
The Worst Colleges in America - ksvs
http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/08/worst_colleges_in_america_2008_part_1_01.php
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gaius
I'm not sure that's a fair criticism of Hamburger U. Isn't it really just a
training facility for McDonald's managers? As far as I know a) it has no
pretensions of being a real college and b) McDonald's is a wildly successful
global corporation, they must be doing _something_ right.

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irinotecan
I heard from a non-Mormon who went to BYU and said the intolerance there was
so awful, that students would walk up to you and ask, "Are you a Mormon?" and
if you said no, they would just walk away like you didn't even exist.

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sofal
Disclaimer: I don't speak for BYU.

I went to BYU. I'm sorry to hear that your friend had that kind of experience.
I believe that everyone I went to school with would have considered that very
intolerant and rude indeed. I hope that's far from the experience of all
students there who aren't LDS.

Some of the points in the blurb about BYU are accurate, but some are
misleading and false. BYU is a private religious institution, and it therefore
has stricter rules about conduct, appearance, and behavior. These rules,
together called the "Honor Code", are accepted by every student before he/she
attends. These standards are a big part of the reason for the students' desire
to attend BYU. Abstaining from tea, coffee, tobacco, alcohol, and illicit
drugs is already part of the LDS belief system. The idea that students are
required to abstain from flirting is ludicrous, and reveals that the author(s)
must either be ignorant or must have misinterpreted their information. There
is no end to flirting at BYU, unless you define flirting to include crudity
and lewdness. "Sexual comments" was an interesting addition to the list. As a
student at BYU, you are expected to use clean language and adhere to high
moral standards, and so I suppose if by "sexual comments" they mean "vulgar or
crass sexual comments" then this is true. These are all things that may
perhaps be labeled as "intolerant" by some, but which I agree with.

The facial hair rule I think is old-fashioned and unnecessary. I and a lot of
others think that blocking YouTube on the campus network is disgusting and
verging on communism (I can't stand forced web filtering of any kind).
Tunneling worked though, and the CS network didn't block YouTube, so that was
nice.

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KirinDave
A cousin of mine explained the dietary restrictions to me. For the full
effect, please indulge me as I enter a brief bit of real dialogue with the
names stripped:

Me: "So how is BYU, _____? Enjoying your first semester away from home?"

Her: "It's great, I'm having a lot of fun. But I don't think you'd like it
very much."

Me: "Why not? I went to college too, you know. Is it because I'm not mormon?"

Her: "There's that." _pauses to open a can of Coke_ "But you're also required
to abstain from things like tea and coffee. You'd have to give up caffeine,
and I know you'd hate that."

Me: _looking pointedly at her can of coke_ "You have to give up drinks with
caffeine in it?"

Her: _pausing again to drink her soda_ "Yes. The Honor Code says we can't
drink tea, coffee or anything with alcohol in it."

Me: "But soda is okay?"

Her: "Yeah, unless it has, like, drugs in it or something."

I checked the BYU website. Coffee and tea are verboten, Soda is not. I even
found pictures of people drinking coke on campus. Way to go, BYU. Your dietary
restrictions are super-good.

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sofal
It does get pretty silly sometimes. There are only a few things that are
"outlawed", and therefore people think that as long as they abstain from those
substances, they're in total compliance with what their religion expects of
them. The root reason of the dietary restrictions is a principle of respecting
the body and keeping it clean, but people misapply it by interpreting it
verbatim and then gorging themselves on junk food, soda, or anything that
isn't healthy but isn't technically "forbidden".

I think it's a good thing that the church doesn't forcefully regulate which
sodas we can or cannot drink, because that would be controlling and
ridiculous. However, these slightly arbitrary rules can end up encouraging a
group of people who do the minimum required just to remain in good social
status. That will be the case anywhere.

Another example of this is R-rated movies. There was a church leader a long
time ago who at one time at a general conference warned against viewing
R-rated movies. This seems perfectly acceptable, except that it ended up
creating an unwritten rule of sorts among LDS members. The principle is that
we should avoid movies that don't meet the standards we're expected to have,
but it inevitably created a group of people who were perfectly okay with
seeing any movie regardless of the content as long as the MPAA didn't put the
magic 'R' on it.

It's hard to know where to draw the line when you know that some people are
just going to get as close to that line as possible. You just hope that most
people are listening to the underlying principles rather than the base
requirements.

I occasionally drink caffeinated sodas if there isn't anything else available.
I don't consider this to be especially damaging to my health. I think that
whether or not I drink a caffeinated beverage has very little or nothing to do
with what I consider to be my spiritual standing.

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KirinDave
> I occasionally drink caffeinated sodas if there isn't anything else
> available. I don't consider this to be especially damaging to my health. I
> think that whether or not I drink a caffeinated beverage has very little or
> nothing to do with what I consider to be my spiritual standing.

The point of my story wasn't to say, "Haha. Here are these goofy mormonians."
I think you can pick out goofballs from any religion. My point was, "Here is
someone going to college that doesn't seem to be able to read the ingredients
on their soda can." Or more directly, "BYU is a school that seems to be
failing at teaching students how to think and reason."

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LogicHoleFlaw
_My point was, "Here is someone going to college that doesn't seem to be able
to read the ingredients on their soda can."_

Ahahahahahahaha. I knew several folks at BYU who could recite, in milligrams,
the caffeine content of various soft drinks. Caffeinated sodas are left to the
discretion of each individual.

I went to both the University of Wisconsin and BYU, and honestly I much more
prefer the atmosphere of "Dr. Pepper as excess" to "Alcohol to excess."

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noelchurchill
I'm from San Diego, and somehow I knew I'd find SDSU in this list!

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etal
With half of College Avenue getting rich off cocaine, yeah, they had this
coming. The 17% four-year graduation rate is impressive, too.

I also remember Chico getting epic on Halloween, until the police cracked down
on it a few years ago.

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fallentimes
Not very empirical but immensely entertaining. The piece on Trump University
alone is worth the read.

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byrneseyeview
The quality of the quotes goes way up for Drexel and Harvey Mudd -- I wonder
if some alumni on the _Radar_ staff couldn't resist a little articulate
bashing of their alma mater.

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noahlt
I'm not sure Harvey Mudd really deserves to be on that list, though.

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byrneseyeview
It wouldn't show up on a list of worst schools by multiple criteria, but I
think that section of the article is _just_ about the appearance of the
campus.

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Prrometheus
My state of California, doing America proud.

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Alex3917
I don't see what the author has against the book Jews Without Money. It's one
of the most important pieces of American literature.

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mroman
Has anyone heard anything positive or negative about Penn Foster College?

