… one of the Penn State movers and shakers: Tim Curley. His remarks at a 2009 Knight Commission meeting UD attended so struck her that she transcribed them here.
Looked at in the context of subsequent events, these comments can really… I dunno… make you… a little cynical?
College athletics is today the healthiest I’ve ever seen it. Everything’s looking great. Everyone here should be celebrating the positive values of university sports. We’ve learned we can be the great success we are and at the same time we can govern ourselves. We don’t need to be governed by outsiders. We’ve made incredible progress on all fronts. Enthusiasm and excitement and participation and profit is at an all-time high. Yes, escalating salaries stress the system. Yes, we continue to be challenged with our expenses. But these things are out of our control. Every one of these expenditures is necessary. We live in a market society, and we have to respond to market conditions.
August 8th, 2012 at 11:12AM
Eerie!
August 8th, 2012 at 11:24AM
Creepy.
August 8th, 2012 at 11:50AM
Great blog, UD! If you’re an ordinary Joe (i. e., a non-professor) who’s concerned about higher education, and who wants to know if there’s something at the academy behind the seamless boosters’ rhetoric and flashy Web sites, you’re at the right blog. Trust me–the horror stories are real. I’ll be a regular reader.
August 8th, 2012 at 11:50AM
I was worried that Jerry Sandusky was completely out of control, but fortunately, he explained that it was just market conditions. Brrrr.
August 8th, 2012 at 7:27PM
That quote seems right out of a Sinclair Lewis novel.
August 8th, 2012 at 7:53PM
Yup – so much mindless Babbitry that if I could find my notes I’d check them. Hard to believe he actually said all that. But I’m MUCH better than, say, Jonah Lehrer, at transcription. I worked as a secretary each summer when I was in grad school, and I took dictation.
August 9th, 2012 at 3:08AM
BTW-by “horror stories” (above), I mean criminal and civil misconduct engaged in by administrators, faculty, and staff, and decisions so malignant or incompetent a 20-year old shift manager at McDonald’s could spot them. A very minor example: there’s the publicly reported Cayman Islands account that goes unexplained, because it’s unquestioned, and because it’s left unrepatriated (as it likely should be for a non-profit with local-only interests), it generates institutional mistrust.
Keep up the great work, UD.