Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
My husband and I are recent graduates of the same highly selective private college, which shall remain nameless. Their alumni newsletters provide comedy gold.
Highlights from the latest edition:
[REDACTED] is an organizer with Milk Not Jails, a grassroots campaign working to build a new urban-rural alliance in New York.
From their website:
Milk Not Jails is an economic alternative to the prison industry. We are a dairy marketing and distribution co-operative and we are a political campaign building an alliance for a sustainable and just regional economy. We are building a regional economy that depends on bringing city residents local, healthy food, not locking them up.
We know that imprisonment hurts communities. Increased incarceration undermines local networks, increases crime and juvenile delinquency, and causes a decrease in everything from public health to housing values to political participation. And we know that dairy farms need help from consumers and policy-makers to succeed.
I'm not clear on how local milk is going to solve armed robbers terrorizing their neighbors. In fact, thinking about it makes my head hurt. Pity my expensive education didn't teach me how to resolve this...
In other news, they are soliciting donations for:
The other exciting thing on campus is the growing movement by the students to start a farm on campus. Students are raising funds from family and friends (and alumni/ae...again, call me) to match funds from the College. As spring nears, time is of the essence. This will be a farm program that is practical and academic, on the ground and in the classroom
My husband is an immigrant from what is tactfully called a "developing country" and I can't wait to tell my in laws, who grew up on rubber plantations, that after working their fingers to the bone for two decades to get their son to a top American school, students there can look forward to...being farmers again. (Not that there's anything wrong with being a farmer, but does it require a $200,000 education? Is this a wise use of donor dollars or what are supposedly the best and brightest youth in the country?)
On a lighter note, please enjoy the song which provides this post its title.
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Sep '11
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
Perhaps the "farm" will help students realize how difficult it actually is to grow your own food. If we truly had to rely on ourselves for the food we eat, we would be working, as your inlaws did, 12-16 hours a day. One good thing that might come out of that would be the falling away of the academic. We wouldn't have time to worry about incarceration rates if we all had to work that hard just to survive.
God granted us great minds like Norman Borlaug so humans could have the luxury to send people to $200,000 schools and navel gaze and not fight every day for basic necessities.
Mar '12
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
Perhaps the "farm" will help students realize how difficult it actually is to grow your own food...We wouldn't have time to worry about incarceration rates if we all had to work that hard just to survive.
God granted us great minds like Norman Borlaug so humans could have the luxury to send people to $200,000 schools and navel gaze...
Here's what gets me. If my kid wanted to be a farmer, I'd send them to a good, solid agricultural school or apprentice them to a farmer. Farming is good, respectable, decent work.
This isn't what my college wants--they want a farm for rich kids to play in. It's Waldorf schooling for grownups, or Hameau de la Reine, where Marie Antoinette would escape the cares of court to play at being a shepherdess.
You're right, farming is hard work. My in-laws used to tell my husband he'd be back on the farm if he didn't study hard enough.
Borlaug is my hero.
May '10
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
These liberals do know that milk comes from eeeeeeeeeevil greenhouse gas-inducing cows, don't they? Reform the street thug into an environmental terrorist?
Mar '12
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
I see your photoshop and raise you a relevant song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nniSuXSFifE
Sep '11
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
Speaking on behalf of the Ricochet Rural Coalition Working Group Steering Committee:
The Milk Not Jails guys are making a big logical mistake. They claim that locating jails in rural counties does not provide the jobs or economic growth promised.
In fact, they do. Decades of economic decline in Mitchell County, Georgia (where my in-laws live) were slowed, and reversed, with the construction of a large medium-security state prison. The prison employs hundreds of local residents.
And many of those prison employees actually do farm. There is a small, and shrinking number of people who farm as their principal source of income--and a much larger number who have a day job, and farm a few hundred acres as a reasonably-lucrative second job. (And if you're going to farm that way, a government job is perfect. Predictable hours, terrific benefits, absolute stability.)
Judging by their web site links, the Milk Not Jails types are way more focused on jails than dairy farming. My guess is that they know bupkis about what farming actually entails.
(For the record, I am a card-carrying 4-H leader.)
Edited on March 22, 2012 at 8:22pmFeb '11
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
Madcap
This isn't what my college wants--they want a farm for rich kids to play in. It's Waldorf schooling for grownups, or Hameau de la Reine, where Marie Antoinette would escape the cares of court to play at being a shepherdess.
In light of subsequent events it seems the peasants were not amused by this mockery.
And I suspect, somehow, that this "growing movement" to build and work on a farm isn't driven by the students or their parents.
But I also suspect- no offense, Madcap- that at some point one of the graduates of this play-farm is going to decide he or she is qualified to give orders to actual farmers about how they should run their farms.
It's not about actual knowledge. It's about the credential. So too often these rich kids show up at a fancy school, drink beer for four years, and graduate with a degree bestowing membership to the social elite, and not much else.
This reminds me of what I've read about the social structure of the late Roman empire, and not in a good way.
Edited on March 22, 2012 at 9:05pmApr '11
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
When I was 12, I grew wheat at my boarding school. We sowed it by hand, fenced it in, harvested it with a sickle, winnowed it, ground it (with partially hand made stone mills) and eventually baked it. It was an unbelievable amount of work to make that bread, and there wasn't all that much of it, despite repeatedly doubling the quantities by matching the our product at a particular stage with an equal quantity of commercially purchased wheat, grain, and flour.
The absolutely astonishing abundance of capitalism was thereby drilled into me. Although this was not my socialist teacher's intent, that class still forms an important part of my faith, my politics, and my understanding of the world. Dairy farming seems like it'd offer less benefit, since you're not having to grow the feed; not a lot of labor involved. Still, I look forward to my kids doing whatever 4H activities can be worked into their urban lives, and perhaps finding a way of renting a small field or garden and growing wheat with them some day.
Feb '11
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
John Murdoch:
Judging by their web site links, the Milk Not Jails types are way more focused on jails than dairy farming. My guess is that they know bupkis about what farming actually entails.
Without having looked at the website, I'll take a guess at what the Milk Not Jail types figure farming entails: They get to tell other people what to do.
And if those people don't do what they're told they either get sent away to jail or get expelled from school.
I suppose this was just the closest they could manage to get to establishing the Soviet Union on American soil.
So far, at least.
Mar '12
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
John Murdoch has some good points I'd like to expand on.
Farming as farming is extremely hard work and the ability to get out extra energy in actually creating something with your hands can be a great benefit to troublesome young men. My dad is a Wisconsin farmer and routinely employs young, college-age fellows who have had run-ins with the law for drugs or other misdemeanors like shoplifting. The work and company very often does them real good. Young men need to learn to put in a serious day of work, and farming is nothing if not serious work. It helps settle them and, dare I say, "ground" them.
The problem with this advertisement is probably the salvific nature these eco-farmers expect. Troubled populations are hard to work with, and self-righteous political screeds aren't going to help them. I think part of the benefit for these young men is working so closely with my dad, a real man if there ever was one.
--Joy
Edited on March 22, 2012 at 9:18pmJun '10
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
Madcap: In other news, they are soliciting donations for:
I grew up on a real farm. I wouldn't trade by growing up years for anything, but farming is hard work. My Dad and Mom worked long hours for modest returns. They sent me and my brother to college so we wouldn't have to farm.
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
I expecting the Milk Not Jails description to discuss how they employ at risk youth to produce, sell, and deliver dairy products so as to keep them from committing crimes and offer them valuable skills.
Not so.
They simply deliver milk to city residents. End of story. I'm confused.
Aug '10
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
Moooove on folks .Bloomberg will kill this idea in it's crib.
EJ Hill, call your agent and chief propulsion engineer, Jeff Immelt wants to buy you a steak dinner .
Edited on March 23, 2012 at 1:51amFeb '12
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
Diane, I think the idea is this:
Jails provide financial benefits to NY State communities.
Jails are bad.
Instead, NY State communities should sell milk!
As far as I can tell, no milk is being delivered or sold at this time. Instead there is a "working group" that is "creating a cooperative business for dairy farmers, and eventually other types of farmers, to sell their products through the MILK NOT JAILS brand. Farmers will continue to produce their goods individually, but the cooperative will market, brand, and distribute the cooperative’s products to consumers." And also a working group that is "researching opportunities for the dairy marketing cooperative to sell products to CSAs, day cares, coffee shops, and supportive housing units."
So no cows get milked, no milk gets sold, and no one does anything that is by any measure productive. But they talk a lot and have Positions on things.
Apr '11
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
If you discovered Tom Lehrer during your college years, the time was not a waste.
Nov '10
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
The organizers of Milk...will fail a drug test.
Jul '11
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
Xennady, you are dead on with this bogus intelligensia wreaking havoc upon actual farmers in the future.
Jan '11
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
No system of Socialist governance could possibly considered complete without some way to show the New American Children just how thoroughly the kulaks have been cowed and brow-beaten into submission. And what better way than to force the socially criminal kulaks to employ the criminally criminal criminals who were, after all, only responding to the economically unjust capitalistic oppression of the working classes by the bourgeoisie in the only way the poor, exploited masses possibly could? Throw some environmental justice in there in the form of the locally-sourced milk and you have a perfect Socialist's trifecta!
¡Viva la Revolución!
Jul '10
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
I'll wager they don't know much about jails, either.
Feb '11
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
That is comedy gold. But it does leave one with an existensial question: why are so many supposedly "smart" people so dumb? Seriously, why?
Edited on March 23, 2012 at 4:14pmMay '10
Re: Bright College Days, oh Carefree Days That Fly
"We know that imprisonment hurts communities. Increased incarceration undermines local networks, increases crime and juvenile delinquency, and causes a decrease in everything from public health to housing values to political participation. And we know that dairy farms need help from consumers and policy-makers to succeed."
Such blather. How do these milk-duds empirically "know" any of these assertions? What about the costs of crime that are paid in increased fear, violence, loss of property and economic opportunity in the communities these genius' claim to be helping? More incarceration for lawbreakers is a more effective and humane remedy for the ills these goodists seek to cure.