More than a few are beginning to understand my comments about how many are more concerned with, and more ready to financially support, their university than their church. I do mean such as a deep criticism of social priorities but, in a more practical sense my point is that many people almost worship their alma mater’s sports and academic programs while being quite ignorant of the waste, fraud upon students and parents, and abuse of the taxpayers that is endemic within the walls of their favorite school.
Take for example a story from Texas Tech’s Daily Toreador on May 2nd headlined “Texas Tech offers course about vampires”. Erin Collopy is the professor teaching the course and pointed out that it’s not original to Tech but has been bouncing around academia since, no surprise, the 1960’s.
“(The course) traces the development of the vampire from its roots in Slavic folklore into the literary and film vampire of today,” said the associate professor of Russian language and literature to the Toreador reporter. “I’m more interested in what the vampires represent,” she said. “They are an excellent metaphor for human anxieties, fears and desires. If you look at something like the book ‘Dracula,’ that has traditionally been read about anxiety about the foreigners, anxiety about political systems that are different from the British system, anxiety about female sexuality.” [sic]
“The course fulfills a multicultural and humanities requirement that is required for all Tech students,” the story reports.
I’m a big fan of true Liberal Arts education but does this truly fit or, is it an example of academic self-indulgence wasting our time, our money, and replacing class time that should be spent on the basic canon of philosophy and Western Civilization?
It seems fraudulent for Texas Tech and the others to decry budget cuts and raise tuition when vampire literature studies are among the rot filling those expensive classrooms.
