For Good? Moody's Investor Services Down Grades Occidental College Debt in Middle of Capital Campaign

Thanks to an article in the Wall Street Journal, I recently learned that I'm not the only white guy who gave up on giving money to Occidental College. According to the WSJ, the school - which is in the middle of a capital campaign - is choking so hard that Moody's Investor Services just down grade its debt from stable to negative. The timing of this announcement couldn't be worse. No rational donor wants to throw good money after bad. There are details on the cringe worthy "Oxy Campaign For Good" on the school's website.

According the the Occidental College spin, the school's financial failures are its punishment for not being nicer to wealthy white families who - perhaps illegally - were willing to pay for their otherwise ineligible children to attend the school. This, of course, is a joke. The school admits tons of black and Latino kids who wouldn't have been eligible to attend the school back when I was a student with extremely high test scores and a number of high school track records too.

In reality, Occidental College has ticked off potential white donors and white alums like me by embracing anti-white bigotry, socialist professors, and identity politics. Moreover, it ruined the prestige of the school by lowering its standards in order to make the school less white.

I remember how its first black president, John Slaughter, told a group of alumni with white faces that he looked forward - essentially - to a future where there were fewer white faces around. I was offended. I still think Slaughter  was a sick jerk. He was completely unqualified to serve as a college president. He had no experience as a fundraiser or as a liberal arts college administrator. Under his feckless leadership, support for students shot up so high and so quick that the Board of Directors had to draw down the endowment to keep the school going.

I complained to him in writing once and he ended up calling me. He denied having said he wanted to see fewer white faces around even though his comments had been printed in the Los Angeles Times. I complained, as I remember, about affirmative action and he said it was clear I had a personal beef with the college. Duh. He was especially incensed when I complained about how admission standards at Occidental College had been dropped to allow for more non-whites on campus. His response, as I recall, was quite odd. "Are you suggesting these students aren't qualified to be here?" This was freaky, in part, because my concern is not whether or not the students were qualified, but whether they were the best of the best. To be sure, I have to give Slaughter credit for calling me back. Subsequent presidents of this declining school haven't done even that...

Since then, Occidental College has been a leader in rolling over to please leftist students and professors with everything from denying guys due process to fight sexual assault and giving in to the demands of black students who took over the administrative building. The article in the Wall Street Journal is reprinted below, after the break. There are a number of really twisted people on the faculty including Lisa Wade, a leader in the fight against toxic masculinity. Or, to be more correct, just masculinity itself. As has been reported by The College Fix, Lisa Wade rejects the notion of "toxic masculinity," saying it is time to recognize that "it is masculinity itself that has become the problem."

Heroes of the school include ethical lightweights like leftist journalist Steve Coll '80 who - as far as I can tell - left his wife Susan for an intern working at his non-profit organization. (I used to be friends with Steve and Susan.) The husband of one of my Occidental College friends, Joe

The capital campaign, of course, is being led by president Jonathan Veitch who distinguished himself as among the nation's most groveling academic leaders who allowed students to occupy his office, terrify his staff, and get away with a number of absurd identity based policy changes. 

I have a couple of hot takes on this....

Occidental College has been a victim of politically correct nonsense for a number of years. It reduced standards to allow more black and Latinos to attend. The negative consequence of this reduction in standards is that subsequent alumni are both less bright and less wealthy than earlier alumni.

Occidental College leaders like John Slaughter, the first black Oxy president, went out of their way to discourage whites from teaching at the school or sending their children there as students. The problem in Slaughter's view was basically that the school was too white.

The school has gone off the deep end in hiring socialist/Communist faculty members who despise whites in principle and who certainly have no respect for those who have acquired any large amount of wealth. Such people, to these socialist/Communist faculty members, are their enemies...not their donors.

I attended at talk at Oxy in 2012 where I overheard Eric Newhall, quoted in the WSJ article, bragging about how much better Oxy was now that it had fewer white people on the faculty. He didn't realize I was a young white guy who was pissed off at the discrimination the school practiced against young white conservative scholars. He looked shocked that a white guy would be upset at a system where he and his relatives got screwed just because of their race.

I wouldn't give a dime to these people. If affirmative action isn't evil, nothing is evil.

I got a request from the school asking me, as an alum, to give to their capital campaign. I've considered the school my enemy for years. I wish I had read this article before I filled out the questionnaire. If they are a bad bet for Moody's Investor Services, then they are a bad bet for me too.

Up Dates: How About Some Free Speech? My Response to Oxy Protesters' Demands

Oxy sociology professor Lisa Wade
claimed that it was horrifying 
to see a booklet on how to confront
a liberal professor. No
conservatives welcome here.

Since students at Occidental College seldom, if ever, hear from a conservative political science professor, I
thought it would be a public service to respond to their demands. I'll do so from my independent perspective. This will be, I expect, a useful example of uncomfortable learning.

Demand #1 Immediate removal of president Veitch.

This demands appear to be completely feckless. Veitch has the support of the Board of Trustees. He is not going anywhere. By any measure he has outperformed the previous affirmative action presidents including a hopelessly incompetent female president and a rude, divisive black president. Veitch could have every protester removed from the campus and dismissed from the school and I don't think any of us would think the less of him. When student protester's over-the-top demands lose the support of even staunch liberals, I think it is fair to say they are done.

Demand #2 Promotion of the Chief Diversity Officer to Vice President level.

Yawn. What is a chief diversity officer anyways? It is generally a weak, symbolic figure who has little purpose except to give die-hard liberals the sense they are accomplishing something. The whole role is a waste of money that adds nothing of value to the educational process. What might make sense, however, is to appoint an Intellectual Diversity Officer (IDO). They would investigate charges of liberal bias among faculty members including Caroline Heldman and Lisa Wade. The IDO would be responsible for protecting freedom of speech on campus, making sure that conservative students and faculty were not subject to discrimination in any manner including hiring practices. Ideologically, the faculty should reflect the basic political divides in the nation. At least half the faculty members, for example, should be Republican. I can't think of anything that would more dramatically improve the quality of education at Oxy than hiring and promoting the most competent conservatives to all available jobs on campus.

Demand #3 Increase the budget of the CDO office by 50%.

The problem with this demand is what do you cut and who do you harm in the process. The protesters never tell us how to pay for this. Maybe Veitch could take a $50,000 pay cut to fund the CDO? Better yet, make the protester's pay for this if they want it so much. Each of them could pay an extra $500 in their tuition bill. If they aren't willing to pay for this out of their own pockets, then it is probably a waste of money for all students to pay for it.

Demand #4 $60,000 allocated to DEB to fund programming and provide resources for black and other marginalized students.

The Diversity & Equity Board is an official student-led branch of the Associated Students of Occidental College. It is supposedly focused on empowerment and improved conditions for structurally marginalized groups. To an outside observer like me, however, it looks like a slush fund for a small group of liberal students to spend as they please. Really, it is more efficient for them to spend their own money. I might support this if an equal amount was given to conservative students on campus. Since the major problem at Oxy is a lack of intellectual diversity, I think $60,000 would go a long way in righting the ideological balance on campus. This fund would pay for visits of prominent, articulate conservatives such as Suzanne Venker.

Demand #5 Creation of a fully funded and staffed Black Studies program, a demand that has not been met for over 40 years.

This looks like another, wasteful, adventure in identity politics. It is difficult for me to understand what sort of job you get after you graduate as a black studies major. In my experience, these Black Study programs end up being a way to get unqualified black professors on campus. The problem is everyone knows that they are unqualified so that sort of defeats the point of have more examples of black academics on campus. Overtime, I'm sure the black family will strengthen and more black families will produce scholars worthy of teaching at Occidental College. In the meantime, however, it seems silly and counter productive to artificially increase the number of black faculty on campus by creating a new, black only niche occupation.

Demand #6 Increase percentage of tenured faculty of color by 20% for the 2017-2018 school years, and by 100% over the next 5 years.

As long as black culture devalues fatherhood and disciplined education, we should not expect it to produce a greater number of black academics, certainly not enough who would be capable of holding their own at places like Occidental College. Oxy is already less prestigious and less elite than when I attended it. At that time, weaker female professors were replacing better qualified male professors. I don't think the school is doing itself any favors by adding unqualified or less qualified faculty members simply because they are black. It is feckless to blame racism for issues which are almost entirely due to structural weaknesses in black culture and the consequences of black identity politics.

Demand #7 Provide funding for Harambee, the student group for black men which has not received funding in 5 years. This seems like a waste of money. Plenty of black men would do better if they attended schools that were a correct match with their level of preparation. Thanks to affirmative action, too many of them end up at places were they are guaranteed to have lower GPA's, fail and drop out. The problems they face are a by-product of affirmative action. Get rid of the special treatment and the black men who remain will be more than able to hold their own.

Demand #8 Institute mandatory training for all college employees, especially Residential Education, Student Affairs, and Campus Safety, that provides tools to properly assist people from marginalized backgrounds. Again, this just seems silly. What exactly are these special "tools." If someone could explain to me what special tools need to be used with people from marginalized backgrounds, then I might be in favor of this. Otherwise, it looks like another waste of time and money.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.