May 24th, 2014
“Brad Martin, a fourth-year anthropology major said his girlfriend was walking to his house when she was approached by the shooters. ‘She is absolutely hysterical, and so she tells me that these guys pulled up and said hey what’s up. She turned and looked and they had a gun and she wasn’t sure if it was a real gun or a fake gun or what type of gun it was … She said the next second he raised it up to her face … and she turned around and started running. That’s when she heard bang bang bang right behind her as she was running, and she could feel the wind hitting her hair from the power of the gunshot from less than five feet away from the car.'”

“Premeditated mass murder” just outside one of America’s most idyllic, envied campuses.

The statement in my headline comes from an article in The Daily Nexus, the UC Santa Barbara student newspaper.

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

Update: There was only one shooter.

[A] YouTube video titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” appeared to be connected to the killing spree.

In the video, a young man sits behind the wheel of a parked car and rants about how he’s been ignored by women at UCSB and that his sexual advances have been rejected. He promises to go to Isla Vista on Friday night to seek revenge against women — especially sorority members — by slaughtering them.

Rodger’s Facebook page indicates he’s from Calabasas, and shows him sitting in a black BMW coupe.

The gunman’s car was a black BMW coupe.

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

My searching around online suggests the shooter may have been the son of a Los Angeles-based film director/photographer.

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

A somewhat similar act of femicide.

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

Confirmation: The shooter is the son of Peter Rodger, “a special unit director on The Hunger Games and director of Oh My God, a documentary the screened during the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.”

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

There are of course also similarities to the Virginia Tech massacre: A mentally disturbed young man of college age makes an angry video promising revenge on a world that has disrespected him; he then gets a gun and starts shooting in areas full of college students.

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

Incredibly, it gets worse. The shooter stabbed his three roommates to death before he began shooting near UC Santa Barbara.

May 20th, 2014
Withdrawal…

… method.

March 19th, 2014
“FANS SAY CARDS OPEN PRACTICE CROWD NOT A REFLECTION ON PETRINO”

Kind of a defensive headline, that. Why, when sleazeman Bobby Petrino (put “petrino” in my search engine) has again (this is a return gig) graced the University of Louisville not only with his presence, but with open practices, is everybody staying away?

[L]ess than [Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Make that Fewer than] 100 fans were on hand for Petrino’s first open practice inside Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.

Do you have any idea what one hundred people look like in a stadium built for 55,000 people?

March 13th, 2014
Ronald McDimesworth

One hell of an all-American headline.

February 26th, 2014
Nobody knows why the state of Illinois doesn’t pull the plug on …

… Chicago State University. Corrupt even by Illinois standards. An almost non-existent graduation rate. Ruled by one greedy hack after another. Frauds in high places. The functional equivalent of North Korea.

And now… (drum roll)…

A Cook County jury has awarded a former Chicago State University employee $2.5 million in damages and back pay after deciding he was fired in retaliation for reporting alleged misconduct by the university president and other top officials, an amount that a judge could further increase at a hearing next month.

… The lawsuit by former Chicago State senior legal counsel James Crowley alleged that he was fired in February 2010 after he refused to withhold documents about university President Wayne Watson’s employment that were requested by a faculty member under the state’s public records law. Crowley also claimed that he was retaliated against after reporting questionable contracts to the Attorney General’s office.

So what’ll it take to shut the place down?

Students are leaving in droves.

Is it possible Illinois will keep the shake-down operation going even without students???

January 8th, 2014
“ILLITERATES IN BIG TIME COLLEGE SPORTS”

Headline of the day.

(Don’t just read the transcript; watch the video.)

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

A related article, and an expression of Okie pride:

[Y]ou don’t have to be literate to play and graduate from OSU.

December 24th, 2013
Headline of the Day

MISSOURI PROFESSOR PART OF MAJOR HUMAN FOSSIL FIND

November 19th, 2013
He made Dean’s List at William and Mary…

… in Spring 2013; he helped his father with his gubernatorial campaign in 2009. But if reports are correct, something went very wrong: Gus Deeds apparently stabbed his father, Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds, and then shot himself to death.

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

UPDATE:

[Gus] Deeds, who had withdrawn last month as a student at the College of William and Mary, underwent a mental health evaluation on Monday at a local hospital performed under an emergency custody order, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. But the son was released from Bath County Community Hospital because no psychiatric beds were available across a wide area of western Virginia, the paper reported.

November 14th, 2013
After this, UD PROMISES NEVER to say Canada is boring.

Muff diving vers le nord.

The mayor’s exact statement.

Background.

November 5th, 2013
“Rand Paul Faces Yet Another Plagiarism Accusation; Will Probably Have to Start Dueling”

Headline of the day.

November 3rd, 2013
Statutory…

… offense.

October 27th, 2013
Armed Person Reported at Indiana…

… University Bloomington. Odd hour and day for a sighting, a lockdown. Five, six, on a Sunday morning.

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

Students fighting; one had a knife and used it. Non-lethally.

October 8th, 2013
Gunshots at Princeton.

This story just appeared on the news; it’s much too soon to know what’s going on. I’ll follow it.

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

It seems to be over, with no gunshots having been fired. Ezra Klein was giving a lecture at the time; everyone was evacuated to the basement of the building.

June 4th, 2013
If you can come up with a better pun headline than this one…

… be my guest. I’ve spent most of the day admiring it.

May 23rd, 2013
You’re as young as you…

… deal.

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
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I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
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As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
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Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
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