← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

“Not only does our terrible attendance record reflect poorly on the University but it also will take away from the student social experience at games.”

I confess I feel somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me, as Lady Bracknell says… Is attendance at games, as this University of Virginia student editorialist argues, really a reflection of any kind, poor or rich, on a university? You could argue that the school in question here, UVa, should be proud of its low football turn-out, suggestive as it is of things like independent mindedness and studiousness. Perhaps some UVa students don’t like thinking of themselves as subjects in a long-running experiment on how to stimulate your rats into finding boring bone-crushing sports events interesting.

[UVa needs to be] building new stadium video boards … enhancing sound systems….

Buy a state of the art Adzillatron to shriek car dealership ads at them! Trap them in a stadium for hours, unable to turn off, or even turn down, incessant messages!

But UD says: Nothing will work without liquor. Only schools willing to soak students in booze are going to get anywhere with the national nightmare of tanking game attendance. Once your students are really shitfaced, they’ll do anything.

*******************

Now with university players, it’s different. If you want to motivate them, try Coach Kermit Blount’s approach: starvation.

Margaret Soltan, October 3, 2015 6:47AM
Posted in: sport

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=50086

4 Responses to ““Not only does our terrible attendance record reflect poorly on the University but it also will take away from the student social experience at games.””

  1. Anon Says:

    I don’t think lack of alcohol is UVA’s problem. They’ve frequently been rated a top party school, and came in at #1 as recently as 2012.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Anon: Yes, there are many big drinkers at UVa, but they’re all already in the stadium. UVa’s problem, I think, is the persistence of a strong minority of studious non-drinkers. These must be dealt with.

  3. Crimson05er Says:

    UVA is conflicted with its own historical tug-of-war over drinking identity. There’s a strong sentiment towards romanticizing the cavalier-like drinker, tempered only by a desire to be taken seriously on the academic and world stage after it got left behind in many regards by other research universities. UVA idolizes the image of the drunk as storyteller, as in adopted writer-in-residence William Faulkner, who spun his inebriation into rich narratives, brutal truths, and a sort of smirking, Southern gentility. At the same time it wants to cultivate a serious image as a place of consequential ideas, embodied by sober men of grand strategy like Edward Stettinius.

    Consider the two poles of UVA’s favorite alumni sons (incidentally both drop outs before degree): Edgar Allan Poe, the poetic lush, and Woodrow Wilson, the infrequent drinker and stern decry-er of frivolity. Drinking runs through the student identity — there’s a reason the Kennedys went to law school here — but there is definite tension between those students who want the “Teddy” path and those who want the less-liquored-up “Bobby” route.

    Sometimes the two mesh, but UVA has never entirely balanced the public persona of dual identities of “hard-drinker” and “originator of big ideas” the way, say, Princeton has.

  4. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Crimson05er: Your subtle account of drinking at UVa made me think of the recent interview Patrick Kennedy gave on 60 Minutes about alcoholism in his family. The details are horrible and sad.

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