March 20th, 2025
This is ominous.

Of course guns are all over every level of America’s schools, but most are in the hands of individual students.

UD has for years said on this blog that the inevitable progression will be toward the Columbine model – guns in the hands of two or more students in a conspiracy to take down the school.

Battery Creek High School was under lockdown for several hours Wednesday after two students were found with handguns. Beaufort County [SC] school officials said there was “no direct threat” made to students or faculty.

‘No direct threat.’ Right.

Police searched [one] student after receiving an anonymous tip about possible suspicious activity. Information from the first student prompted police to question another Battery Creek student, who was also found with a handgun about an hour later.

Take a bow, SC. You’ve got just about the weakest gun laws in the country, with particular liberality toward minors, who can buy all the guns they want without any parental oversight. No need to feel threatened.

March 17th, 2025
Sen. Mykala Voita’s latest…

... proposed legislation:  SB 84 requires all performers
within the state to open carry guns on stage.  Failure to do so
will result in penalties up to and including closure of
shows.
March 16th, 2025
Look at ’em run!!

It’s Spring Break in America!

March 16th, 2025
‘I once encountered a man carrying an AR-15 rifle at a summer festival.’

The writer – a native South Dakotan – seems to think there’s something noteworthy about a man openly carrying this

(that’s a Dad picking up his kid at the airport) in the sweet idle setting of a summer fair. Massive overt personal weaponry seems wrong, somehow, in places like summer fairs, airports, churches, hospitals, schools…

But steely-eyed thin-lipped SD Sen. Mykala Voita

presses hard and successfully on the legislature to arm South Dakotans everywhere – in particular, on college campuses and in bars.

Instead of letting any student keep a handgun in their dorm room and carry it to class if they wish (as the original bill, unbelievably, would have done and as Voita made clear she still prefers), SB 100 now allows only gun owners who have qualified for an enhanced concealed carry permit to have a pistol on campus. 

Now, see, again, that “unbelievably” – this is from the same SD’an who thinks it’s really something to see a man openly toting an AR15 at a summer fair – tips you off that this writer is out of step with her state and should probably be living in godless gunless Garrett Park with UD. As should Republican Senator Steve Duffy (Rapid City), who not only voted against arming bar patrons but said, “This is crazy. When you mix booze and guns I don’t know how you can expect anything good to happen. Sooner or later, there’s going to be trouble.”

But hey this is fuckin Deadwood South Dakota! Sure there’s gonna be trouble, and Voita knows that, but it’s the wild fuckin west so let ‘er rip. Nihilism, ho!

March 14th, 2025
John Adamo makes real progress with his anger issues.

[John] Adamo was known for being “very obnoxious,” and frequently sat in his garage blasting heavy metal at extremely high volumes.

“There were definitely arguments [with his closest neighbors] that led up to this,” [a neighbor] said.

Adamo was a “combative alcoholic” who ripped down a surveillance camera mounted on [his neighbors’] home before squeezing off the first round [of gunfire that practically killed the husband and wife who made him angry]…

[T]he dispute [has] been simmering for years, and … it involved multiple cameras pointed at Adamo’s home, as well as a sign out front, reading, “PRIVATE PROPERTY, NO TRESPASSING,” with the words, “Mr. and Ms. Adamo!!!!” handwritten underneath.

“It’s been a running feud,” another neighbor told the Post. “And John’s a nut. There was always friction… This has been going on for years.”

Adamo, too, had cameras pointed at [his neighbors’] house…

Adamo, a Brooklyn native who used to work on Wall Street but was reportedly doing construction work in recent times, was estranged from his family due to his drinking and friction involving his late father’s estate…

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

After a standoff with police, Adamo was found in his bedroom, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Of course a man like John Adamo had guns.

March 14th, 2025
‘Over their lifetimes, more than a third (34.4%) of gun owners reported knowing someone who died by firearm suicide, while just 1.2% had ever fired at a perceived threat.’

No surprise to readers of this blog.

March 13th, 2025
Bullets. Flying.

You’ll be relieved to hear that although strictly speaking the fight started inside the terminal – at a crowded baggage claim – they moved it outside when the AK47s started up. Admittedly, if you’d been at the airport window that their guns blew out, you’d have been killed, but as it happened no one was standing by that window.

As our country argues the advantages of American colonization to various of the world’s nations, it shouldn’t forget to mention a way of life which rivals only Haiti.

March 9th, 2025
The heart of the heart of America

This story is the quintessence of America, mes petites. UD‘s telling you: It don’t get no more American than this.

Start with baseball. Gotta be baseball, right? A varsity softball game between two high schools where?

 Where else? So okay baseball and Texas. Let’s do motherhood and apple pie! Loving mom Elysia Quinn Klatt was in attendance, cheering on her kid. Also loving dad, from whom Elysia is divorced.

Let’s do free speech! While Junior was out there slugging, mom and dad and their new spouses started shouting about child custody issues.

Last but not least:

During the argument, police said 30-year-old Elysia Quinn Klatt grabbed a firearm from a vehicle and allegedly pointed it at her ex-husband before being immediately disarmed by another male involved in the altercation. No shots were fired.

Klatt and [her current husband] then reportedly left the area in their Dodge Mega Cab RAM 3500, traveling south on FM 462 before the Medina County Sheriff’s Office located Klatt and took her into custody.

Okay, I made up the Dodge Mega. But it must have been some sort of pickup.

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

Plus the story’s like what did Dreiser call it An American Tragedy cuz Elysia can’t even lie to get out of her charges (aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, unlawful carrying of a weapon in a prohibited place and terroristic threat against family/household member – aggravated assault) cuz she did it in front of a packed softball game.

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

“Okay so I made up the Dodge Mega but I wonder how much one costs.”

“I’ll guess,” said Mr UD, “$80,000.”

“I’ll guess $50,000. [Checks online.] Yikes. High end model starts at $90,930. But if you only want a few bells and whistles it’ll cost you $70,000 plus.”

“And then there’s buying gas for it.”

  

March 8th, 2025
Spring Break Begins!

Police responded to reports of a shooting on a crowded beach Friday afternoon.

It happened in the West End, where hundreds of students have gathered for “Senior Skip Day,” according to reports.

A spokesperson with the Galveston Police Department said a gun was recovered from the scene, but no one was struck. Six people were arrested.

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

Footage, interviews. Big fight, big Glock. Big state of Texas that doesn’t give a shit.

March 1st, 2025
Dear old golden rule days…

When junior Alex Acuna walks into John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring [Md.] to start his school day, he feels safe. But in the back of his mind, he says he’s also thinking that walking into the school means it could be his “last day alive.”  

February 27th, 2025
Hoitsy Toitsy Montgomery County Thinks We’re Better Than That.

UD‘s county still hasn’t transformed its public schools into armed camps, with metal detectors and police everywhere, cuz it thinks it’s too classy for that sort of thing. Everybody else is doing it, but Bethesda? Chevy Chase? These are among America’s most affluent, most educated, blahblahblah…

So change has to come from the parents, not the deluded county council, which seems prepared to see students die on the altar of its self-regard.

A petition, in the wake of gun possession and gun fight incidents in just the last two weeks, is now circulating.

February 27th, 2025
‘[S]ome residents expressed shock that an apparent gun battle had happened in the middle of a residential street in broad daylight.’

Get used to it.

February 26th, 2025
What’s going on at BCC?

A fifteen year old student packed heat at the school; mere days before, a fight involving a pretty large number of Bethesda Chevy Chase high school students plus gunfire took place in the middle of Bethesda. As administrators/security begin to crack down, they will certainly discover that the gangs at the school and/or isolated mentally disturbed students bring guns to campus on a regular basis.

But will there be a crackdown? Does BCC have, like, a principal? Is this person doing anything?

February 25th, 2025
What becomes an alcoholic most?

Authorities said they found 47 weapons, including the gun from Ferguson’s ankle holster, and more than 26,000 rounds of ammunition at the home.

February 25th, 2025
‘We saw that the measures we took last year were necessary and it worked. We had an incredibly successful spring break. No fatalities, no shootings, no stampedes.’

What can I say. In America, that’s how you define a successful gathering of college students.

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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. ...
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

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