marileej – Welcome

On Retreat

I’ve been back in RI at my sweet place for a much needed personal retreat after a remarkable and challenging academic year that ended well but nearly exhausted me. I’ve written about doing a retreat before. Years ago when I hit the proverbial wall, a coach of mine, Dr. Monica, suggested that I take a few weeks each year to retreat to my place of solitude and ‘live in the moment’. I couldn’t think of a worse thing to do and pushed back hard. But she assured me that if I did this well, it would change my life. And so it did. Now it’s a healthy habit.

Holy smokes! So much is happening in the world these days, it’s hard to know what is actually real. Recently I’ve been reading Charlie Robinson’s The Octopus of Global Control about what is referred to as the Deep State which is both hilarious and so shocking. It’s mostly quotes by real people who say the most troubling things. Don’t get me started on David Rockefeller, may he rot in hell, and how he tells us in his autobiography that he and his family work against the interest of the US in order to eliminate people like you and me so the world can be run by the more worthy elites. And then there’s the daily insanity of the Trump presidency. Who knows what’s really going on there? I have anti-NWO friends who think Trump is a savior and progressive friends who think he’s destroying the republic. To my observation, he’s the latter. A fricking nightmare of a wrecking ball. A complete disgrace.

But then again, who knows? I long ago decided to hold the belief that everything I’ve ever learned is wrong. It keeps my mind open.

Being here in RI by the sea is good for the soul because despite the world’s turbulence, you can count on the tide changing each day and the sun does come up every morning. This is a banner year for bunnies and gophers, there are plenty of birds and even a young skunk family living nearby. And the occasional fox is encountered. So all is well here in Heaven and the rest, as they say, is illusion.

An Open Letter to Ivy +/COFHE Admissions Deans

My dear friends and colleagues,

These are tough days for admissions officers. You really are up against it for so many reasons I won’t discuss here but I know you know so well. If Harvard loses that discrimination lawsuit, which is looking likely, you could see a major dismantling of your admissions processes as your lawyers leap in to protect you and your school from a similar fate. That isn’t the worst thing in the world and will probably be good for you as time goes by. But I can only imagine how nervous it must make you in the meantime. I’m assuming that you are anticipating this outcome anyway and have begun to make the proper remedial efforts.

As a former college admissions officer, I have a compassion for you that most could never appreciate because I understand the myriad of pressures you work within every day. I know what a drag it is to read thousands of applications and then turn down great kids because there are just too many for too few spots. I know how nearly impossible it is to describe to the average person what you actually do and why. But the world is changing all around us and the old ways are being quickly swept away in every field, including college admissions.

And with the advent of AI being sophisticated enough to make nuanced decisions, your jobs may even be at risk within a decade.

So I suggest it’s time for you to do a serious self-reflective reset by asking yourself these questions:

Do you know what your school’s mission is and could you succinctly describe it to me if I met you in an elevator at NACAC this fall? Are you fulfilling that mission?
Based on that mission, do you know who you are looking to admit and why? Could you articulate that to me on our next elevator ride?
Have you read BAT Thresher’s “College Admissions and the Public Interest“? If not, why not? If so, can you please read it again?
Are you familiar with 2018-2028 demographic trends across all populations? If not, seek out Jon Boeckenstedt, AVP at DePaul University, who is my favorite numbers geek and the ‘Vision’ of current college admissions. He knows what’s happening and what’s coming. And he’s a very wise man.
After becoming familiar with population shifts, reevaluate your own. Are you over-serving some and under serving others? If so, can you defend that in a court of law, meaning that you are not violating the 14th Amendment by discriminating by race and/or gender? Has your lawyer evaluated that same data?
What is your school’s obligation to the nation? See #3 above.
Are you fulfilling that obligation by serving a longterm plan to anchor peace, prosperity and stability in the US for generations to come by creating a large middle-class? If not, why not?

My point here is that you are serving more than your Board of Trustees and alumni. Because you are a key player in education, you are in service to humanity itself.

This is the highest of all callings, my friends. You play a key role in communicating that to your BOTs, faculty and alumni, reminding them of their higher roles. Your students already know this and they will be your biggest allies when you break free of that toxic grip business has on your job and finally bust out as a leader in your field.

At the moment, Boeckenstedt is a Lonely-Only out there…he needs some Wing Wo/Men.

If you serve humanity itself first, and not your BOT etc, you really will become a hero on the right side of history.

You will also be more immune from lawsuits that will cost your school and destroy your reputation. It’s a win-win.

So why wait?

Love from your biggest fan,

Marilee

Enough is Really Enough, Folks

Today I’m feeling real anger about the most recent school shooting in Parkland, FL, and about our inability as a culture to act like adults for a change and enact sensible gun control legislation.

Looking at the faces of those teenagers who lived through the event, who stepped over the bodies of people they knew as they were rushed out with their hands above their heads like criminals by police who looked like Robocops into a swirl of smoke and fear just broke something inside of me. I sat and sobbed as I listened to them tell their stories. I couldn’t take my eyes off their faces. And I cannot imagine the pain the families of the deceased are enduring even as I write this. I can’t imagine my daughter dying that way, at the hands of another broken nut case who can’t cope and wants to destroy life as violently as he can.

I wonder where all the normal gun owners are now and why they are not organizing to stop the sale of assault weapons. Don’t they understand that their own reputation gets worse with each senseless shooting?

70% of Americans do not own guns, nor feel the need, and are getting really really fed up with this blind all-or-nothing thinking when it comes to the 2nd Amendment.

My father owned guns and taught us how to shoot when I was growing up. My former husband owned guns and was raised as a hunter by his father. My compadre brother-in-law owns guns as a hunter. These are all good people who are responsible with their weaponry, so I’m assuming that most people who own guns are similar.

I just wish they would organize and break the grip of the NRA, which is a corrupt organization of zealots who stand by and rationalize the deaths of innocent teenagers who happened to be in the wrong place (school) at the wrong time (during the school day).

I accept the fact that the price of freedom may be random violence because in a nation of rebels, some will always take it to the extreme.

But this steady cadence of gun violence unleashed on the most vulnerable is not normal. It is obscene and we should no longer tolerate it.

Don’t believe me? Just look carefully at the faces of those kids who literally recorded the sounds and the chaos of a shooting event so that they could share it with the rest of us so that we’d do something about it.

Look at their eyes. See what this did to them. And now imagine that they were your children. How would you feel that you could not protect them?

And as for me, in my anger and frustration I write and plan the acts of kindness I’ll do today to anchor more peace into my country that so badly needs it.