Can these claims be true? Longtime observers of SCSU know it’s a basket case; how could anyone have accomplished these remarkable … accomplishments there?

Hey, maybe the dude did… But if I were reviewing his self-presentation at West Liberty University, I’d vote against making him president…

But they did; they did make him president. And now they’re stuck with this disgraceful career plagiarist as the head of the school.

It’s pretty much the same process at any university that loses accreditation (both of these universities are distinctly heading that way), loses its financial base (both are Moody’s basket cases), loses alumni donations (SCSU never had much of that, but Yeshiva did, and it’s losing it), and loses students (enrollment is tanking at both schools). If you want to know how to drive your school into the dirt, you can learn the procedure at almost any failing or failed university. A few schools (Sweet Briar) shut down because of market or demographic forces they really can’t control (very few women want to go to single-sex schools), but the overwhelming number of institutional collapses of the sort Yeshiva and SCSU are undergoing display the same mix of factors. Let’s review them, using as our focus this account of the latest developments at Yeshiva.

UD used to think that boards of trustees were pretty pointless – rich businesspeople overseeing, in a vague way, the activities of a university, but, basically, above all, and ever and ever, being called upon to transfer huge chunks of their personal fortune over to the place. Indeed this non-interventionism might be more or less the way things are at high-functioning schools… Maybe you’ll find one or two trustees who actually do understand universities, and who actually have a meaningful relationship with the school’s president… At happy roly-poly little sports factories like Auburn you’ll find one or two trustees (they played for the team back when) actually setting admissions policies and sticking their noses in recruitment, but this form of corruption doesn’t push the school in the direction of collapse. You can’t collapse a school that’s already, like Auburn, an intellectual joke. And it can in fact be perfectly serviceable to have a BOT made up of clueless sheep herded by a brilliant Babe.

Most BOT’s, in other words, don’t amount to much in the smoothly running institutional scheme of things; they’re like US ambassadors to Malta. How badly can they fuck up? You don’t want the person you appoint ambassador to Malta to be ambassador to Afghanistan; for Afghanistan, you need someone who knows how to be an ambassador. For Malta, a rich donor to the current President’s campaign will do. For trustee, a rich donor to the university will do.

But it turns out that a truly depraved board of trustees can bring down a school. Truly stupid, self-serving, self-righteous, risk-taking cronies of the sort Yeshiva and SCSU boast can take an already vulnerable campus and pound it into the dirt.

The key is greed and secrecy.

The key is assembling a group of male buddies (if you want total destruction, the more men the better), many of whom are in each others’ pockets financially, none of whom knows or cares anything about universities as such, and all of whom think they’re doing the lord’s work – for race, for religion, for class. Schools that implode tend to be fantastically parochial. Their trustees are fantastically parochial people, ignorant of much beyond their particular political or spiritual orthodoxy. These trustees routinely bring on board characters like Jonathan Pinson and Bernard Madoff and let them run the show because hey Jonathan! Bernie! My man!

So now your trustees are hard at work stealing the school’s endowment while, one by one, being very publicly carted off to prison or court – a carting off that really does very little for your school’s reputation and its alumni loyalty. For president at this point you have one of two types: The twelfth deer in the headlights you’ve hired in twelve days (the board merrily ignores this person) or just the opposite – a loyal long-serving crony-servant.

The process of destruction is now so bad at Yeshiva and SCSU that the faculty is routinely voting no confidence left and right… But another problem with BOTs of this sort is that they do not know that the faculty exists. What does a faculty do? Students they get – students go to concerts and games and students provide the money the BOT misappropriates. Students, yes. Faculty? So this sort of BOT/university president essentially does not communicate with faculty. Their relationship to faculty is restricted to firing most of it when the BOT’s years of malfeasance destroy the school’s credit rating and they can’t borrow any more money.

“It’s the time of year when we put the schedule together, and we realized we were paralyzed because we didn’t know which faculty would be around,” said [Gillian] Steinberg, an associate professor of English and director of writing at YC. “The administration won’t tell us who will get a contract renewal.”

She can’t take it anymore; she’s leaving Yeshiva.

Then there are the students. You can see Yeshiva cultivating a good longterm relationship with them as well.

According Yadin Teitz, a junior at Yeshiva College who has been leading student efforts to get information from the administration, the “administration operates without consulting the faculty.”

“There’s no connection between what’s going on at the top and at the bottom,” Teitz, an editor at The Commentator student newspaper, told The Jewish Week. Teitz’s March 3 article was the first time students, and many faculty members, found out about cuts being made to the core curriculum.

“There’s no transparency,” said Teitz, who said it was “crazy” that faculty members had to find out about cuts to their own programs through a student newspaper.

Exactly the same at SCSU. You’ve basically got a semi-criminalized sect sequestered in a building somewhere on campus, working feverishly to continue bleeding what money they can out of the institution before it utterly bleeds out.

When I was a student/athlete at then-SCSC, I witnessed increased donations in the athletic department but we as students got nothing. We went from flying to events and games to riding a bus for 15 to 20 hours while coaches received increased salaries, bought new houses and cars, and continued to travel by air. Large donations presented at halftime during footballs games were not spent on the science department as indicated at the time of presentation.

I must say I love SCSU, but the mismanagement of funds has negatively affected enrollment and has caused a decrease in donations from alumni. SCSU, a historically black college, has in years past been a very respected institution, but the actions of deceitful people in power have caused many who would have chosen SCSU to go elsewhere.

This is what legislators deciding the school’s fate really need: Direct testimony from honest people who’ve been there. Of all the things said in the last couple of weeks about SCSU, UD finds this the most persuasive and the most moving.

A university is a delicate thing; a university means an enormous amount on many levels to many of its graduates. When a regime of greed and deceit sets in on campus (I’m looking at you, Yeshiva University), these graduates, wounded and angry, pull back. Word gets around. Contributions and applications tank.

Schools like these need completely new presidents and boards of trustees. And that’s only a first step.

According to [Congressional Black Caucus] members, [President Obama recently told them] that struggling HBCUs with low graduation rates are failing black students, and he reportedly said that the lowest-performing institutions “should fall by the wayside.”

The turnout strengthens the arguments of those in the legislature who point out that there’s no there there.

UD recommends that SCSU stop holding rallies.

Rescue fantasies.

You can follow her many posts about this staggeringly pointless institution by typing South Carolina State University in her search engine. She has often wondered aloud, on this blog, why the chump taxpayers of that state don’t en masse refuse to pay up until SCSU, with its virtually non-existent student body and its corrupt leadership, is shut down.

Now a state subcommittee has indeed voted to close the money pit, though higher level votes are needed to really make this happen. As proposed, the closure would be temporary; but the measure would almost certainly hasten the natural evolution of the campus toward extinction. You cannot function without students and without money. Taxing citizens year after year in order to transfer revenue to an empty outstretched hand is insane.

And speaking of transfer: Under the plan, SCSU students with respectable GPAs would be free to transfer to other state campuses. They may thus have an actual shot at an education.

Jonathon Pinson was recently chair of the board of trustees at South Carolina State University. Now he’s going to prison.

… are just beginning to be rounded up. Stay tuned.

An audit of South Carolina State University, labeled incomplete by its auditor, was approved Monday afternoon by the board of trustees’ executive committee.

The vote on the audit came almost a month after it was due in the S.C. Comptroller General’s office.

Only three of the five committee members participated in Monday’s teleconference about the audit.

Dr. Walt L. Tobin, one of two people calling themselves chair of the board…

Eh. Forget it.

A joke.

But a dangerous one. I wouldn’t be laughing if I lived there.

I mean, the latest anxious freshman eighteen year old preparing to mass kill if he failed to get into a frat made a point of leaving gun-unfriendly Boston (where he went to a real expensive private school) and coming to Highpoint University in North Carolina because, he explained to the authorities, it’s easier to get guns in that state. Acquaintances from the private school recall his obsession with guns and mass killing; he clearly made a logical decision to move to a place where – unlike Massachusetts – that would be easy. Crazed reject loner mass killers like the guy down the street at the University of North Carolina Charlotte last April just seem drawn to North Carolina, whose state motto appears on this shirt…

This was a couple of years ago. The student’s question went to the immense disparity in the president’s salary and various coaches’ salaries. Annoyed that the president blew off the student, Mr UD pressed the president on problems in the athletics program.

The president of the University of Maryland responded to Mr UD along these lines: There’s little I can do about the program, and the program can blow up at any time.

UD has always been rather astonished by the president’s honesty; because this of course is the fundamental truth of all big-time university sports programs. The jock school president – in the favorite words of the second-highest paid employee in the entire state of Maryland – is a pussy bitch and a bitch pussy and a pussy pussy and a bitch bitch pussy pussy pussy.

And the jock school’s big-time sports program can indeed blow up at any time. If you know even a little about how they’re run – and the people who run them – you know why these programs keep blowing up.

***************

Real men die for the University of Maryland football team, like 19-year-old Jordan McNair, who didn’t get much of a life, but at least lived it taunted as a pussy and tortured to death by a first-rate football power.

[S]ome number of Maryland football staff members probably belong in prison.

Which is to say that just as the university’s president anticipated, the program, having killed a player, has now blown up.

You need to go back to Rutgers’ celebrated basketball coach Mike Rice to get a sense of the sick sadism characteristic of the man we Maryland taxpayers each year pay $2.5 million. I mean, try reading through all of this without puking (puking by the way is something the UMD coach makes his players do … part of the school’s force-feed ’em til they’re monsters regime… ).

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A Deadspin report concludes:

One perfectly reasonable question is why Durkin, Court, and Robinson, at the very least, haven’t already been fired. Former Maryland football staff members say the current coaching environment of the program is intimidation-based; current and former players say these men routinely use intimidation and humiliation as motivational tactics; current and former players say they have a pattern of pushing teenagers past the point of complete physical exhaustion, in some cases to weed out and punish players they’ve targeted as unwanted. A pattern has been described that makes what happened to Jordan McNair a likelihood, if not an inevitability, but it says deeply troubling things about what Maryland’s athletic department deems as acceptable coaching behavior that Durkin’s tactics weren’t rejected long before now.

But we know why they weren’t rejected. It’s really not about “what Maryland’s athletic department deems as acceptable coaching behavior,” because Durkin and Court were after all hired at great expense to torture teenagers to the point where they can win football games. It’s about Maryland’s administration.

So look at what the president of the university said to Mr UD. He has no control over the program. His job is to resolutely look the other way, and to irritably say nothing to people who insist on questioning him about a program over which, officially at least, he has authority.

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It’s a mad mad mad mad world. Over in the shabby humanities buildings they’re committing seppuku if they fail even for a moment to use scrupulously sensitive, politically correct, language; in the sports palaces, they’re getting in front of 19-year-olds’ faces and spitting pussy and faggot and fucker and shit and bitch at them while making them run on a hot field until one of them actually dies from the abuse.

Far out.

But routine reality at many of America’s big-time sports universities.

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UPDATE: In response to another coach (Will Muschamp, South Carolina) passionately defending Durkin, since much of the reporting about his program is based on anonymous sources:

A player is dead, but Muschamp is more worried about attacking ESPN’s article and the staffer giving them information.

Glorious University of South Carolina.

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As usual, Deadspin has the most trenchant response to Muschamp.

He told [one player], in front of the team, he should transfer to a “transgender league,” multiple players said.

At some universities, basketball coaches just go ahead and call players cunts or fags. At UD‘s GW, the coach allegedly goes that extra mile, lifts his comment above cliche, looks for a fresh way to say it…

Speaking of saying, though… Faced with some pretty persuasive evidence that GW’s got a real angry paranoid at the helm (don’t make his daughter cry), pulling down one of the highest salaries on campus (Don’t know how much. Will guess. Around $500,000? With this and that, could be a lot more.), UD‘s institution is abundantly not talking.

[GW’s Title IX coordinator] did not return an email, and a school spokesman said he was not available to comment. Interim Provost Forrest Maltzman declined to comment through a spokesman. Despite repeated requests, the school made no officials available for interviews. The school declined to answer questions about its inquiry into [Mike] Lonergan, or even acknowledge it, saying it does not comment on personnel issues as a matter of policy.

——

Brian Sereno, the executive director of athletics communications, did not immediately return the [GW] Hatchet’s request for comment.

——

Hokay! Get the message!

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Gets a bit colorful now, and UD knows that her readers are sensitive souls. So – SELF-ABUSE WARNING.

Five current and former players said Lonergan told players [GW Athletic Director Patrick] Nero requested the practice tapes so he could masturbate while viewing them in his office. The players said Lonergan also told them Nero had engaged in a sexual relationship with a member of the team. Players said they found those comments to be shocking and offensive, with no grounding in reality.

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You’re expecting some concluding words of wisdom?

Oh, go ask Bobby Knight and Mike Rice and the rest of them. They’ll tell you what it takes to win.

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Actually, UD does have some words of comfort for GW, as this story rapidly goes viral.

You know you’re one of the big boys when a whacked out scandal about your allegedly whacked out coach hits the mainstream media. You cannot buy the sort of publicity the school is about to get. Think of what that Saturday Night Live thing about Mike Rice did for Rutgers (start at 1:00)…

(Lonergan recently turned down a job offer from the selfsame Rutgers. People there seem to think they, uh, dodged a bullet. A second bullet.)

But okay look let’s take that last bit out of its parenthesis so that UD can share with you the following thought. This country is close to hiring as head coach a man just like Rice and Knight (Knight was in fact invited to speak at the Republican convention) and (allegedly) Lonergan and the scads of other abusive and twisted university coaches UD has followed over the years of this blog.

Every time Donald Trump steps on the brutality gas he wins more votes. Every time coaches step on the brutality gas they win more games.

It is quite obviously the way you win.

Because for every one sadist, there’s apparently one million masochists.

I have no idea what to do about it. Just noting it.

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Here’s a tweet:

Don’t know why coaches and schools refuse comments in these situations.

So yeah it’s odd and dumb to say nothing even as the story goes really really big. UD will tell you, if, like this guy, you don’t know why there’s this initial silence, what’s going on.

Think lots of moving parts. As we speak, an extremely large and complex institution is gathering and consulting with amazing numbers and types of people. Lawyers. Public relations experts. Players. University spokespeople. Administrators. Coaches. Trustees. Boosters. Atlantic 10 people. NCAA people.

You better believe that Lonergan is also lawyering up like mad. People like Lonergan are not in the business of losing. Lonergan is just like the Ur-Lonergan, who says

“We’re going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning. you’re going to say, ‘Please Mr. President, I have a headache. Please, don’t win so much. This is getting terrible.’ And I’m going to say, ‘No, we have to make America great again.’ You’re gonna say, ‘Please.’ I said, ‘Nope, nope. We’re gonna keep winning.’

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And all of this is taking place in the typical university context of interim provosts and ever-rotating deans and presidents who have just announced they’re leaving. Yet you need one strong singular voice in crises like these. It’s gonna take a bit of work.

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But wait, UD! Wait!

How did it happen?

Okay, so here’s the drill. Ambitious university is all agog because it’s got a respectable basketball team that brings in fans and revenue and attracts media attention. Sure, they’ve heard reports that suggest the coach may be el mayorly crazed motherfucker, but what coach isn’t? Bobby Knight threw chairs at people and today he’s an elder statesman. Florid complaints start to come in from the players, but it’s just a few malcontents and anyway when they get truly pissed they leave the program. Problem solved.

And now the new amazing contract with all that money, and the wins, and the adulation, have, let’s speculate, made the coach feel his methods are brilliant and he can get away with anything (see Coach Trump). His behavior maybe becomes so bizarre that a critical mass of players finally goes public with the problem.

The university now desperately needs a run and gun game, but because they’ve been in denial all they can do is dribble while Rome burns.

“There’s this idea, primarily coming from alumni and boosters, that you can put enough money into a team and turn it into a powerhouse success story,” Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College, said. “But that becomes more and more unrealistic with each passing year. It’s a fool’s errand, but people are crazy about football, so they keep trying.”

The trend, Zimbalist said, is predominantly located in the southern United States, where the “culture is very football dominant.”

… In its first season as an FBS team, Georgia State won zero games. The following year, it won one. Last season, the team won six of its 13 games… [A]verage attendance plummeted from the previous season’s 15,000 to 10,000.

… “I think we’re right where we should be from a competitive standpoint,” [said Georgia State’s AD].

… “It’s almost impossible to make this leap [to big-time football],” Zimbalist said. “It’s not rational to think otherwise. But if rationality was all that was at play here, this would have stopped a long time ago.”

… “[In the South, there’s the feeling that] if you don’t have a football team, then you’re somehow not a real campus, [said Mark Nagel, a sports management professor at the University of South Carolina,] and you are not on par with other schools. That emotion takes control.”