The New York Times alludes to UD’s buddy, University of North Carolina professor Jay Smith.
And … who else? Who else among the UNC faculty bothered asking? The cardinal rule of being a professor at a football factory is to shut the fuck up.
Or no:
Some faculty members took the role of useful fools, vigorously defending the indefensible.
Useful, and richly rewarded.
Meanwhile UNC has consistently treated Jay like a pariah.
If you’re having trouble understanding this treatment, look to the trustee at Penn State complaining the other day about Jerry Sandusky’s “so-called victims.” Victims! You’re talking about young men lucky enough to be forcefully anally penetrated by a coach so famous a brand of campus ice-cream – The Sandusky Blitz – was named after him!
April 2nd, 2017 at 10:42AM
Thank god that neither Ben, nor Jerry, ever was a fan.
Speaking of useful fools, Manafortian Canadates . . . no let’s skip it — it’s much too much with me these days: I’m tapped out.
April 2nd, 2017 at 11:27AM
“It’s very disillusioning to live through the last six years here,” Smith told me. “The university is operating like a crime family, and it shows the lengths to which they will go to protect their athletic machine.”
Operating like a crime family. Another insider saying out loud what a lot of us had been thinking about our local Podunk Techs. We just couldn’t believe our eyes, our ears, our judgments.
April 2nd, 2017 at 1:51PM
Money quote: “Everybody believes in affirmative action when it comes to the admission of athletes.”
April 2nd, 2017 at 5:38PM
Here’s my favorite: “University officials take great umbrage at this. They claim to have investigated thoroughly. This is nonsense. I waded through their reports, and it was like watching a reluctant striptease.”
Exactly: Not exactly a cover-up: rather, a reluctant striptease. They’ve hardly ever admitted anything that wasn’t dragged out of them.
April 3rd, 2017 at 12:15AM
more than just the collapse of academic rigor, the unis have had their faculty senate’s brought to heel. do we have to go back to the mid-60s uc berkeley to find a fs that stood up to not only their admins, but the political apparatus that controlled the state of california….
April 3rd, 2017 at 1:29AM
charlie, the son of a friend of mine recently defended his dissertation. Selective or very selective Eastern university. Poli sci. He knows the job market is bleak.
I told him if he’s absolutely desperate, and applies to my local Podunk Tech, and gets hired: “Your research specialty will be disparaged, you’ll be disparaged, and you’ll be a lecture machine for department chairs who haven’t done anything in twenty years.”
What I really wanted to tell him was: “I’ll whoop your ass.”
You’re right. I’m no faculty fanboy, but when are faculty going to take back universities from the bloodsucker admin and ancillary people?
April 3rd, 2017 at 4:56PM
jack, you would be doing the kid a favor if you did beat him up enough to realize his folly.
gotta get him to realize that tenure was created in order to speak truth to power. numerous times faculty senates have had the opportunity to do just that, and have refused. the new york attorney general a decade ago released findings that showed that the unis were taking kickbacks for shoveling their students to lenders with the worst loan terms. that’s concomitant with unis becoming clown schools fronting as loan mills. yet not one fs that i know of has addressed either of those two issues.
unless your buddy’s son is as craven as the institutions he wants to join, he would be much better off looking for a new line of work. besides, it’s all a coming apart, the uni’s business models are failures….
April 5th, 2017 at 2:34AM
charlie, yeah, I don’t get our local faculty senate.
It’s common knowledge that campus surveillance cameras are selectively used by department chairs and staff managers for “gotcha supervision”. (How stupid is “surveillance supervision”? One campus cop actually confessed to me he was tracking a senior staffer because he “looked guilty”.)
Where’s the faculty senate on this and so much more? Nowhere.