← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

‘ Davis said everyone has pretty much accepted that SMU’s not going to retreat on its athletic spending. “SMU doesn’t go backwards,” she said.’

Oh but it does, it does. Southern Methodist University does nothing but go backwards, as it digs an over one hundred million dollar hole via out of control athletics, and then makes students pay for it. You can sort of sense the student writer’s rage as she notes that students have no access to this financial information, and as one university rep after another to whom she speaks responds to her with contempt and condescension.

In an accompanying article, this student says it best:

“I think it’s insane that our money continues to go into a black hole of mismanagement that we don’t even have access to see the specifics of,” he said.

SMU athletics is losing money hand over fist; the yahoos who run it spend like drunken sailors. Why should they give a shit about students!

Insane really says it. The people the student journalists talk to make absolutely insane remarks to them. Here’s my favorite, from the Athletics Policy Committee Chair:

“It’s like what I teach, which is history of the Soviet Union — we want reform, but nothing seems to work until the whole thing collapses, and maybe that’s what’ll happen with this.”

Thanks, man. SMU students will be sucked dry for a shitty education until the Romanov dynasty collapses, and then things will get better.

Southern Methodist University is fucking nuts.

Margaret Soltan, May 10, 2012 3:27PM
Posted in: sport

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=35825

5 Responses to “‘ Davis said everyone has pretty much accepted that SMU’s not going to retreat on its athletic spending. “SMU doesn’t go backwards,” she said.’”

  1. AYY Says:

    “SMU doesn’t go backwards?” I seem to remember somebody in WW2 saying the same thing only it was about Germany. That strategy probably cost him the war. Mao said “Enemey advances, we retreat.” He won his war.

  2. AYY Says:

    Oops, It’s “enemy”. That’s what I get for commenting in the wee hours.

  3. University Diaries » For sure the most degrading school at which to be a student or a faculty member at the moment … Says:

    […] the background here, if you can stomach […]

  4. University Diaries » Oh, I don’t know… Let’s focus on … Says:

    […] the fantastic campus culture of the sports factory faltered in the wake of SMU’s misfortune. Secrecy about the budget even as they soak the students for higher and higher athletics fees? Check. Sodden frat boys befouling all they touch? Check. […]

  5. University Diaries » Such a bland little article, this one; such a typical bit of local journalism, Texas-style… Says:

    […] [SMU has] been notably vile ever since its long-ago death penalty, a signal distinction within a national landscape of dirty sports programs. SMU has not let the fact that the program remains moribund stop it from accumulating – last year – a one hundred million dollar athletic deficit. […]

Comment on this Entry

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

Archives

Categories