… Condi Rice, who plans to go back to being a professor of political science at Stanford, got grilled by a student at a reception at a dorm there on Monday.

I’ve often wondered why students haven’t been more vocal in questioning the architects of the Iraq war and “legal” torture who landed plum spots at prestigious universities. Probably because it would have taken the draft, like the guillotine, to concentrate the mind. But finally, the young man at Stanford spoke up. Saying he had read that Ms. Rice authorized waterboarding, he asked her, “Is waterboarding torture?”

She replied: “The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against Torture. So that’s — and by the way, I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency.”

This was precisely Condi’s problem. She simply relayed. She never stood up against Cheney and Rummy for either what was morally right or what was smart in terms of our national security.

The student pressed again about whether waterboarding was torture.

“By definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture,” Ms. Rice said, almost quoting Nixon’s logic: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

She also stressed that, “Unless you were there in a position of responsibility after Sept. 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans.”

Reyna Garcia, a Stanford sophomore who videotaped the exchange, said of Condi’s aria, “I wasn’t completely satisfied with her answers, to be honest,” adding that “President Obama went ahead and called it torture and she did everything she could not to do that.”…

A student describes the images in Bowdoin College’s yearly Naked Art Show.

Students produce works of art in which they and/or their fellow students appear naked.

They are the bodies of college students invested in the future, determined to shatter the social coordinates of the privileged class’ modes of distinction in a highly choreographed way.

The local paper’s quoting Marilyn Flowers, an economics professor – and chair of the department – at Ball State who’s been going after campus athletics.

… Ball State has more than $14 million budgeted for its athletics programs. Approximately 80 percent of the budget is paid for from student fees – almost $9 million – and institutional support – almost $2.5 million.

“When it costs so much for kids to go to school, and you charge them $800 a year and most of them don’t go to any games, that I think is really unfortunate,” Flowers said.

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UD thanks a reader for linking her to this story.

An undergraduate woman at the University of Minnesota writes a column in the campus newspaper.

… [W]e were supposed to be working on a group project, but instead, we decided to get drunk. Inevitably, drunk classmate girl talk leads to the question of whether we find our professor hot. Prudence’s response was something along the lines of, “Well, I find MY professor to be hot.” When we asked her exactly what she meant with that kind of emphasis on ownership, she proceeded to unveil every girl’s college fantasy:

“I’ve known him, my professor boyfriend, since I started working in his department about two years ago. I never took a class under him, but he always flirted with me…I blew him off mostly, but a couple of months ago he asked me out to dinner. We have had many, many discussions about whether or not it’s okay to pursue this, but so far it’s working out well enough. We just have to be discreet about it.” Before I could even get the question out of my mouth, Prudence added, “And yes, I call him ‘professor’ in bed.”

My classmates and I were awestruck by her academic prowess, but it did cross our minds that he could just be a hairy old man. A couple of Facebook clicks later, however, and Prudence proved us wrong. He is, in fact, a gorgeous specimen – perhaps heightened by the fact that he is not opposed to scandalous romance. (As a side note: the fact that we now have the ability to friend our professors on Facebook to learn more about their personal lives, sift through their photos, etc. makes this dating scene even more hot to handle.)

“It is highly likely that us professors are attracted to our students,” Prudence’s professor said when asked for comment….

There it is. US professors????

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UD thanks Bill for the link.

… about George Zinkhan. From an article in People magazine:

The shocking act of violence [is] alleged to have been committed by the endowed professor …

… are female freshman roommates at George Washington University.

La Kid is not one of them.

…[T]he red Jeep Liberty was found in Bogart, an Athens suburb in northwestern Clarke County. … [T]he vehicle was positioned in a way to make the scene look like an accident.

Not sure what this last bit means. Drove it into a tree?

Some sources have Zinkhan with a drug or alcohol problem. Isn’t it possible he did the deed high, then drove the car high, then crashed it not on purpose? And started running?

I know. He drove his kids to a neighbor’s house and calmly told the neighbor to watch them because there had been an emergency. But a person’s capable of remaining calm under the influence.

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Drove it into a ditch.

And, I mean, how far off was UD?

UD said he’d ditched the car by pushing it into a body of water.

She was close.

It was deep in a ravine.

[A police spokesman said] the Jeep was found in a ravine, “well off the beaten path.”

“You can’t see it from the road, which explains why we couldn’t find it.”

… at the height of spring, and as you know if you read UD with care, her town is an old, well-tended arboretum.

As the cab from the airport drove down Argyle Hill, the driver AND UD, who has had decades to get used to Garrett Park in the spring, both gasped.

It was the whiteness of the dogwoods pouring down the hill to Wells Park that got to UD and the cabbie.  Massed, moving with the car and the wind, bright against the afternoon’s dreariness, the trees glittered like ocean foam.

Underneath them, white hosta flowers and white azaleas churned.  Above, the ancient town evergreens ruled the waves.

More than enough compensation for my loss of the tropical sun.

… you see every day.

“Witnesses say 57-year-old Zinkhan first targeted Clemson University professor Tom Tanner, whom Zinkhan believed to be having an affair with his wife, Marie Bruce. He took aim at her next. Then he reportedly shot 63-year-old Ben Teague, the small theatre group’s father figure, who some say died trying to save the others. “

… at the University of Wyoming, is missing.

He was in Japan, hiking to a volcano.

That was Sunday, and he has not yet returned.

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Lots of detail, and a link to a Facebook group, here.

Dipshitty little plane took me to Fort Myers for my connecting flight to DC.

Hot day, bright sun, and from my window seat I marveled at all the velvet green islands lying flat under white clouds.

“Drug-runners paradise!” I said to my seatmate, who a few moments ago had described his sky diving trips to me.

He couldn’t hear me. Plane got real loud as we leaned toward Ft. Myers, and then it shook like a son of a bitch. “Sein ZOOM Tode,” thought UD, who doesn’t like to fly.

No problem finding your gate, because there’s only one gate.

Cabbie to the airport, a frazzled woman: “I’m so over Key West. I’ve been here too long. I’m movin’ to Miami. My dad’s got a house there. I’ve had it with sweating. Enough sweating. The people I thought were my friends are only out for themselves. I’m getting ripped off right and left. Aren’t any jobs. Cabbie? Cabbies are people with SUCKER written across their forehead. I can’t stand being so far away from any other place. You can’t get anywhere. You can’t get out of the state.”

… if true.

… at the University of Delaware.