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Its beloved coach sexually assaulting boys in a campus shower; its last president convicted of child endangerment; fraternity brothers stripping unconscious women students and then publishing naked photos of them on social media; fraternity brothers stepping over the dying body of a pledge all night until he dies of neglect…

Penn State is always in the news. Hometown hero Jerry Sandusky (he had his own ice cream!) dominated the news for years – and you can still follow ongoing stories about how much his case continues to cost the university ($237 million as of January). Even as the Sandusky thing finally began to quiet down, everyone was covering the unconscious naked women thing… and now PSU has done it again, dominating the university-news cycle by hosting on its campus such spectacular cruelty (even by Penn State standards; even by fraternity standards) that the whole nation is once again riveted to Happy Valley.

Read the (literal) blow-by-blow here.. The frat camera records Timothy Piazza’s long dying. Highlights:

4:59 a.m.: Piazza stands up and staggers into the fraternity’s front lobby, falling again onto a stone floor. There, at 5:15 a.m., Beta brother Jonathan Martines steps over the prone Piazza on his way to the kitchen for a glass of water.

… 6:44 a.m.: One of Piazza’s fellow pledges, according to the report, enters the hall. At 6:57 a.m., he starts to take a video of Piazza using the “snapchat” app …

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

Yes, a most unusual school.

Margaret Soltan, May 6, 2017 8:05AM
Posted in: STUDENTS

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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

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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

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Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

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Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

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Roland Greene, Stanford University

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Carlat Psychiatry Blog

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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

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Money Law

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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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