More than a few leaders in academia are nervous about the on-going college admissions scandal.  Rich and privileged parents, including actress Felicity Huffman, paid thousands of dollars to get their kids into elite colleges. The scandal has focused on Rick Singer, a “consultant” who employed a variety of tactics, including arranging for private proctors to abet cheating on the SAT, bribing coaches to support special admissions based  on false claims of  athletic excellence, and  using  “donations” in exchange for the waiver of admissions standards.  All pretty bad, but it might not be the biggest worry for academia. The overall admissions process is dysfunctional and in need of reform.   

Partially as a result of the Singer case, how colleges select students for admission is under increasing scrutiny.  This started long before the current scandal. Legacy admissions, a practice that gives preference to the offspring of alumni, has been under attack for more than a decade.  Other preferences, such as rewarding donors with special consideration for applicants, are also under attack.   Proposed solutions include cutting off federal funds.

College leaders, especially at elite private institutions, are watching closely. All admissions standards not based on merit are under scrutiny. These include not only legacy admissions, but preferences for athletes, offspring of staff and faculty members, and even celebrities.  In all these cases, the assumption is that the system works to the benefit of wealthy, probably white, students to the detriment of more meritorious students.

One can hope that the prosecution of Mr. Singer and the parents involved in the current scandal will increase the integrity of the process. Unfortunately, even if that happens, and even if other minor reforms are made, the bias of the current system will remain. Simply put, bright but disadvantaged students must have the same chances of winning admission to elite colleges as students without those disadvantages. 

The current system, using SAT scores, grades, and extra-curricular activities as heavily weighted criteria excludes many gifted students.  For a fair system, the weight given these criteria needs to change, by adding new criteria or adjusting current ones. The personal circumstances of individual students, such as the quality of the schools they attended, the ability of their parents to facilitate involvement in athletics or community activities, and even things like access to adequate nutrition and health care, somehow should be added to the mix.  This is not an easy fix, but one worth exploring.

Importantly, some of these issues are already on the radar screen.  Progress has already been made.  The College Board, for example, has adopted an “adversity score” to adjust outcomes based on identifiable factors that might cause students to score lower on the exam as a result.  Many colleges are also increasing the qualitative examination of applicants, a process which, if employed with integrity, will go a long way to making the process more equitable. 

Also, in considering college opportunity and success, the fact that low-income students are succeeding in college in increasing numbers should be remembered.  Many students also assume that getting into an elite college is essential to success in life.  It isn’t.  For many students there are hundreds of great colleges that in many cases may provide an individual student with an equally good or better education than they would have gotten at one of the so-called elite schools.  Examples are easy to find. 

While progress is being made, the admissions process remains in need of fundamental reform. The need is urgent.  Each year another cohort of high school graduates must live with the current system. Are there any quick fixes out there without the pitfalls inherent in developing more complicated formulas for evaluating students?  Is more radical reform worth a look?  Can it be done without increasing federal intrusion into the governance of institutions of higher education, something that could arguably undermine the uniqueness or excellence of some institutions?  For example, the “elite” nature of Harvard and similar schools is arguably as much a matter of the composition of the student body as it is of the quality of the faculty.  Would Harvard be Harvard without it’s “cream of the crop” student body?

Clearly, reform will be complicated and controversial. Despite that, one can hope that the college admissions scandal will prompt more serious, comprehensive, efforts to make college admissions more equitable. Work needs to be expedited, pursued with urgency and involve the key stakeholders, especially students, academia, and taxpayers.

It’s time to support the American Dream by making college admissions fair.   

J.E. Dean of Oxford is a retired attorney and public affairs consultant. He is a former counsel to the House Committee on Education and Labor.  For more than 30 years, he advised clients on federal education and social service policy. He is the former chairman of the National College Access Network (NCAN), a group promoting success in higher education among underrepresented groups, and KnowledgeWorks Foundation, a national leader in strategic foresight and education innovation 

The strange fishing season on the Chesapeake this summer has served as another reminder about the importance of Eastern Shore Land Conservancy’s vision for a Delmarva Oasis. This initiative would protect half of our beautiful region for wildlife, farming and continuing the traditions like fishing in the waters of the Wye River. Clearly, fishing is important to me and many of

my strongest relationships have been built by quiet time together in a boat or on a shore or canoeing a river. Some of my fondest fishing memories are with Marquis Roberts – one of my closest friends since we were paired together in Easton’s Big Brothers program in 1994. Back in those early days our favorite outing was a summer evening skiff ride from Bellevue to Benoni Point near Oxford to wrestle with some white perch and stripers while watching a beautiful sunset. But times – and weather – are changing.

As most are aware, it was incredibly wet in this region over the last year. We had so much rain between the springs of 2018 and 2019 that the Chesapeake Bay freshened to a level that freshwater fish species typically locked by salt water into the upper reaches of our rivers suddenly were free to move about the Bay. This summer we have caught our share of perch and a few rockfish, but for the first time our catch has been overwhelmingly dominated by catfish. In one evening of Wye River fishing we caught over 40 lbs. of catfish equally divided between Blue and Channel Cats. The invasive and non-native Blue Catfish is the largest catfish in North America reaching over 100 lbs. – and they eat a lot of everything with potentially serious impacts on Blue Crabs and Menhaden – two species critical to a healthy Bay.

The other fish to benefit from the heavy rains is the Northern Snakehead – another non-native and invasive freshwater fish that is now spreading Bay wide. Like something out of a horror movie, Snakeheads grow large and with big teeth, they feed on anything including small mammals and birds, they can walk across land on their fins and live out of water for up to four days, they lay up to 15,000 eggs several times per year, and their favorite prey is white perch. Yikes!

Extreme precipitation and warming temperatures are also causing changes on land. Since I was a kid the ospreys returned from their southern wintering grounds on my birthday every year – March 12. Over the last decade or so the return date has crept earlier in March and now there is usually at least one spotted in February each year. Many bird species that I record on my annual Christmas and spring songbird counts are staying later in the fall and returning earlier in the spring due to the milder winters.  These changes and many others caused by a warming climate and increasing weather extremes are playing out across our lands and waters with mostly unknown consequences.

With these worrisome changes underway I find great comfort in ESLC’s Delmarva Oasis initiative to help our region adapt to change and even thrive long into the future. In striving to protect half of Delmarva by 2030, our approach is to build out our system of hubs and corridors of wildlife habitat to both protect our water quality and allow plants and animals to migrate and evolve as the climate warms. We also will secure our best farmland for growing our food.

Personally, my plan is to keep learning from observation and robust science, to adapt our conservation strategies quickly, and to get outdoors and enjoy the natural world in old and new ways – including fishing for stripers and whatever other species show up in the Bay. I talked with Marquis the other day about Snakeheads and Blue Cats and we both agreed – delicious!

Rob Etgen
President, Eastern Shore Land Conservancy

When the moral perversity of the Hollywood culture-crats is bemoaned by modern liberals, I can’t help but exclaim, in the same way, Dionysus replied to Pentheus in the classic play The Bacchae: wisdom is foolish—most especially to a fool.

How foolish it was to think the very same men who gave us Magic Mike and Bad Moms—obscene filth with degraded trash on nearly every scene—could be paragons of moral virtue. Sleaze is what sleaze does. Only the fool fails to see.

Yet, mugged by recalcitrant reality (to paraphrase Irving Kristol), liberalism’s leading lights now denounce the predations of Harvey Weinstein and similarly sleazy scoundrels. But, I hasten to ask, how can liberals denounce with moral or intellectual consistency the depraved actions of Weinstein and his Hollywood hoodlums yet still praise the vile porn these men push in the malls and cineplexes, from Seattle to Sarasota? They can do so only by becoming even greater fools.

The greatest of fools, in fact.

Indeed, it was Chelsea Clinton’s favorite hack-site, Common Sense Media—a Hollywood-celebrating “review” rag purporting to “improve[e] the media landscape for kids and families”—that suborned moms to see the disgusting skin flick Bad Christmas Moms 2 with their teenage daughters. Yet Chelsea Clinton lionizes the (often quite necessary) #Metoo advocacy ascendant in the cultural zeitgeist.

It’s high time liberals not only decry the sexual perversities of the men who run the Hollywood movie houses, but also decry the very filth these men spew in theatres across the country. To condemn one without the other is to be blind to the toxic culture Hollywood pedals—and the negative consequences the smut they merchandize has on our nation’s moral conscience.

The pop-Media moguls and all the politicos dependent on their ill-gotten cash will no doubt cast me a prude for asserting a tight nexus between the smut these men pander and the vice these ogres live. However, the social science data on mainstream smut is staggering. Social psychologist Ross O’Hara, for example, has documented that highly sexualized content—especially when created or viewed in a mainstream setting and in the normalized context of a close circle of friends—has a powerful impact on one’s sense of propriety and forges sexual scripts in the minds of makers and viewers that heighten risks for aggressive and offensive behavior.

These men on the tops of the Hollywood Hills scarcely do much more than rehash smut upon smut upon smut. That that they should be smutty scumbags themselves only heightens a truism we all used to know, before these Titans of Titillation convinced us otherwise: “monkey see”—your mother, your minister, your teacher knew too well—“monkey do.” Indeed, it was no unctuous preachiness that led St. Paul to instruct all individuals of moral seriousness to “set one’s eyes on higher things.”

Proverbs, moreover, tells us that “doing wrong is like a joke to a fool.” “Oh, it’s all escapist fun; it’s simply raunchy humor”:

The last refuge of a Hollywood porn pusher—and a sexual harasser—or worse. Proverbs, however, also reminds us that “the wise will inherit honor, but fools only get disgrace.”

Better words scarcely have been spoken.

Joseph Prud’homme is a professor at Washington College, and founder of the school’s Institute for the Study of Religion, Politics, and Culture. He lives with his wife and family in Easton, Maryland. 

If you’re not yet worried about Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s abandonment of Smart Growth, you might want to read a new study on how Dumb Growth could cost Frederick County taxpayers some half a billion bucks.

First, a brief Smart Growth primer (which was once available on the Maryland Department of Planning’s website — until the website and department became a joke under Hogan): Smart Growth is the antithesis of sprawl, which is development outside areas planned and built for growth. Sprawl gobbles open space, increases air and water pollution, and costs more in new services than it ever offsets with taxes from new residents.

Sprawl, or Dumb Growth, can work politically, though, at least for a while. You just call it Economic Growth, or just Growth, which sounds fine to many people, especially bankers and developers and pavers and homebuilders — all of whom are good at electing candidates who’ll butter their bread.

That’s the way it worked in Frederick County for several years, until a more progressive slate of county officials took over in 2015 and began toting up the cost of “progress” under the former regime.

An August 2017 report done for Jan Gardner, the county executive, examined developments in the pipeline that will create 21,000 new housing units in the county, adding 50,000 new residents, 10,000 of them school age.

The fiscal bottom line: Taxpayers will fork out $340 million for roads and another $167 million for schools beyond anything that was planned or budgeted for, the county spokesman said.

A number of these developments also lock the county into agreements for up to 25 years, so that even if zoning gets stricter or developer fees are raised, the presently approved growth remains exempt.

The Frederick experience illustrates the perils of poorly planned residential growth, as well as the fallacy of believing it generates enough new revenue in property taxes to outweigh the demands it makes on government services.

This was one of the reasons that Maryland, under Gov. Parris Glendening in the 1990s, became a pioneer in pushing Smart Growth. Martin O’Malley, who preceded Hogan as governor, added teeth to Smart Growth in 2012 with a landmark law sharply limiting new development in areas that are predominantly farm and forest.
That law did not literally usurp traditional county power over land use; rather it dramatically curtailed, across rural landscapes, the use of septic tanks, on which sprawl development depends.

The law in recent years has begun to make a difference, and a major reason was the vigilance and “jawboning” of the Department of Planning, combined with the assistance it provided to counties in complying.

That threatens to unravel under Hogan, who announced in August to the Maryland Association of Counties that “Plan Maryland,” as O’Malley’s version of Smart Growth was called, “is off the books.” He was putting land use “back into the hands of local authorities,” Hogan said to applause.

The governor has also made it easier to develop using septic tanks again and given Cecil County a pass on complying with the 2012 anti-sprawl law.

He has not overtly tried to repeal the law itself, but in addition to Cecil, at least three more of Maryland’s 23 counties — Wicomico, Allegany and Queen Anne’s — have adopted plans or are pushing developments counter to the law.

But nothing is stopping any county whose citizens want to grow smartly. Charles County in Southern Maryland is a shining example after a six-year campaign to overturn a ruinous development plan.

As of 2016, Charles finalized a plan that stopped an estimated 339 major subdivisions on septic across 88,000 acres of open space. It also stopped about 123 new subdivisions in watersheds designated high water quality.

The new plan finally protects Mattawoman Creek, one of the Chesapeake’s best fish habitats; saves an estimated $2 billion on new roads; and cuts projected population growth in the next 30 years from 75,000 to 37,000.

Several Maryland counties have excellent compliance with the anti-sprawl law, while several others remain a mixed bag. For information on your county, contact 1000 Friends of Maryland, a statewide environmental land use group.

Rating Gov. Hogan environmentally is complicated by the reality that he is a tree hugger compared with national Republicans and the Trump administration, which set the lowest of bars.

He’s been good by any measure in important areas like Program Open Space, the state’s premier land preservation effort, and in aspects of air quality, such as greenhouse gas reductions. His transportation programs, though, remain far too road-improvement oriented, as opposed to pushing mass transit and mobility.

His environmental secretary, Ben Grumbles, gets high marks from environmentalists. His natural resources secretary, Mark Belton, might be good if nastier Hogan appointees would butt out of managing Bay fisheries.

The governor got a “needs improvement” grade on his 2017 report card from the Maryland League of Conservation voters; that’s the next to lowest of five ratings the group gives.

Hogan remains popular and has a good shot at re-election in 2018. But if the housing economy picks up, I fear a return to major sprawl development. In his re-election bid, the governor will face tougher questions about Smart Growth than he’s gotten so far.

Tom Horton has written about Chesapeake Bay for more than 40 years, including eight books. He lives in Salisbury, where he is also a professor of Environmental Studies at Salisbury University. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the Bay Journal.

Contemplating the Middle East writ large or even its component countries tends to be a short-lived experience for most Americans. We inwardly shudder at the inexplicability of these places and the “rationality” of their populations’ suicidal urges. We remember our 8 years in Iraq and the heavy US human and financial costs paid (4500 KIA, 33,000 WIA, $1.1 trillion), and the absence of “success”. And since 2011, the Syrian Civil War complicated by the presence of various vicious groups like ISIS, Al Qaeda etc who kill and destroy ostensibly for religious and ethnic reason, defies our minds. Some authorities say easy sex, power and lots of money are also involved and that is understandable.

In Syria, it’s a case of a dictator desperate to remain in power who is willing to kill some 500,000 of his own people and destroy their economy and much of their cultural and historic heritage, to do so. After Ukraine, Russia saw an opportunity to expand its influence in the Middle East, demonstrate its intimidating military prowess and restore the glory of the Soviet Empire. Assad and Putin’s motivations are not difficult to grasp.

When confronted with a jumble of impenetrable puzzles or a problem with multiple moving parts, it’s easier to break them apart and focus on a single element and learn enough to proceed.

In terms of the Middle East, Aleppo, Syria’s former largest city is an excellent starting point.

Aleppo: The Reality Show

The death, destruction and human experience in Aleppo have become the narrative and image for the entire Middle East. Daily we see and hear grieving fathers holding their dead children and screaming at the pain of a lost son or daughter; we see brave men digging through the rubble to rescue or remove the survivors or more often, the dead. We learn how many cluster bombs were dropped, hospitals and schools in ruins and always the mounting daily toll. We are exposed to the doctors, nurses and support staff who chose to remain at great risk, but in declining numbers, to care for the victims. And always, we’re told there is little food or potable water or safe shelter.
This in microcosm, is the reality of lives across the Middle East, albeit to different degrees with idiosyncratic back stories and different adjectives and adverbs describing the people involved. However, the human emotions, suffering and lost history, memories and faded futures are all much the same.

If you think Chicago instead of Aleppo and imagine its residents – Americans – subjected to this same level of misery amid the ruins of the city’s landmarks, we come closer to understanding what is happening to people like us, except people who unfortunately live in Aleppo, not Chestertown or Easton.

Aleppo’s Next Season

Aleppo, as was Berlin, is now divided between East (regime controlled) and West (insurgents). The current devastation from the air, will likely soon add another more dangerous dimension: ground and tank attack. Large Syrian army forces and armor with their Russian advisors surround the city (10/16). How this situation will unfold is unknown, though it promises more civilian suffering and distress. It took 45 years after the final assault, for Berlin to emerge united and whole. And, for Aleppo?

Tom Timberman is an expert on military policy and now lives on the Eastern Shore. Among his many assignments with the US Department of State, he has headed a provincial reconstruction team, embedded within a combat brigade in Iraq. He has also helped implement a new counterterrorism strategy in South East Asia as Senior Advisor for South Asia in the Office of Coordinator for Counterterrorism.

 

Maybe Donald Trump is right: The system is rigged. For proof, look at how interest groups are feverishly trying to “rig” Maryland’s choice of authorized marijuana growers and processorsThe Black Legislative Caucus wants to “rig” the selection procedure so that people of color get their share (and more) of the lucrative payoff from legalized pot-growing, despite their lack of high rankings in the objective selection process.

Others recently got the system “rigged” in a way that denies licenses to a few top-ranked growers who were chosen on merit. Instead, lesser-rated groups in politically sensitive geographic areas were awarded this rich financial prize.

Picking the best, most qualified growers gave way to political “rigging” of the system.

So much for the commission’s carefully planned “double-blind” selection procedure designed to remove political favoritism and eliminate any hint of subjective bias.

Guarding against tainted results

This well-established, scientific method works beautifully in drug-testing and picking the most skilled musicians for the Baltimore Symphony. So why not use this proven way to guard against tainted results in the state’s effort to find the best and most capable cannabis growers and processors?

Silly idea. An honest evaluation of the applicants proved too much for state politicians and lobbyists. Their favored applicants failed to make the cut.

Suddenly, criticism rained down on the medical marijuana commission. The cry went out: Bring back Maryland’s spoils system.

“This is a good modern-day civil rights fight,” said Del. Cheryl Glenn, who chairs the Legislative Black Caucus.

Well. . . that’s a stretch.

It’s an effort to ensure that already financially well-off minorities get a slice of the action – regardless of their capabilities for handling the growing, processing and distribution of medical marijuana.

After all, this is expected to be a national multi-billion-dollar business.

To heck with selecting the most qualified cannabis growers. What Maryland needs is some good old favoritism!

Merit selection process

The commission tried its best to keep politics out of its decision-making. It came up with a way of choosing winning applicants that was devoid of political pressure and influence-peddling – a double-blind ranking system conducted by an outside group.

Applicants’ names, and their investors’ names, were removed from proposals so the rankings would be based entirely on merit.

It turned out, though, that none of the applications submitted by minority-controlled companies ranked high enough to gain a cultivation license. That’s when impartiality and merit-selection went out the window.

Attorney General Brian Frosh, in an incredibly two-faced action, contradicted his own assistant attorney general and other higher-ups in his agency, who had concluded the commission could not legally tilt the playing field.

Frosh rallied to the side of the Black Caucus. Gov. Larry Hogan expressed concern, too. Word came down from on high: Work something out.

Oh, well, so much for a color-blind government that allows only the best-qualified cannabis cultivators and processors to ply their trade in Maryland.

Gift-wrapped permits

The commission quickly buckled under the pressure.

In August, the panel stripped two winning companies of their licenses not because they had done something wrong but because one commissioner argued there wasn’t enough “geographic diversity” among authorized growers.

Lower-scoring applicants with more politically acceptable locations were gift-wrapped these valuable permits.

Not surprisingly, the disqualified applicants are threatening to sue. More litigation is inevitable.

If the Black Caucus succeeds in pulling the licenses of other applicants for the sake of diversity – or gets the entire process re-started – we’ll have enough legal action to set back the cause of medicinal marijuana for a long time.

Yet while minority groups fight for a bigger slice of the cannabis windfall, sick and terminally ill patients in excruciating pain are denied the relief cannabis might provide.

No one seems agitated about that. Mammon rules the day.

It’s a royal mess.

Politicians get involved

Years ago, attempts in Maryland to “rig” the system sent a vice president into shameful exile and a governor and several county executives to prison. The quest for money can be a corrupting influence.

So it is with legalizing medical marijuana – at least in Maryland.

Choosing the people who will grow marijuana plants and turn them into safe medicinal products is serious business. It seemed to make sense to pick them based purely on expertise and merit.

But not to the b’hoys in Annapolis.

So now politicians have their hands in the action. The result could be lengthy delays and a more expansive and pliable process that allows Maryland’s spoils system to work its magic.

Is an impartial, unbiased selection system about to be manipulated for the benefit of lesser-qualified applicants who have friends in high places?

You don’t need to be Donald Trump to answer that question.