Main quad at the University of Connecticut’s flagship campus, in Storrs
Funny what gets people upset and what doesn't get them upset at the University of Connecticut these days.
A great scandal was contrived lately when two white students got drunk at a bar one night and, walking home across campus, played a game of shouting vulgar words to no one in particular. The vulgarities eventually included a racial slur that was heard by two people in a nearby apartment.
So scores of students marched and rallied in protest as if this disgraceful juvenility was not only a war crime but also representative of white students and university policy generally. Predictably cowed, the university's new president accused the two white drunks of doing "egregious harm." The two were tracked down and arrested on a charge of ...ridicule. They confessed and apologized.
Meanwhile, a member of the university's men's basketball team got drunk at a party, stole a car, sped off, crashed into a street sign and another car, and, when stopped by a police officer, smelled of liquor and ran away. He was tracked down and was charged with evading responsibility, interfering with an officer, driving too fast, and driving without a license. He, too, confessed and apologized. The woman whose car he stole decided not to complain.
But though the basketball player had damaged property and put lives at risk, no university official accused him of causing "egregious harm" and there were no protests and rallies about his misconduct. Instead his coach made excuses for him. He's black.
Yes, there may be some racism at UConn, as everywhere, but mostly there are stupidity, hypocrisy, and political correctness, and they afflict cowardly university administrators as much as politically opportunistic students.
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Connecticut state government's primary purpose was revealed the other day by a Yankee Institute study of the gross insolvency of the state teacher pension system. The study reported that 22 percent of state revenue is used for funding pensions and medical insurance for retired state employees and municipal teachers, and that fully funding the pension and insurance systems would consume 35 percent.
The study recommended easing the teacher pension burden by encouraging private schools, whose staffs are paid less. But doing that would barely be noticed amid the deep hole into which Connecticut has fallen with its capitulation to the government employee unions.
Connecticut will be able to resume normal state government -- government whose purpose is serving the public, not its own employees -- only when it gets out of the pension business entirely, outlawing state-provided defined-benefit pensions and medical insurance for state and municipal government retirees. Even that remedy will take decades to produce results, since it could start only with new hires.
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A spokeswoman for Connecticut Atty. Gen. William Tong confirmed last week that the attorney general will not intervene with antitrust law against the merger of People's United Bank and United Bank, whose operations overlap heavily. The attorney general concluded that the merger would not reduce competition enough to harm depositors or borrowers.
But competition levels provide lots of discretion for antitrust authorities, and the merger is likely to eliminate hundreds of jobs.
Oh, well -- at least the attorney general last week also appealed to the U.S. Department of Energy not to weaken energy-efficiency rules for dishwashers.
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Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
