“[G]ases from the melting, brown load hindered firefighters.”
“[G]ases from the melting, brown load hindered firefighters.”
We’re on our way to one mass killing by a crazy person with guns every day.
The death toll is the highest from a school shooting in U.S. history since a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007.
***********************
Comment from an Andrew Sullivan reader:
I could never feel anything but contempt for the asshole who did this, but the truth is we are a nation of assholes. I include myself in that. Most radio stations I heard could only be bothered to touch on this massacre of children for a moment or two before getting back to the critical topic of football. That wonderful game full of violence that has no regard for the well being of the young men who play it.
Someone’s been shooting on the campus of Casper College, a public community college in Wyoming. One person is confirmed dead, and the shooter is either injured or dead.
The incident is still going on.
******************************
This report says it’s over – one dead, and the injured shooter in custody.
*******************************
Apparently the person killed was an instructor at the college.
*******************************
And apparently guns weren’t involved, as originally reported. Stabbing, it sounds like. And now three deaths are reported.
********************************
Phys ed exam?
We need to know if (as UD suspects) the teachers cheating on these tests came out of only a handful of universities in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Massive, long-term conspiracies of this sort maintain themselves through word of mouth. I’d guess that only four or five schools generated the cheaters. Once we know the identities of the schools, it’s important to publicize their names (of course accreditors, and the schools themselves, will do nothing) and warn students away from them.
An ABC news pundit just summed up the problem that’s kept the Republicans down in this election. And we can quote it here at University Diaries because it’s a university reference.
UD will cop to being extremely excited to hear, just now, that Elizabeth Warren won in Massachusetts. UD has been a big supporter of Warren from the start, and it’s been a close race throughout. Big sigh.
… supporters, maybe Donald Trump is something God intended to happen.
… a Chinese novelist, wins the Nobel. Presumably we’re all off to read, among his novels, Big Breasts and Wide Hips (1996).
One of the two recipients of the Nobel for chemistry describes The Phone Call.
UD suspects, though, that hearing five Swedish accents might have the opposite effect. Might make you think it’s just a more elaborate joke.
… a student at Utica College – an award-winning hockey player in high school – is charged with having beaten his girlfriend – a College at Brockport student – to death in her dorm room.
This is breaking news. University Diaries will cover the story as it develops.
*****************
Update: The story has quickly jumped to the Associated Press.
*****************
Unverified details suggest some more similarities to the Virginia lacrosse case: The boyfriend is rumored to have been drinking with friends before he went to the woman’s dorm room; the couple is said to have had a stormy relationship with a lot of fighting; there is a suggestion that she may have tired of the relationship and tried to end it.
Unverified details of the attack are also similar. As in the Yeardley Love case, this woman was battered to death.
There are also rumors that the killer knocked out the woman’s roommate by hitting her with an iron.
And like Love’s killer, this suspect has a drunk and disorderly arrest on his record.
****************************
Students are not being held in the dorm, but many have been seen leaving the hall with parents, as well as some with full backpacks and purses.
SUNY Brockport’s newspaper suddenly has a big story on its hands, and so far is doing an excellent job, providing incident-by-incident updates. Its journalists are best-situated to convey a sense of the feel of the campus in the immediate aftermath of a murder. And yes – of course those parents are swarming to take their kids out of that bloody building.
… other sites, was down for most of the afternoon. Her host, GoDaddy, apparently got hacked.
But I’m back, to share with you the Headline of the Day:
MEN CAUGHT WITH TINY PRIMATES IN THEIR UNDERWEAR IN DELHI AIRPORT
… frequented by University of Alabama students.
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. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
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.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte