From a New York Times article:

…Dave Maggard, the University of Houston’s athletic director, predicted “a lot more scrutiny” for public universities that make expensive coaching changes. He said that the use of state money would come under increasing scrutiny, especially considering that many universities, even the larger and more visible ones, lose money on their athletic programs.

“A lot of places, even the big places, are running deficit budgets today,” Maggard said. “I think you’re going to see some real pulling back and I think some real effort to economize in every way possible. I just don’t think you can be flippant with the public today because it’s just not going to play well.”…

Can’t be flippant with students either. They’ve had it with athletics fees.

A reeling economy and student concerns over rising fees overwhelmingly sent the Beach Legacy Referendum that would have benefited Long Beach State athletics to defeat Friday.

By a vote of 3,912-2,615 over two days of voting on the Internet and campus, students defeated the referendum that would have added $95 a semester to student fees beginning in the fall of 2010. The proposal was designed to raise $7 million annually in new revenue for the department.

The referendum was intended to cover an expected 10 percent increase in scholarship tuition costs, a large increase in the cost of student housing, state budget cuts that could be as high as 10 percent and capital improvements for campus facilities.

The proposal included plans to build a combined soccer and track stadium, new practice field for the baseball team and a clubhouse for spring and aquatic teams…

… for Dean in Charge of Placing Thieving Professors on Leave With Pay. It has so many of them.

USF has only just gotten rid of the bicycle thief professor; now at UF there’s the NASA funds thief professor.

The FBI searched the offices of a University of Florida scientist Wednesday who is accused along with his family of taking “hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegally obtained government funds” from the nation’s space agency.

Court documents filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tallahassee describe a criminal and civil investigation into “fraudulent” invoices that resulted in funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to professor Samim Anghaie, 59, his wife, Sousan, 54, and their two adult sons.

Federal officials would not talk about the details of their investigation, which UF reacted to by placing Anghaie on leave with pay. He could not be reached for comment.

Also working the case are agents of NASA’s Office of Inspector General.

Perhaps the university system should consider building a holding pen on one of its campuses.

… UD, Mr UD, and La Kid, were just interviewed by Bruce Johnson of WUSA News, a CBS affiliate in DC. The crew was covering the return of the Springsteen chorus to Washington. I don’t know if we’ll actually show up in the story, but you might want to tune in (or find it on the internet) if the idea of seeing ALL of Les UD’s at the same time is appealing.

… He shook my hand and he thanked me. We had lots of pictures taken with him. I talked with Nils Lofgren too. I told him I’m from Garrett Park. He said that was cool. Then I got my picture taken with him too…. It’s just amazing, Mommy! We’re leaving now – to beat the crowds. I’ll be home in about sixteen hours. See you.”

Whoops in the background. Huge whoops. I can barely hear her.

“It was amazing. The crowd greeted us like celebrities. The audience was enormous! The whole thing was unbelievable. I have to go. I’ll call you back…”

… would you have glimpsed the kid on the far right. Oh well.

Various sources tell me I shouldn’t run the rehearsal photos. Sorry!

From the University of Pennsylvania newspaper:

… There’s no reason why students should use the Internet so heavily during class. Unless a professor asks everyone to navigate to a certain page, open laptops do nothing more than attract eyeballs that should be attending to lecture notes. Bright, shiny monitors in front of a college student during lecture are evolved bug-zapper lamps.

Sure, you may say that you’re not affected by it. That you can pay attention, take good notes and still catch up on the latest headlines at nytimes.com. Or that you have the discipline to remain oblivious to your neighbor’s open PennLink page. But then you’d be lying to yourself.

The evidence? Take this annual example. Every spring, there’s that one fraternity pledge who causes a stir in a big lecture class because he’s watching porn in the first row. If no one was paying attention to the laptop ahead of him or her, the annual commotion would never occur – but it always does, without fail. Just wait a few weeks from now.

… [L]ast spring, the University of Chicago Law School … cut out non-class related computer use. As Dean Saul Levmore said in his letter to the school’s students and faculty, “we know that class time is not for shopping and e-mailing.”

… In the name of the New Year, let’s all make a resolution to cut our internet activity while a professor is talking. If not in the name of our own GPA, then for the sake of our classmate whose notes may suffer because they’re distracted by the porn two rows up.