UD has said it before and she says it again: There are few nuttier locations in this country than Penn State’s Happy Valley.
UD has said it before and she says it again: There are few nuttier locations in this country than Penn State’s Happy Valley.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
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[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
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Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
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The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
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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...
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From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
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I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
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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.
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University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
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If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
March 12th, 2014 at 11:05AM
The benefits of a liberal education–condemning an entire population based on a few people.
March 12th, 2014 at 11:16AM
GTWMA: I’m condemning a culture. Since it is a culture, I am making a generalization. I am not condemning an entire population.
March 13th, 2014 at 1:56PM
Linking to an article that mentions the student riot without mentioning the student and town candlelight vigil for the victims that was roughly 4-5 times larger in size or the numerous ways the university and community have reckoned with their responsibilities (which I’m sure you can’t even begin to name) simply provides further support to your blinders.
Dottie does what almost all family members do in these situations. It doesn’t reflect Penn State culture. It’s unfortunately the most common human reaction to such a situation.
“But it’s also common for their wives to be “in denial, to be blind, deaf and dumb, when it comes to these acts,” said Dr. Frank Ochberg, who teaches clinical psychiatry at Michigan State University and is a former associate director at the National Institute of Mental Health.”
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/26/how-can-wives-of-molesters-not-know/#ixzz2vs0aAjOT
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Moreover, your misguided effort to pin it on Penn State culture allows others to deny that the same thing may well be happening in their own community. You’re not generalizing. You’re attempting to specify the problem as “nutty Happy Valley”, which allows you and others to pretend they’d never be fooled by a monster like that–too smart, too cultured, too sophisticated for that.
And that denial is just as tragic as Dottie’s
March 13th, 2014 at 2:58PM
GTWMA: I don’t claim for one moment to be too clever to be fooled by a monster; and I live in Washington, which, if that HBO show everyone’s talking about is at all accurate, is just as nutty as your neighborhood, only in different ways. People always generalize about local cultures, and I’m arguing – based on certain atrocious results – that Happy Valley is a rather sick one. I think there’s plenty of evidence to back that up. I don’t say everyone there is sick – though if you’re trying to tell me, for instance, that Dottie’s behavior for the last few years and up to the present moment is not sick, I’m afraid you’re going to fail in that effort – but I say enough people are sick, and enough people are enablers who look the other way as things get very ugly, that the results are twisted and horrendous, with special reference to a protracted assault on children.
March 14th, 2014 at 12:15AM
The Second Mile Foundation was established by Sandusky back in the late 70’s. That means that Sandusky was doing what he was doing for over 30 years.
When the story broke open in 09, Sandusky had already been investigated by the county DA years prior, they had audio of what he did, it was known what he did. Yet, Paterno, et al, continued on the Board of Directors of the SMF, AFTER they knew that something was seriously wrong with the organization. And by et. al, I mean the most important people in PA, mostly men who had business dealings with the university. PA Gov. Corbett was state attorney general when the county was investigating Sandusky, he knew that something was very wrong with the SMF. So what does he do when he becomes gov? He authorizes that several million dollars be granted by the state to SMF, so that a dorm could be built for the boys.
When the hell is someone going to ask WTF were any of these guys doing lending their names and authority to an organization run by Sandusky, long after it became evident that something very wrong was going on? PSU officials KNEW that something was wrong, yet allowed Sandusky access to the campus and facilities, while some of their most important functionaries continued working with SMF.
March 14th, 2014 at 11:30AM
UD,
GTWMA is a company man who spends his free time on blog comment sections augmenting the efforts of The Old Main Propaganda Shop. Take him with a grain of salt.