Extra Credit

2009 Nation Student Writing Contest Winners

By The Nation

The winners are:
Jim Miller, Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, AK
Deborah Ghim, Buffalo Grove HS, Chicago, IL

Each winning essay will be published in a special youth issue of The Nation in early November. All of the finalists will be published at TheNation.com on Thursday, November 5

The finalists are:

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October 23, 2009

The Right Goes Viral

By The Nation

By Frank Reynolds

CampusReform.org has many of the features you would expect from a university review site: you can rate your teacher, comment on textbooks, and let other students know about exciting upcoming events. But unlike sites such as College Prowler or Students Review, on CollegeReform, you can also report leftist abuses on campus, organize a Tea Party and "raise awareness about America's slide to communism." That's because CampusReform, launched last month by Morton Blackwell's conservative Leadership Institute, is a social networking site with an agenda: to provide training to future leaders of the political right by harnessing the ground-level organizing capabilities of social networking sites such as Facebook, twitter and Myspace.

According to the site's mission statement, "CampusReform.org is designed to provide conservative activists with the resources, networking capabilities, and skills they need to revolutionize the struggle against leftist bias and abuse on college campuses." To this end, CampusReform has sub-sites for 2,376 four-year colleges in the US, all easily accessible from the site's main page. From the sub-sites, students can connect with conservative groups in their area, rank faculty on a scale from conservative to leftist, and rate textbooks for their degree of liberal bias (reviewers should be on the lookout for "Politically Correct Language," "Radical Feminism" and "Reverse Discrimination"). Students can also network with alumni to find jobs and internships with conservative organizations.

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October 21, 2009

Seeing Through the 'Morehouse Mystique'

By The Nation

By Daniel Chandler

Morehouse College, an "elite", historically black all-male College, boasting such eminent alumni as Martin Luther King Jr., puts its popularity amongst the "best and the brightest" African American men down to the "Morehouse Mystique":

The Mystique is joining a brotherhood like none other. And after being ignored, stereotyped or marginalized, it's about finally finding that "home" that, deep inside, you always knew existed, where you are the heart, soul and hope of the community. And where you are not alone.

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October 20, 2009

The Curious Case of Meghan McCain

By The Nation

By Fernanda Diaz

In a 2007 Salon piece about Meghan McCain's debut into the mainstream, her father, John McCain, responded to a question about whether he approved of his daughter's openness about her tattoo and music tastes on her blog project about the campaign trail. In retrospect, his answer seems almost prophetic: "She's having fun. I want her to enjoy the campaign. It's once in a lifetime. And then I want her to get a job."

Almost a full year after McCain lost the election, Ms. McCain, age 24, seems to like sticking with the "fun" part and only teasing us about the "job" part. It's possible that she's under the impression that the practice of generating baseless buzz constitutes a politically-minded career, but it seems like the right time to agree, as her audience and generational peers, that it's not enough.

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October 20, 2009

"Safe-Schools Czar" Under Attack

By The Nation

By Elisabeth Garber-Paul

In the latest attack on progressive White House staffers, fifty-three Republican members of congress signed a letter to President Obama yesterday urging him to ask Kevin Jennings, the "safe-schools czar," for his immediate resignation. The letter, penned by Steve King (R-IA), sites Jennings's earnest dialogue and roots as a gay educator as the reasons he's unfit for office.

Their first qualm, which surfaced in September--not long after the demonization and subsequent resignation of Van Jones--had to do with a description in his memoirs and speeches of some problematic advice he had given a student over two decades ago: a young man confessed that he'd had a sexual encounter with an older man, and Jennings first question was if he'd used a condom. Even though this was during the peak of the AIDS epidemic--which makes the condom question seem relevant enough, to me--Jennings recently apologized for the incident.

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October 16, 2009

NYC Mayoral Debate: Clash of the Dullards

By The Nation

By Nathaniel Herz

New York City mayoral candidates Michael Bloomberg and Bill Thompson each had about twenty minutes during last night's debate to use as many words as they wanted to. But the most revealing portion of the evening was actually the five-minute "lightning round," in which the candidates were limited to responding with a simple "yes" or "no."

In responding to questions ranging from the personal (Have you ever had a manicure or a pedicure?), to the political (Do you think more troops should be sent to Afghanistan?), the candidates conveyed far more about their own views and beliefs than they did in the rest of the one hour session.

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October 14, 2009

Time to Raise Pell!

By The Nation

By Pedro de la Torre

Congress is facing a stark choice this month between doing the right thing and bowing to special interests.

In May, President Obama proposed a major reform that would cut wasteful subsidies to student loan companies by eliminating the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) and originating all future loans through the already operating Direct Loan Program. This plan would create $87 billion in savings over ten years, which would be reinvested in grants for low and middle income students. The plan would also help millions of young people benefit from higher education by investing in community colleges and minority serving institutions and creating state/federal partnerships for college access and completion.

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October 7, 2009

Young Activists Gear Up for the Green Fight

By The Nation

By Nathaniel Herz

As nations around the world prepare to negotiate a new international climate change agreement in Copenhagen in December, youth activists are gearing up to fight for passage of a "clean, bold, and just energy bill" here in the United States.

This month, as part of a nationwide effort, students and young people will come together in a series of eleven regional "Power Shift" summits on energy and climate. According to organizers, the focus of these conferences will be to put pressure on elected officials to pass new climate legislation, as well as to provide training for youth activists to allow them to continue building the movement's momentum.

While climate change itself doesn't give organizers the same obvious foes like the burning rivers or massive oil spills that galvanized the youth activists of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Power Shift's planners are still trying to get people involved by finding ways to make the fight against global warming more immediate. They cite the massive impact of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia and coal-burning power plants in the Midwest.

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October 6, 2009