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Florida State University: In foetore luxuriae voragine.

A Florida writer titles his article about the University of Florida and Florida State University’s amazing criminal record Want to Stop Campus Crime? Stop Cheering for Criminals:

The root cause is the fans themselves.

Coaches do what athletic directors allow. Athletic directors do what presidents allow. Presidents do what the public allows.

And the public thinks characters like [Chris] Rainey are the S.

(Suffice it to say it’s slang for “very special”).

Any other university-related club would be boarded up if members were suspected of 119 crimes in five years.

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Another commentator:

ESPN’s latest report on [Florida State University] football moves the program’s smell from “stink” to “stench”.

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And since every year everything gets worse, where does FSU go from stench? Stink is strong; stench is stronger… What’s stronger than stench?

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There is no one word. Only literature will get us there. FSU and even more crime-ridden University of Florida have fallen all the way down to Dante’s Inferno.

By reason of the horrible
Excess of stench the deep abyss throws out,
We drew ourselves aside…

The next step for Florida State University will be to jettison its old motto (Vires, artes, mores – Strength, skill, character) for a new one:

In foetore luxuriae voragine – Excess of stench in the deep abyss

Margaret Soltan, June 16, 2015 11:34AM
Posted in: sport

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4 Responses to “Florida State University: In foetore luxuriae voragine.”

  1. A Reader Says:

    After ‘stench’ is ‘reek’ and after that is ‘miasma’

  2. charlie Says:

    In 2012, U of Florida eliminated the Computer Science Department in order to save $1.4 million dollars. Concomitantly, they jacked up the Athletic Department budget, mostly for football, over $2 million dollars. After protests that became international, admins rescinded the CS closure.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2012/04/22/...

    Why would U of FL brain trust attempt to do something seemingly that stupid? Because it wasn’t stupid, fans, and most of the state, don’t care. Just as they don’t care if they have psychopaths playing football….

  3. Margaret Soltan Says:

    A Reader: My problem with miasma has always been that I don’t associate it that strongly with smells. Germs; an insidious atmosphere; yes. But not smells. See this extract from “Daisy Miller.”

    [As] Winterbourne approached the dusky circle of the Colosseum, it recurred to him, as a lover of the picturesque, that the interior, in the pale moonshine, would be well worth a glance. He turned aside and walked to one of the empty arches, near which, as he observed, an open carriage—one of the little Roman streetcabs—was stationed. Then he passed in, among the cavernous shadows of the great structure, and emerged upon the clear and silent arena. The place had never seemed to him more impressive. One-half of the gigantic circus was in deep shade, the other was sleeping in the luminous dusk. As he stood there he began to murmur Byron’s famous lines, out of “Manfred,” but before he had finished his quotation he remembered that if nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are recommended by the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors. The historic atmosphere was there, certainly; but the historic atmosphere, scientifically considered, was no better than a villainous miasma.

    The Colosseum in this scene doesn’t smell; it’s just a gathering place of rather inchoate evil forces.

  4. Anon Says:

    Stank, obviously.

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