January 16th, 2020
‘Bellaire High School [is] trending nationally on Twitter for the wrong reasons. There have been multiple incidents of students with guns in the first semester at Bellaire — obvious signs that something need[s] to be done. But yesterday, a JROTC student was accidentally killed. Why does a student have a loaded gun on campus?’

Some people claim it wasn’t accidental. The 16-year-old shooter shot a fellow student right in the chest, has a reputation as a bully, and isn’t cooperating with authorities.

And the student who wrote the opinion piece I quote in my headline adds another element to the story: Already, in the first semester of the year, there have been “multiple incidents” of students bringing guns to school. This was just the first incident to end with someone dead.

Wow.

January 15th, 2020
“Welcome to a safe place”…

… it proclaims over and over again on the Bellaire, Texas website.

But hey.

It’s Texas.

The mayor is “utterly shocked” you can’t go to high school in Bellaire without risking a fatal gunshot wound. But what does Don’t Mess With Texas mean? It’s means Texas has more registered guns than anyplace else in America.

And hyuk! That’s just registered guns!

What I’m trying to say is Texas has a lot of guns and Texas is always talking about guns and showing off guns and taking guns to church and all and how utterly shocking that the state is one big ol’ shootout.

**********

The details are just great. Little kid brings loaded gun to school; shows other little kid. Shoots other little kid to death.

December 29th, 2019
Let us…

spray.

December 3rd, 2019
Oshkosh B’

Glock.

December 1st, 2019
Nawlins in the …

mawnin. As in much of the rest of the world, mass shooting is the way Americans celebrate ball games. (Southern won the game by doing what it had to do. Congrats!)

November 25th, 2019
What took you so long?

Already eighteen and only just bagged your first murder? This is America! This is Bama! Remember: There are competing states. I’m gonna assume you’ve already bagged a bunch, but only got caught for this one.

November 22nd, 2019
Thirteen Going on Fifteen

Only 13 years old and already so confident an AR-15 marksman he’s about to kill his whole middle school!

November 16th, 2019
“Shooting forces suspension of Camden-Pleasantville playoff game”

Here’s a headline with a whiff of the obsolete. Not long from now, parents will recall for their children the quaint practice of suspending football games when people in the stands or on the field initiated mass shootings. “Now of course they play right on through it – couldn’t have youth football if you suspended every game where some little fella took out his AR-15! … People still scatter. But as soon as the shooter’s finished, everyone comes back to the stadium. And something I’ve noticed is that there’s an excitement factor, a wake-up factor – like the guys on the field and the people in the stands are all shook up – but in a good way – after the shooting. The players are sharper; the fans are more enthusiastic. The whole thing feels more real; bleeding children remind the crowd of the preciousness of life and how lucky they are to be here, on a sunny day, watching football.”

November 15th, 2019
“[T]wo of the deceased persons inside the house were themselves armed.”

Airbnb: Bringing Gangland to your neighborhood.

November 12th, 2019
“The families argue that Remington violated Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act by recklessly marketing the rifle to disturbed young men like the Sandy Hook gunman through product placement in violent video games and advertising pitches like ‘consider your man card reissued.'”

And the Supreme Court just said go ahead and sue.

November 2nd, 2019
A new setting for our country’s gun massacres.

You can’t help wondering, driving through Potomac, Maryland, or the Hamptons, or hundreds of locations like them, what’s going to happen to all the empty, unsellable, mcmansions. Turns out not every generation of Americans wants a meaninglessly vast, crushingly expensive box in a distant field – so once the owners realize they’re also desperate to get out of them, what do you do with the abandoned, house-littered landscape?

Of course there are always squatters – Florida and Nevada mcmansions are full of them – but there’s no money in that. OTOH: Turns out a beautiful cosmic convergence is playing out right in front of our eyes: Owners are renting to enormous bring-your-own-guns parties! Shooters want anonymity for their shooting; owners want rental income: Win/Win.

Yes, neighbors are pissed about hundreds of drunk dangerous people next door in what they thought was an upscale neighborhood — dumping trash, blasting music, fighting, crashing their cars, and killing each other — but town councils don’t give a shit, and by the time the police get there, as in lovely Orinda, California, five people are already dead, and more to come, kiddies.

And look – as I’m sure the NRA will explain to the local belly-achers – there are two cool things they’re overlooking here:

  1. They can watch the massacre on YouTube. Yes! It was filmed.
  2. The Orinda party was on Halloween. How many parents can show their trick or treaters real corpses?

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

Uhhhhhhhh… okay! Day 1 post-massacre, Airbnb announces it’s banning party houses. But if you read the article I linked to, it’s clear that this won’t be easy. Massive parties and criminal activities have for some time been the “scourge” of the industry, and UD doesn’t see how you can effectively police liars of the sort who lied her way into the use of the Orinda house. Plus, as abandoned mcmansion territory grows, there won’t be any neighbors to complain about your meth lab/assault weapon jamboree. Miles of tumbleweed and turrets will assume a Mad Max character…

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

UPDATE: ” [T]he party was filled with people carrying firearms…”

November 1st, 2019
“It changed that moment, it’s difficult to comprehend why that weapon would need to be at a 5- and 6-year-old’s game. At 9:15 on a Saturday morning.”

Parents of teeny weeny soccer players get all booohooo when it turns out spectators carry multiple weapons, including an assault rifle. I mean hellooo? This is America, people!

October 25th, 2019
Urban Cosmic Convergence:

Layers and layers of horrible in UD’s hometown, Baltimore, Maryland, where a woman driver being threatened by the city’s adorably named squeegee kids takes out her gun to make them go away.

Squeegee is a venerable Baltimore institution:

One police officer estimates squeegeeing has been a part of the city “as long as murder has.”

October 24th, 2019
There are certain advantages to living in DC. A well-placed friend tips off UD that…

… after the success of their committee room storming, Republicans are planning a second action, this one a knitting circle. Apparently the congressmen will sit together just outside the hearings room, each of them knitting a panel revealing a dystopian America if Democrats win the White House. Steve Scalise, for instance, will depict an America where James Hodgkinson is unable to buy a gun.

October 20th, 2019
She had herself an Adam Lanza, but couldn’t be bothered to lock up her boyfriend’s many guns.

But she was his mother, so we can’t charge her with anything! I mean, after all, her son simply shot out the school’s door, exchanged gunfire with police, and then killed himself. He didn’t kill all his classmates, which was his intention…

Hey wait. Lookee here.

The felony charges against [Mary] York relate in part to [her boyfriend’s] gun-storage locker located in her basement. It was easily breached by [her son], nearly allowing the massacre to occur.

Maybe things are actually changing. She’s been charged with six felonies. Good. Now we’ll see if a jury has the sense to send her to jail. If American gunnies want to have a zillion weapons in circulation, they’re going to have to accept the consequences.

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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 ...
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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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If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
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