031919 Lakeport City Council agenda packet by LakeCoNews on Scribd

In 1997, my students and I traveled to Croagh Patrick, a mountain in County Mayo, as part of a study abroad program course on Irish literature I was teaching for the University of Dayton. I wanted my students to visit the place where, each July, thousands of pilgrims pay homage to St. Patrick, who, according to lore, fasted and prayed on the summit for 40 days.

While there, our tour guide relayed the story of how St. Patrick, as he lay on his death bed on March 17 in A.D. 461, supposedly asked those gathered around him to toast his heavenly journey with a “wee drop of whiskey” to ease their pain.

The mention of whiskey left me wondering if St. Patrick may have unintentionally influenced the way most of the world celebrates the holiday today: by drinking.

It wasn’t always this way. The Festival of St. Patrick began in the 17th century as a religious and cultural commemoration of the bishop who brought Christianity to Ireland. In Ireland, there’s still an important religious and cultural component to the holiday, even as it has simply become an excuse to wear green and heavily drink in the rest of the world.

The legend of St. Patrick

Because historical details about St. Patrick’s life remain shrouded in speculation, scholars are often stymied in their attempts to separate fact from legend.

In his spiritual memoir, “Confessio,” St. Patrick describes how he was brought to Ireland as a slave. He eventually escaped, rejoining his family in Britain, probably Scotland. But while there, he had a recurring dream, in which the “Voice of the Irish” called to him to return to Ireland in order to baptize and minister to them. So he did.

The Irish revere the account of this dream described in the “Confessio”; they accept the simplicity and fervor of his words and feel a debt of gratitude for his unselfish commitment to their spiritual well-being.

St. Patrick’s efforts to convert the Irish to Catholicism were never easy. Viewing him as a challenge to their power and authority, the high kings of Ireland and the pagan high priests, called Druids, resisted his efforts to make inroads with the population.

But through his missionary zeal, he was able to fuse Irish culture into Christianity, whether it was through the introduction of the Celtic Cross or the use of bonfires to celebrate feasts like Easter.

Again, many of these stories could amount to no more than myth. Nonetheless, centuries after his death, the Irish continue to show their gratitude for their patron saint by wearing a spray of shamrocks on March 17. They start the day with mass, followed by a daylong feast, and prayer and reflection at night.

St. Paddy’s Day goes global

From 1820 to 1860, almost 2 million people left Ireland, many due to the potato famine in the 1840s and 1850s. More followed in the 20th century to reunite with relatives and escape poverty and joblessness back home.

Once settled, they found new ways to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and their Irish identity in their new homes.

Irish-Americans, especially, were quick to transform March 17 into a commercial enterprise. The mandatory “wearin’ of the green” in all its garishness is a far cry from the original tradition of wearing a spray of shamrocks to honor St. Patrick’s death and celebrate Irish solidarity. Parades famously sprung up – especially in New York and Boston – revelry ensued and, sure enough, even the beer became green.

Children of Irish-Americans in the United States have absorbed Irish culture at a distance. Many probably know that St. Patrick is Ireland’s patron saint. But they might not fully appreciate his mythic stature for kids growing up on the emerald isle.

Ask children of any age in Ireland what they know about St. Patrick, and they will regale you with stories of his magical abilities, from his power to drive the snakes out of Ireland to his use of the three leaves and one stem of the shamrock to demystify the Trinity doctrine of the Catholic Church.

They see St. Patrick as a miracle worker, and as adults, they keep the legends alive in their own ways. Some follow St. Patrick’s footsteps all around Ireland – from well to hill to alter to chapel – seeking his blessing and bounty wherever their journeys take them.

Raising a glass

Of course, in America, the holy day is really a party, above all else.

This year, Americans are expected to spend US$5.61 billion celebrating, with 13 million pints of Guinness consumed. Some parts of the country plan a pre-celebration on Sept. 17 – or, as they call it, “Halfway to St. Patrick’s Day.”

Where all of this leads is anyone’s guess. But beginning in the 1990s, Ireland seemed to grasp the earning potential of the Americanized version. Today, March 17 remains a holy day for the natives and a holiday for tourists from around the world, with pubs raking in the euros on St. Patrick’s Day.

But I’ve always wondered: What if St. Patrick had requested a silent prayer instead of “a wee drop of whiskey” to toast his passing? Would his celebration have stayed more sacred than profane?

James Farrelly, Professor of English, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The most damaging myth in American higher education is that college admissions is about merit, and that merit is about striving for – and earning – academic excellence. This myth is often used as a weapon against policies like affirmative action that offer minor admissions advantages to low-income students and racial and ethnic minorities.

From our standpoint as education researchers who specialize in college admissions, what counts in practice as “merit” is more complicated than the public thinks. For universities, building a student body is not only about identifying the most academically accomplished students. Universities also rely on offices of admissions to protect their financial bottom lines and to project a certain image.

The deck is stacked in favor of affluent parents who use their privilege and exploit these institutional needs to find their children a way into elite colleges.

The outrage at the admissions scandal that came to light this month in which affluent parents allegedly used fraudulent means to get their children accepted to high-profile universities, including our own school, is well justified. But in our view, there should be just as much outrage over the many ways that already “disadvantaged” students are further disadvantaged when wealthy families do things to protect their competitive advantage in the college admissions process.

A range of practices worth questioning

At one end of the continuum are the kind of parenting practices that are ethically sound, like enrichment activities for children, which affluent parents are spending more for as of late.

Meanwhile, spending on lower-income kids has barely budged. This practice by middle-upper class parents gives their children tangible advantages, such as stronger resumes. It also gives them unseen advantages, such as self-confidence and comfort in dealing with authority figures like coaches, doctors and professors.

Research by sociologist Annette Lareau shows that children of working-class parents often are not raised to unlock these kinds of hidden advantages.

Test prep

The next step on the continuum is more ethically suspect. It demonstrates the fine line between gaming the system and good parenting. Affluent parents spend big on test preparation for SAT/ACT exams, coaching on admissions essays and sessions with high-priced college admissions consultants. No one blames parents for seeking advantages for their children, but these kinds of behaviors amount to a smokescreen because they make applicants appear stronger without actually improving their skills and abilities.

Backdoors

One step further are backdoor admissions processes that are legal and common, but which only the well-connected know about, often because of the close relationships between selective college admissions offices and the elite high schools where these students enroll. One example is early decision programs, which often offer substantial increases in the likelihood of admission. But people have to know about and understand the advantages that come from the early decision programs to take advantage of them, as well as have the money to commit to the school. Less affluent families, who need to compare financial offers, can rarely make such early commitments, because they would have to accept whatever financial aid offer was made by their accepting institution.

Spring admits

Another example is the so-called spring admit, which colleges use to game U.S. News rankings. In this scheme, colleges admit students with weaker qualifications – often affluent students and athletes – on the condition that they defer their admission to the spring after they graduate high school, rather than enrolling immediately in the fall. The spring admission enables colleges not to count weaker students in their admitted class for ranking purposes.

Donations

Even the notorious “wealthy donor” route – imagine a prospective student’s family giving a large donation – falls into the category of legal but ethically questionable. All of these kinds of advantages are perfectly legal, but they only serve to offer a leg up to people already standing on the top of the pile.

Breaking laws

And finally, there are the outright scandals, such as the one that the Department of Justice announced on March 12. It involves fabrication of test scores, bribes of athletic coaches and more. To be sure, these alleged actions were morally and legally wrong. However, the fact that other practices – such as working with elite college counselors to encourage affluent students to apply in early decision or as a spring admit – are not seen as over the line raises questions about where the line should be drawn.

The plaintiffs in a federal court case against Harvard claim the problem is not with mechanisms that protect pathways of access for the wealthy, but rather with affirmative action based on race.

This despite the fact that affirmative action in college admission is a policy of being race-aware, not race-based – it is just one factor among many that is used to make holistic decisions. Admission officers are prohibited from considering race as a deciding factor in their decisions.

What the public wants

The truth is that voters support affirmative preferences for disadvantaged students, though results are often sensitive to how questions are asked. A poll we conducted recently of California registered voters found that most people support admissions advantages for low-income students and racial or ethnic minorities. This result matches polls from Pew and Gallup, which find that majorities support “affirmative action for racial minorities.”

In contrast, voters in our poll were more opposed to advantages for athletes and for children of donors. Voters’ intuitions may not be far off. In highly selective institutions, once the legacy students, student-athletes and other applicants with highly desirable qualities are admitted, there are fewer spots remaining for which to compete.

The college admissions scandal should be a wake-up call to remake selective college admissions so that wealth doesn’t have so much influence. Since many believe that where a person goes to college matters when it comes to getting a good-paying job, it’s important – at least from an equity standpoint – for selective colleges to be transparent about how they admit students.

If the scandal reveals anything, it is that some affluent parents will stop at nothing to make sure their children win in the high-stakes game of college admissions.

Morgan Polikoff, Associate Professor of Education, University of Southern California; Jerome A Lucido, Professor of the Practice, Executive Director, Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice, University of Southern California, and Julie Renee Posselt, Assistant Professor of Higher Education, University of Southern California

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.