UDs’s old friend Rita Koganzon argues, in the New York Times, that colleges should stop coddling and controlling students, and instead start offering them an environment in which they need to be autonomous adults. Her colleague at UNC Chapel Hill, Jay Smith, launches an ad feminam attack in response, advising her in his last sentence to “look in the mirror.”
After all, Smith argues, Rita has herself been coddled by a conservative establishment (in the NC legislature and on the Chapel Hill board of trustees) which arranged a nice faculty position for her in a newly established conservative thought program on campus to which many faculty objected.
Though they would never admit it, the faculty of [this new program] benefited from affirmative action, but of the unjustifiable kind that works in reverse. Their candidacies for positions at UNC were made possible not by pure merit, which they may or may not possess, but by their membership in or adjacency to a well-funded conservative ecosystem saturated by euphemisms like “viewpoint diversity,” “civility” and “balance.” That ecosystem thrives on other built-in advantages. [The program’s] mission, like that of other similarly inspired centers across the country, is supported by the generosity of rich donors working to defend and disguise capitalism’s worst excesses, a gerrymandered GOP supermajority in our state and a university administration willing to accommodate the political goals of legislators and their minions on governing boards. [These] professors may well be the most protected people on our campus.
A far more intellectually honest direction of attack on autonomy at universities offered itself to Smith, and UD is surprised he didn’t take it. The university Rita is about to join permanently and luridly besmirched itself not thirteen years ago when a twenty year long fake courses/fake department/fake professors/dirty administrators scandal finally broke – hundreds of no-show student athletes were handed out As in non-existent courses engineered by corrupt professors and deans who were highly compensated by the university president and trustees, who themselves certainly knew all about the scheme, as did – one with equal certainty assumes – plenty of professors and – duh – students. “Investigators concluded that university employees were aware of the fraud and actively steered athletes and other struggling students to those courses.” It was “a clear and atrocious example of academic fraud.”
[T]he university’s accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, … placed the university on a yearlong probation in 2015, ending in 2016, for violating seven accreditation standards, one of them being academic integrity. It was the strongest punishment the accreditor could deliver besides revoking accreditation entirely.
Because Smith’s university spectacularly betrayed the moral trust upon which the free and legitimate university rests, it lost its autonomy. In response to the scandal, the university initiated a policy whereby school officials will drop in unannounced at any time in any course to make sure professors are meeting their courses. Pretty humiliating, huh? Pretty nanny state, right? But Jay Smith’s school demonstrated its inability to be autonomous, and therefore all must be monitored.
And by the way – if Jay is worried about “capitalism’s worst excesses,” he can find those very close to home, in a university which continues to hand over huge amounts of its money to sports over academics, even though it’s easy to argue that if it had any integrity it would have shut down its athletics programs for a decent interval.
No one seems to be able to keep it down in Lansing, starting with the super-rapey football team in 2016 (Rape Captain here), moving on to gymnastics in 2018, in which the school’s president came very close to going to prison (if an actually jailed university leader is your cup of tea, try Penn St former prez Graham Spanier), and settling most recently on ex-football coach, highest paid person at the university, and phone sex enthusiast/accused sexual abuser Mel Tucker.
Now I want you to realize that with a heap of sex shit like this comes unbelievably expensive, endlessly filed and refiled, litigation. Never one of the world’s great public universities – mainly because — notice? — nothing really matters to it except athletics, for which it is happy to humiliate/sacrifice itself – MSU now spends most of its time dispensing hundreds of millions of dollars to claimants and batting down not very nice remarks about itself from the governor. Bedlamite trustees and massively projected images of Hitler during football games round out the bad joke that is MSU. I’d say there’s a lesson about big university sports in all of this, but that would never be true. With guns as with football, Americans are always eager to destroy themselves.
… with big ol’ settlements to the parents of a Univ New Mexico player (UNM is among the ickiest of the icky, athletically and in all other ways) who killed himself after a scuzzy coach made him keep playing even though he’d concussed himself into a serious depression.
The lawsuit noted that a year prior to [Nahje] Flowers’ death, UNM suspended [Coach Bob] Davie for 30 days over allegations that he physically assaulted players, obstructed a rape investigation and frequently engaged in racist comments.
UNM, a month after Flowers’ death, agreed to pay Davie a $825,000 buyout. He left at the end of the 2019 season with two years on his contract. During his tenure, Davie had a 35-63 record over eight seasons. He couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.
Another feather in soccer’s cap. We tend to focus on the brutality and bigotry of European stadiums, but let’s not forget the great fans closer to home!
… John Calipari, whose latest thing is losing lots of games at Kentucky but costing that stoooopid school over 33 million if it wants to get rid of him.
That’s because for decades Greek fans have been killing people and torching cities and all. The hapless government thinks a temporary pause and some more security cameras will bring Peace in Our Time, but this latest scheme will work out just as well as Chamberlain’s. I guess it’s real hard to confront the only thing to be done with a significant population of nihilist shits: No. More. Soccer.
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A BAD CROWD
Since that’s way rad an idea, let me say a bit more about pre-modern and postmodern crowds, and how they’re making crowds themselves obsolete.
The Greek football fans generate primitive, pre-modern crowding, all about atavistic drives among men. We had one of these recently in the States — the mass shooter at the Super Bowl victory parade was just, you know, hormones, spoiling for a fight.
Any scenario that surrounds fundamentally aggressive men with other young men will bring out the AK47 (that’s new — primitive cavemen had rocks), or, outside of gun-drenched USA, knives. And not just random young men: It was a signal cultural moment when the sixty year old owner of a soccer team got angry and ran onto the field during a game, with a gun in his outstretched hand to kill a referee.
You understand – yes? – the message Savvidis sent to all random hormoned-up young men? What I’m doing is a highly charismatic act.
You make matters worse when you present these people with established ‘enemies’ – opposing domestic or foreign teams. They don’t have to – like the Super Bowl shooter – go looking for enemies. You’ve set up a war for them to fight in, collectively, cuz they’re part of… a crowd.
And it’s an all-male, all-young crowd, right? Didn’t use to be, but over the years women children and older people have arrived at the conclusion that Greek soccer stadiums are not conducive to longevity, let alone a fun afternoon. So now you’ve concentrated the scariest element of society into loud sweaty excited rageful quarters.
So Greece is simply farther along in the evolution toward the end of crowds: It has watched for decades as its soccer matches – increasing numbers of them – devolve into fatal violence. It has tried everything, including, indeed, the end of crowds. The country is coming off of a two-month moratorium on soccer attendees.
But now that they’re letting these incredibly dangerous groups of people back in, what do they think is going to happen?
So, you know, we’re getting the stern announcements about enhancements of the police state they’ve already set up in the stadiums – vast numbers of security cameras, police, mandatory digital identification, weapon checks, blah blah.
Will it work? Keep your eye on Miami’s spring break. It’s happening right now. Those crowds are so awful that Miami released this ad a couple of weeks ago, and has made clear that it does in fact want the total end of those crowds. We don’t want you. Don’t come here. AND here are all the police state goodies we’re throwing at you if you come anyway. Let’s see if it works. Might make the guys madder, you know.
Anyway, so Greece. So what was once supposed to be A GAME, a certain thing, a sports gathering, is now – you understand? – a kind of lord of the flies free for all held perilously in check by insane levels of surveillance technology plus a very large, very frightened, security force. The players are scared, and not just the ones dreading racist chants. The referees? Forget about it. You know that groups of them have gone on strike because of the attacks.
So my thing is who’s kidding who. Eventually it won’t just be Savvidis packing heat. Obvious escalations of an already lurid situation are on their way, and we know from security’s inability to stop a mass shooting at the Super Bowl parade that guns are too quick and easy and lethal to police.
Think security will find weapons and confiscate them? Haha. Check out how many smuggled guns are discovered every day at all of America’s airports. People are always trying, and think about how many guns the TSA isn’t finding.
When crowds become impossible, what are your choices? You can try identifying and excluding the evil doers, but you’ll never get them all, and of course they’re evil enough to figure out how to get into the stadium no matter what you do. You can get to North Korean levels of police state apparatus, I guess (lines of soldiers with guns pointed at the crowd throughout? torture chambers below the locker rooms?), but this won’t be very… pretty. No, UD is thinking that Greece (and other countries) will have to shut down the whole thing.
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Our highly advanced postmodern crowds are a whole other thing. It’s their innocence that gets you. They are sitting ducks, awaiting the Las Vegas shooter, the Prague shooter, the Highland Park shooter. They are gathered to enjoy a concert, a parade, or just a sunny afternoon on the campus of Charles University. Massive, extensive, the highest of high-tech firepower rains down upon them from a heavily fortified genius who has thought everything out to guarantee he’ll be able to shoot for a long time and kill a lot of people.
I don’t think American parades or outdoor concerts have a very long shelf life either.
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Oh, and on the subject of Greek violence — We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the petrol bombs being thrown at police, even as we speak, in opposition to the government’s shocking intention to allow private universities to operate freely in Greece.
Yes! What’ll they think of next? Private, as well as, public universities!
Most Greeks are in favor; over 40,000 of the smartest young Greeks currently study abroad, having fled the squalid corrupt national system. (Put Greece university in my search engine.) Competition might wake up the dead public campuses and reverse the brain drain, but who would want to do that?
… to an appalling 216 today, Texas Tech got there the traditional southern way: Appoint political hacks to run the place; make athletics everything, with its full complement of disgusting fans, sadistic/litigious/mentally retarded coaches, corrupt boosters etc etc etc; make sure everyone on campus is fully armed.
And fully drunk. In a typical day in basketball, Texas Tech fans threw water bottles and lots of other shit on the court cuz they were losing.
To round out your reasons to attend this school, Lubbock is one of the most dangerous cities in Texas.
New Mexico State’s Robert Carpenter pulled back his arm and delivered a powerful punch to the face of Liberty’s Shiloh Robinson, sending the forward to the floor, [breaking his nose,] and leading to an ejection during an Aggies overtime win.
The beauty of it is the coach initially said Carpenter’s a great guy and I’m sure he’s remorseful and maybe we’ll suspend him for a game or something… And then I dunno someone must have talked to the coach cuz now it’s oh he’s suspended indefinitely blah blah.
Yesterday, Faruk ran onto the field and punched a ref so hard the guy had to be helped up off the ground. Faruk has now been arrested. SO…
Things are getting so much better in world soccer! The last time a team owner ran onto the field and attacked a ref, he did it with a gun!
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photo credit: superlig
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Update:LOLOLOLOLOL
My aim was to react verbally to the referee and spit in his face. At this time, I slapped the referee in the face. The slap I gave did not cause a fracture. [The ref’s cheek was fractured.] After the slap I gave, the referee stood for about 5-10 seconds, then threw himself on the ground. They immediately removed me from the scene because of my heart disease. Other than that, I am not aware of any incident that took place.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Because of my heart disease, I hereby resign from the club and place myself in jail for assault.