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(Tenured Radical)

Saturday, April 22, 2006

How Far Short
of High Standards
Is a Cesspool?



"Asked to describe the state of the [University of Kansas] athletic department [until recently], one current KU administrator said: 'It was a cesspool,'" notes a Knight-Ridder article this morning. As a result:


The NCAA has [now formally] alleged that Kansas' athletic department demonstrated a "lack of institutional control" during a six-year period that was marred by academic fraud within the football program and unreported rules violations in other sports.

Not since the Jayhawks won the 1988 basketball championship and then went on probation the following year has the university been in such hot water with the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The most recent Big 12 school to earn the dreaded "lack of institutional control" was Baylor University after its national scandal surrounding the 2003 murder and cover-up of one of its basketball players.

"We set very high standards for ourselves at the University of Kansas," Chancellor Robert Hemenway said Friday. "We recognize that at times we fell short of those high standards."