Up for air from grading, I check my email and find this passed along from a student to the faculty discussion list:

I am currently a graduate student in the Social Responsiblity Program. I have been working on the Graduation Pledge this past semester and I am writing to you all to ask for your help in getting the word out to graduating students. For those of you who are not familiar with the pledge, it is a pledge that students sign that state that they will try to pursue socially responsible jobs and seek socially responsible actions in any job they choose (see below). There will be a table at graduation where students can sign the pledge if they choose to and they will recieve a green ribbon that symbolizes their participation in the pledge. The pledge will also be acknowledged during the ceremony. If you could find the time during your final periods to announce the pledge to your classes and inform them about the table at graduation, that would be greatly appriciated by those involved with the pledge.

The pledge, which can be found here, is sponsored by a "peace studies" program at Manchester College in Indiana. Among the steps they suggest for promoting the pledge:

GET CAMPUS GROUPS TO ENDORSE, participate, and get out word to their constituencies (a) student groups--e.g., social service, community service, environmental, peace, human rights; (b) programs/departments/schools within the university--social work,, sociology, environmental studies, women's studies-- or any socially concerned active ones on campus; and (c) offices/councils/centers--career services, community services, women's centers, student government). Another approach is to get senior class officers or reps involved, as they often have good channels of communication with all seniors.

In other words, get leftist faculty to help organize one last way to indoctrinate students.

As David pointed out to me, the second part of the pledge says that "social responsibility is self-determined". Yet at the same time, these groups wish to impose their view of social responsibilty on others. It's to be self-determined ... if you've succumbed to the programming of the university over the years. You are not programmed to like making money; the links to jobs offered on the Manchester and MIT sites are a passel of Green and Naderite organizations, with no assistance to finding jobs with for-profit firms. There is a speech that was given to the Objectivist Club at the Univ. of New Hampshire a few years ago that included this:

Social independence and intellectual independence are both discouraged at our nation�s schools and universities. It is hard to think of any other set of institutions besides our nation�s schools that do more to kill the natural curiosity and individuality of young people.

Schools preach the damnable notion that learning is a duty. From the start students are given the message that they must sacrifice their self-interests in order to get an education -- and that the very purpose of getting an education is to become useful to society.

And commencement is becoming just one more place where the message is reinforced.

UPDATE: Let's show them this winner of the FreedomAds.org contest. Consider: In any other country, could you even suggest to graduating seniors that they should take lower-paying "socially responsible" jobs?