… is the chorus to Paul Simon’s The Boxer; it’s also how the University of North Carolina is responding to reports that some of its highest-profile, most-celebrated athletes over the years have been illiterate, or semi-literate. In the wake of the Nyang-oro scandal, UNC’s chancellor ran away; its faculty lay low (which is what faculty at sports factories almost always do); and the school shoved its admissions director onstage to lie for it.
[W]e do not admit students who we believe cannot read or write.
January 15th, 2014 at 10:17AM
The (sort of) couplet just before the string of “lies”:
“Still the man hears what he wants to hear
and disregards the rest”
It would be interesting to have a pie chart showing those heads in the sand and then those who know and just don’t care or who embrace the results. (A pie chart of actual pie preferences would make me happier.)
By the way, my wife’s grandma used a yiddish word for those looking away, not wanting to see, something like “nishvissendic.” Can’t find it quickly in online Yiddish dictionaries. Any ideas?
January 15th, 2014 at 11:15AM
Try “nicht wissendich.”
January 15th, 2014 at 11:24AM
Greg: Yes – I found a lot of the lines in “The Boxer” strangely pertinent – including the pathos of the clueless suffering athlete at the center of the song…
January 15th, 2014 at 8:19PM
“[W]e do not admit students who we believe cannot read or write.”
The Associate Provost and Director of Undergraduate Admissions apparently doesn’t know how to use the word “whom.”