RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to a student at California State Polytechnic University–Pomona, trying to give a classmate a ride to their car so you can get their parking spot is rape culture.

In an op-ed for the Poly Post, the school’s official newspaper, Editor-in-Chief Adrian Danganan admits that commuting to the campus “has never been more difficult” because “parking is becoming increasingly sparse.”

She explains that “students are struggling to find suitable methods ” to find a spot to park to attend class, and that some have resorted to offering departing classmates rides in order to take their spots when they leave.

But this method, according to Danganan, is far from “suitable.”

Now, she starts off by explaining that it’s generally a bad idea to get into a stranger’s car — which is a totally fair argument. She quickly goes from reasonable to ridiculous, however, when she writes that “pressuring a pedestrian to enter a vehicle only encourages idiosyncrasies that attribute [sic] to rape culture.”

(Yikes! I guess these students would be better off missing class entirely. They might fail out of school, but at least they wouldn’t be contributing to a culture of sexual assault!)

Now, Danagan does concede that “this seems radical and outlandish,” but explains that she’s actually totally right because “trying to ease someone or even guilt him or her in to [sic] doing so is almost like sweet-talking to get what is desired.”

A student at the University of California–Santa Barbara had to deal with someone threatening to stab him because he dared to write an op-ed with a conservative point of view.

Jason Garshfield wrote a piece in the Daily Nexus, the school’s official newspaper, criticizing the Department of Feminist Studies.

Basically, Garshfield’s piece argued that the department violated the the University of California Regents Policy 3201, which forbids using the classroom “for political indoctrination.” He explained that he himself once took a course in the department, and that it promoted ideas such as gender as a social construct and the “recognition of male privilege,” and that the lessons were taught as fact without giving students the opportunity to contest or debate them.

“How can an academic department which is explicitly named after a political movement possibly claim to be ‘aloof from politics?’” Garshfield asked. “Imagine how you would feel if there was a Department of Objectivist Studies at UCSB. The department was dedicated to promoting Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. All of the professors were Objectivists, and students in the department were taught heavy doses of Objectivism without being exposed to a single dissenting opinion. Would you consider such a department to be ‘an instrument for the advance of partisan interest?’ You probably would.”

Clarity!” has been the battle cry of the EPA over the last year as it put the final touches on its expansive and overreaching definition of “waters of the United States” (or “WOTUS”). And yet, a week after the final rule was published, the only clarity the EPA has provided is its intent to snatch up every piece of land that can channel, pool, or absorb water and include it within its newly minted jurisdiction.

The effects of this rule are both far-reaching and disastrous. Tributaries make up only one aspect of this unconstitutional overhaul of the Clean Water Act, but they provide useful insight into the impractical mind of the EPA.

The amended definition of a “tributary” will expand the EPA’s dominion to ephemeral flows — or, as an ordinary person might know them, dry lands where water sometimes flows after heavy rains — as well as many common drainage ditches. If a tributary contributes any flow at all, regardless of frequency or volume, to a downstream water, it is now within the EPA’s purview.

Practically, this means that the average drainage ditch, the channels between rows of planted crops, and the land beneath the crudely formed streams from the torrential rains that carried away portions of central Texas over the last several weeks are now all subject to federal jurisdiction if water from them can be carried downstream at any point. To build one’s home, to plant crops as a means of livelihood, to erect a fence or build a road, the average person will now need to seek a permit from the Corps of Engineers.