but was still a senior in HS
there was little in the way of social services or opportunities
available to him (too old to get youth services and no HS diploma.)
Like a lot of queer kids, when faced with that he hitched to San
Francisco, and he arrived here Monday. For the past couple of weeks
he's been homeless, doing survival sex (trading sex for
food/shelter/transport/money) and I hope his HIV test remains negative
- when you are getting fucked for money, you can often get $10 more if
you are willing to not use a condom. Ten dollars to risk your life
seems ludicrous to all of us here, but then none of us are hungry,
cold, or homeless.

He struck me as good kid: polite, quiet, reasonably intelligent (maybe
115 range IQ.) He was actually accepted at a UT because he was in the
top whatever percent of his class. However, Dad ensured that he would
not be able to finish his HS diploma this year. He won't get a merit
scholarship because while he's certainly a kid who could do well in
college, he's not top 5-10%.

He may end up getting his GED and getting into City College in SF or
even a UC. But its also equally likely that this will mean he won't go
on with his education. Its easy to say "well gee, why doesn't he just
do X, Y, and Z to get his life back on track" as you suggested. But
he's an emotional trainwreck. He loves his dad, and is in a deep
suicidal depression because the man he's looked up to and worked to
hard to please for 18 years called him a "fucking faggot" and said he
never wanted to see his face again. At this point, the most forward
thinking he can do is that we worked on a shelter placement for him
because its been cold and wet in SF this week, I got him to take a bag
of condoms with him (mostly because it contained several granola bars
as well), and I got him to contract with me for safety regarding his
suicidality largely by tapping into that profound strain of 'boy that
is desperate to please the adults in his life' that made his father's
rejection of him so devastating.

The timing of both witnessing that young man's life destroyed and
reading your self-righteous, indulgant, neo-con dreck makes me not so
much bitter. Saddened is a better word. Shocked at the level of
ignorance that can exist in an otherwise apparently intelligent
person. And really appalled by the entitlement of a group who really
don't seem to realize the significant gifts that they were given.

And honey, what you are is a libertarian, not a liberal.

Nick

On 4/20/07, alumni-request at ncssm.net <alumni-request at ncssm.net> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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>   1. Merit Scholarships (wraynop at aol.com)
>   2. Re: Merit Scholarships (Joseph N. Hall)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:44:35 -0400
> From: wraynop at aol.com
> Subject: Merit Scholarships
> To: alumni at ncssm.net
> Message-ID: <8C951049566798D-11CC-D565 at mblk-d33.sysops.aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> The discussion of the tuition grant has brought up a couple of interesting points in discussing "needs testing" changes to the scholarship, namely that it is a zero-sum game, and the implicit assumption that only the recipient of the scholarship benefits.
> First that it is a zero-sum game, this is true for aid directly from financial aid within a university, but not when it is created at the state level or even system level since (assuming that the tuition grant is created revenue neutral) the corresponding cut can be taken the form of a non-educational expenditure ($1-4 million in an $18-19 billion budget). As can be seen at this site <http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/fiscalresearch/frd_reports/frd_reports_pdfs/overview/Overview_2006.pdf> repealing a "Logging Machinery Sales Tax Exemption alone would provide the funds for this whole program. I am not saying where the reshuffling actually occured, only that the nature of the budgetary process makes the zero-sum game model a poor choice.
> The implicit assumption is that only the recipient of the grant benefits. From my experiences at Duke interacting with the A/B Duke Scholars I would say that while they were the primary beneficiaries of their scholarships, I certainly benefited by having a number of them at Duke as they provided a good bit of club leadership, especially in academic clubs such as the Math Union and Society of Physics Students. For those unfamiliar with them, A/B Dukes are Duke's attempt to recruit the very best students away from Ivies and such. I do not know whether merit scholars are as visible in leadership and as school representatives elsewhere, but I felt Duke got a bargain in paying for their tuition in exchange for their presence on campus. The same thing holds to a lesser degree for the NCSSM Tuition Grant program we are discussing - it keeps students who might have left in state, benefiting their classmates who now have them to work with. Regardless of how much money his/her parents
> made, keeping say a Westinghouse winner at UNC/NCSU would be worth considerably more than free tuition in my opinion.
>
> As a direct response to Nick's argument:
> "Emily simply because you cannot do something perfectly, that does not mean that you cannot make any attempt. For example, it would be VERY easy to eliminate those kids who are upper-mid to upper-class from this entitlement by taking 2 seconds looking at their FAFSA. How is that wrong? Perhaps you think I am a raging liberal then, but tell mehow it is bad to take money slated to educate children from the top 15% of earners while allowing children in crushing poverty to have noopportunity at all. The former group can afford to educate their"children - even if its a little hard for some."
> Nick, it is wrong because punishing the child for the sin of the parent is wrong. Each man owns his own labor, so where is it just to exclude from consideration the children of those contributing the highest percentage of their wages? I've always felt that those who can best contribute to the academic life at a university are those most deserving of aid, not those most in 'need' since part of their tuition is paid by their contributions to the university and by raising the value of the education to those paying in full. As an aside, I subscribe much more to the ideas of Ayn Rand than Karl Marx, and would be proud to be called a conservative on this forum, since exposure to liberalism at NCSSM helped mold my worldview this direction. As I said, each man owns his own laber, so doing with it what you believe is right with said labor is an admirable quality, even if that form differs from one person to the next.
>
> Paul Wrayno
> c/o '02
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 19:26:19 -0700
> From: "Joseph N. Hall" <joseph.nathan.hall at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Merit Scholarships
> To: alumni at ncssm.net
> Message-ID:
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>
> It doesn't need to be that nuanced. If you are running a school for
> excellence, the most sensible thing is to recruit excellent students.
>
> If you recruit students who can improve, you are running a school for
> improvement. I taught Princeton Review one year and I always enjoyed
> students who started out with scores well below 1000 because I knew I
> could get them another 200 or even 400 points no problem (this is back
> in the day of the 1600 point maximum). It was extremely satisfying to
> everyone involved. But even the most confused person wouldn't send a
> student who scored 1000 on the SAT to Swarthmore because he could use
> the opportunity. He's just going to have to find another vehicle for
> improvement. There are plenty of them. Anyone who is smart and grimly
> determined can get a GRE, go to community college and max out, go to a
> good state school and carry a 3.8 or 4.0, and get into a solid med
> school or graduate science or engineering program. For pure
> mathematics, you don't even need a pedigree if you're brilliant. This
> is America and those options are always open to you, even if you have
> to work two jobs and take two classes a night for eight years, or
> don't make it to college before you're 30, or to med school before
> you're 45. If anything, the opportunities for adult education have
> broadened in the past few decades. It's just life that some people
> have a harder row to hoe. You can *always* catch up in this country.
> You can do it without anyone giving you a single cent or moment of
> help, although there are enough generous people to be found to make
> that a matter of choice. You may be embittered by the biases you
> encounter and the place you started in life, but, hell, you could have
> been born in Botswana. Get over it, or be prepared to listen to people
> quote "Invictus" to you until you do.
>
> I'm always in favor of opportunity and acceleration (I certainly
> needed it, and didn't get it in an ideal way), but I'm not in favor of
> grouping students by potential. You group by knowledge and
> proficiency.
>
> The liberalism that I embrace is the liberalism of ideas and
> tolerance, not the liberalism of guilt and free stuff.
>
> -j
>
> On 4/19/07, wraynop at aol.com <wraynop at aol.com> wrote:
> >      Nick, it is wrong because punishing the child for the sin of the parent
> > is wrong.  Each man owns his own labor, so where is it just to exclude from
> > consideration the children of those contributing the highest percentage of
> > their wages?  I've always felt that those who can best contribute to the
> > academic life at a university are those most deserving of aid, not those
> > most in 'need' since part of their tuition is paid by their contributions to
> > the university and by raising the value of the education to those paying in
> > full.  As an aside, I subscribe much more to the ideas of Ayn Rand than Karl
> > Marx, and would be proud to be called a conservative on this forum, since
> > exposure to liberalism at NCSSM helped mold my worldview this direction.  As
> > I said, each man owns his own laber, so doing with it what you believe is
> > right with said labor is an admirable quality, even if that form differs
> > from one person to the next.
>
>
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>
> End of alumni Digest, Vol 39, Issue 15
> **************************************
>

-- 
R. Nick Gorton, MD
Diplomate, American Board of Emergency Medicine
808 F Street #311
Davis, CA 95616
(504) 261-8379

The plural of anecdote is 'not data.' - Roger Brinner.

Few arguments are more dangerous than those that "feel" right but
can't be justified. -Stephen Jay Gould

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