My alma mater, Middlebury, finally abolished the frats after one notorious frat (the same one all the freshmen had to walk by on orientation day; so my parents and I both saw their sign, "Don't worry, Mommy and Daddy, we'll take care of your little girls" - I was 16 and my parents almost put me right back in the car -- but I digress) hung a naked female mannequin out a window by her neck, complete with fake blood dripping down her body.

Universities need to take very strong stances on this kind of idiocy cum bigotry and I applaud you for calling yours out and inviting them to step up.

And I knew I liked you -- I was a world lit major with minors in German and Spanish!

I think college aged men have a tough time, particularly in U.S. culture, becoming "manly" without losing their humanity.

I remember having dinner several years ago with a particle physicist from Lawrence Livermore Labs who, in his cups, said, "boys beat the heart out of me in middle school and I didn't regain it until I fell in love with a woman." It's one of the saddest things I've ever heard a man say.

Here's one of those things Cloke said that is never far from my mind: "the smallest piece of evil is the inability to find the other in the self," something I'd be failing to do if I just chalked this incident up to the tone-deaf antics of a group of people I have been carrying a prejudice about since my own college days.

Among the many questions raised by the current troubles at UCSD are WHY these young people thought their "Compton Cookout" was "funny" and how the University might help them understand how very very unfunny it actually is.

But I don't think any of us will every make any progress on these issues until we're able to acknowledge our own biases. Writing this post, I inadvertently stumbled upon the "other" (frat boys) in myself (prejudice). I'll post more on that soon.