Posts by Keir Leslie
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false equivalences
Pot. Kettle. Black. You know the rest.
"What is the compelling state interest to be advanced by giving associations of students the power to compel others to join them?
The advancement of knowledge and the dissemination and maintenance thereof by teaching and research is I believe the standard terminology.
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No.
So, erm, what difference does it make that Oxford used exclude dissenters? I am not arguing that Oxford did x therefore x is good; I am arguing that Oxford (and a whole bunch of other universities) did x (or rather x-like things), and that x has been proven by experience to be a good thing, therefore x is good.
The second part doesn't apply to the exclusion of dissenters, so I really don't see the relevance at all. And I also don't see how your argument (?) doesn't also apply to exams, lectures, degrees, and the whole apparatus of higher education.
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As Hadyn pointed out, I was talking about physical moves.
No, you asked if there was etc. which, yeah, there is. Have you looked at what actually happens when a team goes up or down? Suddenly the amount of money available massively changes, and they buy up or sell-off accordingly, as a rule, which is what I thought was the idea: the NPC union forms the nucleus, then expands, not that the Hurricanes would just move to Palmy and start wearing green and white, which, yeah, would be daft.
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No, Keir, its a reminder that people who want to appeal to historical authority really shouldn't treat history as a row of bulk bins where you can cherry pick the sweeties you like, and ignore the rest.
So, what, the assertion is that all appeals to historical authority are flawed? Because I did propose a mechanism for distinguishing things like exams and students' associations from the exclusion of dissenters and women, so you might want to argue with that instead of pretending I'm making a undifferentiated appeal to precedent (I leave that to Tories.)
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As I pointed out upthread, "historically" Oxford and many other universities have chosen to exclude women, place a religious qualification on admission, and required dons to be unmarried and at least ostensibly celibate. I think anyone who tried to justify any of the above on historical grounds would get extremely short shift.
Also historically Oxford has handed out degrees on the basis of sitting exams. This is an utterly specious argument, unless you want to utterly remove self-government for universities*. The above were gross violations of human rights that served no good purpose, whereas student associations and exams aren't gross violations of human rights, and serve a good purpose.
* Which, er, I suppose you could, but I don't think would be a very good idea. Universities aren't the state.
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But if I want to get a degree from VUW, I have to be a member of VUW. If I want to get a degree from VUW, I also have to be a member of VUWSA*. Why is it legitimate to require one but not the other?
I don't see that your argument answers that to be honest, but that could just be me not getting it.
* Bless their little Marxists souls.
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I would like to see a serious argument that deals with the fact that universities are fundamentally associations & all the arguments against CSM also apply to universities full stop.
I dunno; it seems to me that there's a conceptual difference about what it means to be at an university.
I think that if you removed the concept of being a member of a university you would lose quite a bit more than just some dignity. This applies especially to current students; if you've got a BA from Victoria, meh, I don't see that it makes much odds if you are a member of the university or not.
But if you are getting that BA, I think that it is important that you be a member of the university, that ultimately the association of students is at the heart of the institution. (Again, what were Cambridge, Padua, Bologna originally? Associations of students.)
And, yes, that means forced association, like you get forced to attend lectures, and forced to sit exams.
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who are a business, not a publicly owned enterprise
No, they're an incorporated society, not a business. The overly corporate approach to rugby is part of the problem.
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I have no problem with private universities saying that their students association is compulsory - in fact the bill accounts for this.
Which would also apply to being a member of the university, which is kind of fundamental to the idea of a university (cf. Cambridge, Bologna, Padua etc), which rather suggests this argument proves too much.
(& the distinction between public and private in terms of a university is a bit suspicious; is Oxford a public university?)
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Find me a multi-million dollar business with about 40 staff that moves every year depending on whether some other business has done well.
The Premier League does something pretty similar, as does almost every other football league in existence, including the Champions League.