Scathing Online Schoolmarm
Pope Urges World Peace has become a paradigm-headline for UD, a headline whose emptiness expresses the emptiness of all empty headlines.
You don't always see UD's paradigm-headline in just those words. Sometimes it's Pope Cautions World Leaders, or Pope Notes Rising Youth Drug Use... A non-papal example UD remembers from her Medill School of Journalism days was a huge banner headline on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, which every day blared out with a huge banner headline:
HOPES RISE ON ARMS CURB.
Another variant of the empty headline -- which almost always accompanies an empty article -- is the Small Town Back to Normal After formulation. This is the piece about how, despite last Thursday's storm, Postmistress Pam is back to stamping letters.
Here's a recent addition to the empty headline stock, from Bloomberg.com:
Easier College Admission for Athletes Sparks a Review by NCAA
As with all of the earlier empty headlines I've mentioned, nothing has happened. There isn't any news. To be sure, the rolly-poly NCAA has had its forward motion impeded a bit by some recent reminders (the Costas show; Antoine Wright's comments) that, as Boyce Watkins notes, it's a whorehouse on wheels. Subsequent to this embarrassment, a certain amount of wink-wink nod-nod has taken place:
The longstanding practice at U.S. colleges of admitting athletes with substandard academic credentials is coming under fresh scrutiny.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association has launched a review that might limit the number of these so-called special admits. At the University of Oklahoma, which just completed a four-year review of admissions, Athletic Director Joe Castiglione says some students read only at a fifth-grade level.
For years, football and basketball players have lagged other students in graduation rates. Coaches, administrators and faculty have wrestled with the sometimes conflicting goals of creating winning teams and well-educated students. Now, special admits may become the focus of efforts to reconcile the two.
..."Sports are an important part of the psyche of our institution," says Castiglione. "It's not to be made fun of or laughed at, it's to be embraced. But we have to work on some things."
[Strange comment from the AD at one of the most shameless abusers of athletes in the country. We're not making fun of his charges; he is. They're entirely used for their entertainment value.]
... Such policies risk eroding the reputations of the nation's top universities, says Larry Faulkner, president emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin.
"It goes to the heart of what is the intercollegiate model and what business we are in," Faulkner says. "Our institutions don't exist principally to provide entertainment to the public." [Certainly Castiglione's, and many other institutions, exist precisely for that principal purpose.]
... Faulkner is a member of an NCAA task force on admissions that called in October for a review of the special-admit system. NCAA officials might recommend changes within 18 to 24 months, says Myles Brand, president of the Indianapolis-based sports governing body. Rules changes would require the assent of the body's 18-member board of directors.
Among the possible steps, according to the task force: setting a maximum number of special admits per team or athletic department, adding programs to monitor and assist students, and collecting information on the progress of special admits who are athletes so the data can be submitted to faculty boards. [Blahblah.]
Brand, 64, says he doesn't support limiting special admits [Quelle surprise], so long as athletes have a chance to graduate once they're given assistance. Yet Brand says the NCAA doesn't track graduation rates for specially admitted athletes and doesn't know of any school that does so. [Rollin' along, singin' a song!]
`A Student First'
University administrators agree with Faulkner, in principle, when he says the athlete is a student first." [Sure, sure!] Even so, they say schools must meet the needs of the communities they serve. [It's a matter of needs, not entertainment, man!] Fans, alumni and financial supporters care about sports, says Tom Reason, associate director of admissions at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
"Athletes are a group that has been identified as important to the institution and to society," Reason says. "You can't deny the reality of it." [Longtime readers know the thrill UD always feels on being lectured to by a Reality Instructor...]
... Administrators argue that without special admits, it would be difficult to compete in sports against schools that have lower academic standards. [It's a race to the bottom... as Oscar Wilde might put it...]
... Oklahoma has been increasing the number of special admits given to its football, baseball and women's track and field teams, according to admissions records. Castiglione says the athletic department is trying to improve its 60 percent graduation rate. [This is like balancing the budget and lowering taxes.]
..." In an ideal world, you might wonder if we wouldn't be better off getting rid of athletic scholarships, then it would really just be about going to school," Wisconsin's Reason says. "But things have evolved in a way that's dramatically different. You have to accept the reality of it and help the kids the best you can." [This is by far the slimiest bit of university sports rhetoric out there. We're here to help the kids.] Labels: SOS
|