JH, I’m sorry you hate Harding so much. Obviously that affects how you view points and respond to things. I hate to hear that.

Also, I have seen the same comment by an anonymous poster at various sights saying that Elrod “supported” gay marriage, just because he didn’t decry it as the end of western civilization.

http://www.matthewsblog.waynesborochurchofchrist.org

1) w/regards to Matt’s “why did you stay if it sucks so bad” question: There’s any number of reasons why someone might stay at HU when they hate it. Changing colleges is not always possible for a variety of reasons including financial, familial, and academic. Even when it’s possible, it’s never simple. In my case, I came to hate the place toward the end of my sophomore year, but I stayed and graduated anyway because a) leaving HU would deeply disappoint my parents b) I was majoring in Biblical Languages c) I had a good group of friends. As for why I continue to engage in the school’s life through blogs, it’s because HU is intertwined with my own family’s history. Even though I think the place is awful, it’s still “family,” and I’ll always be interested in what’s going on there.

2) w/regards to Roland’s comment in #40 and elsewhere: Well, I’ll just take this sentence by sentence. Do many of these folks think that Harding is perfect? That it is some utopia? Every college has issues. Yes, but some colleges have more issues than others. This is a strawman. No one has contended HU should be a utopia or perfect. What’s so funny, these people ripping on Harding and so forth yet their enrollment just keeps going up and up every year. This is true in the literal sense, but the rise in enrollment is due to all the new graduate programs, most of which have poor admission standards and very little rigour. In other words, they’re cash cows. Undergraduate enrollment has actually been going down for the last several years. They keep churning out highly successful people, year after year. I’m not sure what you intend to prove by saying this. It would be really surprising if a school which handed out hundreds of degrees every single year didn’t have some successful alumni. Peoples’ success in life depends on a huge variety of factors, of which undergraduate education is only one. Mark Elrod chooses to keep working there year after year. In fact, he always talks about what a great job he has. If Harding is so bad, why is he still there? Well obviously he doesn’t think it’s so bad. In fact, he thinks his job is so great, as you said. What’s your point here?

I don’t know why he banned you from his blog. But judging by your comments, it might have a lot to do with your argumentation tactics. The internet is full of this kind of stuff, and everyone does it to some extent, but I’ve hardly seen so many straw men, ad hominems, non-sequiturs, false dichotomies, etc. You also have a tendency to throw people into “liberal” and “conservative” camps and then slap a bunch of lame stereotypes onto them. Disentangling all this stuff is tedious work, and it’s easier most of the time just to mock people who do this, (or in ME’s case, ban them) rather than spend way too much time sorting through their “arguments.”

Jerri – That about sums it up.