Sometimes you have to follow a politician’s career a bit to get an idea of where they want to go. The one-minute video below is from a speech on June 30, 2003 from Illinois State Senator Barack Obama to the Illinois AFL-CIO. In it, he clearly affirms that his long-term goal is a single-payer, universal health care system but that “we may not get there immediately. First, we have to take back the White House, and we’ve got to take back the Senate, and we’ve got to take back the House.”
Hmm. He now has all three. So why is it that with a filabuster-proof majority in the Senate, and a strong majority in the House, the President is not as forthright with this sort of language? Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most reasonable: Because the American people don’t really want to go there, but he intends to take us there anyway.

Over vacation with my family recently I poked around a book entitled Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled–and More Miserable Than Ever Before by Dr. Jean Twenge. As a college professor, I want to be aware of the cultural ethos of the so-called “Gen Y” (aka, Millennials). The book definitely contains insightful commentary, with some scholarly material that’s tougher sledding for the uninitiated (and hence soporific on a vacation).
Twenge notes that Gen Y (what she calls “Generation Me”) tends to put themselves first and to have high expectations for their life. This is a highly optimistic generation with no shortage of self-esteem. Says Twenge:

They expect to go to college, to make lots of money, and perhaps even to be famous. Yet this generation enters a world in which college admissions are increasingly competitive, good jobs are hard to find and harder to keep, and basic necessities like housing and health care have skyrocketed in price. This is a time of soaring expectations and crushing realities. Joan Chiaramonte, head of the Roper Youth Report, says that for young people “the gap between what they have and what they want has never been greater.” (Generation Me, p. 2)

I could see how that might lead to discontentment, anxiety, and discouragement.
All that by way of background to the recent story of Trina Thompson, 27, who graduated from New York’s Monroe College this past April with a bachelor of business administration degree in information technology and a 2.7 GPA. Unable to secure employment (at a time when unemployment nationwide is close to 10%), Thompson has sued Monroe College for $70,000 for tuition (the full cost) and $2,000 to compensate for stress. She claims that Monroe College’s career-services department has not exerted sufficient effort to help her land a job:

“They’re supposed to say, ‘I got this student, her attendance is good, her GPA is all right — can you interview this person?’ They’re not doing that,” she said.

The NY Post reports:

“She’s angry,” said Thompson’s mother, Carol. “She’s very angry at her situation. She put all her faith in them, and so did I. They’re not making an effort.
“She’s finally finished [with school], and I’m so proud of her. She just wants a job.”

Thompson also claims that Monroe’s Office of Career Advancement shows preferential treatment to students with excellent grades:

“They favor students that got a 4.0. They help them more out with the job placement,” she said.

Thompson is entitled to a fair hearing, but her allegations seems fishy on the surface. For starters, attending college is no guarantee that one will immediately obtain field-related employment (even in a more stable economy). Secondly, soon after completing my undergraduate, I learned that many employers screened applicants at the 3.0 GPA level. The standard procedure of our placement office was to pass along a stack of resumes from students interested in specific open positions. The placement office did not “push” any candidates in particular. The employers would then select certain students for phone or on-site interviews. Naturally, higher GPA students received more solicitations.
Thirdly, Thompson has been unemployed for only three months – not much time in today’s job market. Maybe she should send out more resumes or pursue short-term employment to boost her resume and develop stronger references (many college students graduate with little or no relevant work experience). Lastly, one wonders why Thompson’s mother feels compelled to fight battles for her 27-year old (adult) daughter.
Update: An articulate writer with Slate magazine presents the other side of this dispute.

There is no doubt that Dr. Robert George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and founder of the American Principles Project, is one of the most articulate spokesmen in our day on the issue of same-sex marriage. Today he penned an outstanding WSJ article on the possibility of the Supreme Court weighing in on Proposition 8 (which restored the historic definition of marriage in CA as the union of husband and wife). Excerpt:

Lawyers challenging traditional marriage laws liken their cause to Loving v. Virginia (which invalidated laws against interracial marriages), insinuating that conjugal-marriage supporters are bigots. This is ludicrous and offensive, and no one should hesitate to say so.
The definition of marriage was not at stake in Loving. Everyone agreed that interracial marriages were marriages. Racists just wanted to ban them as part of the evil regime of white supremacy that the equal protection clause was designed to destroy.
Opponents of racist laws in Loving did not question the idea, deeply embodied in our law and its shaping philosophical tradition, of marriage as a union that takes its distinctive character from being founded, unlike other friendships, on bodily unity of the kind that sometimes generates new life. This unity is why marriage, in our legal tradition, is consummated only by acts that are generative in kind. Such acts unite husband and wife at the most fundamental level and thus legally consummate marriage whether or not they are generative in effect, and even when conception is not sought.

Read the whole thing.