This isn’t exactly the kind of juxtaposition you want if you are a university about to hire for a year a man so drunk at the wheel he kept driving even after hitting a truck and spinning out. DUI plus hit and run aren’t chopped liver; he could go to jail for a year on either charge.
So, okay, the juxtaposition. It’s embarrassing. The elegant encomium from Kissinger immediately followed by the inelegant particular of the court date. September 12 – the very beginning of the semester. Who will cover Crocker’s class while he’s off who knows how long to Spokane? And he’s pleading not guilty, which is a bad sign since he does seem guilty, with witnesses and probably a film of the arrest, etc. Does Crocker think he wasn’t drunk? If so, maybe he’s in denial about a dangerous problem. Soon he’ll be driving around New Haven.
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Good timing. Let someone else handle the mess.
August 30th, 2012 at 9:42AM
Allowing professors to teach from prison is surely what the wonderful revolution in online education is all about.
August 30th, 2012 at 10:43AM
Not to defend him, but my son a former criminal defense lawyer says you never plead guilty at this stage. The other side hasn’t even finalized all the charges. The real issue will be whether he goes to court. This will be pleaded out.
August 30th, 2012 at 3:10PM
Alan Allport, thanks for the chuckle. Publicly, we citizen-observers (none of us professors) sustain the usual pieties about higher education. “Gosh, dang all, ain’t that thar’ sumtin dem smart folks is doin’ up thar’ on that applied sciences building.” That’s what we’ll tell you at the wine-and-cheese soiree where groundlings like us are invited to mingle with you.
Privately, we pretty much know there’s a ton of hokum and blarney surrounding–permeating–higher ed. We don’t like that much. I write this as a man in late middle-age who has a great regard for book-learning.