…. (background on the party school business model here) pushes West Virginia University out of the headlines with its own student drinker in critical condition this morning.
SUNY Albany! Who can be surprised? One of our most notorious sicko campuses, with a French Revolution-worthy history of riot and carnage.
As UD explained here, one of America’s most ghastly jockshops, the University of Louisville, has scored quite the td in recruiting one of the architects of Chapel Hill’s undoing.
Here is one of her valedictories as she leaves UNC. It appears in UNC’s newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel:
TO THE EDITOR:
It is good news that Leslie Strohm is leaving her position as UNC Vice Chancellor and General Counsel.
I had strongly recommended to the administrative review committee that her contract not be renewed, following [ex-chancellor] Holden Thorp’s unfortunate resignation. I stated that “she is incompetent, dishonest and unethical.”
Her stonewalling on releasing records about the athletics scandal has only made things worse; with better advice, Holden Thorp might still be here.
Elliot M. Cramer
Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Do keep in mind, in case UD has not said it explicitly enough, that UL’s motive in hiring her is almost certainly her protect-the-dirty-sports-program-at-all-costs M.O.
Can’t keep in mind the details of each and every dirty sports program? Type UNIVERSITY LOUISVILLE into my search engine.
But just to whet your appetite: Here’s a sample.
An interview with UD‘s cousin-in-law,
currently performing as
Alfred P. Doolittle.
UD‘s cousin is
in the same show, as
Mrs Pearce, the housekeeper.
The University of Michigan. Like the University of North Carolina, a real university. Not like those other places.
[Florida State University president] John Thrasher — a career politician who is now the chief decision-maker at the nation’s most disliked football-playing university — [grabbed] his coach in a very giddy, very public embrace.
Earlier, Thrasher had released a statement blasting The New York Times for a report Friday describing how two starters on the Florida State defense ran from the scene of a late-night car accident in October and were given what seemed to be preferential treatment by Tallahassee police officers.
It was merely the latest in a long string of headlines that has brought endless cynicism about the kind of operation Florida State has been running off the field while beating everybody on it for now 26 straight games.
But here at Sun Life Stadium, moments after No. 2 Florida State finished off yet another comeback to beat Miami 30-26, you could at least envision why people like Thrasher and Fisher may be able to rationalize all the enabling and justifying of behavior other schools at least pretend to care about.
The harder the nation roots for Florida State to fall, the more self-fulfilling life becomes in the Tallahassee bubble. The Seminoles aren’t running from their identity as escape artists; in fact, they’re practically scripting it before it ever happens.
Front page coverage in the New York Times ain’t chopped liver, even if you live in backwater Tallahassee and really personally couldn’t give a shit. There’s your life as a well-paid security guy at endless violent Florida State University official and unofficial events (plus your life as a city cop), and there’s everything else Out There in the land of haughty elites who don’t get football.
But it’s not just the latest front page thing. Last month they did another long front page thing. Hell, back in April they did a big ol’ Sunday Magazine article with a pretty picture and all…
Until a couple days ago, we didn’t stoop so low as to even answer any of this slander, but now word’s gone out that we gotta say or do something.
As the statement in this post’s headline suggests, we haven’t quite worked out what plays we’re gonna call… There’s the conduct an internal investigation play and there’s the do not conduct an internal investigation play and we’re still working that one out amongst ourselves…
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Over at the university seems like they’re also moving away from the stonewalling strategy, since, you know, when the New York Times does a big wee-wee on you, every other news outlet in the country (plus we’re starting to get international coverage) has to whip theirs out too. FSU’s new president, who’s a veteran local politician so you know he can handle it when our ways of doing things down here get unwelcome attention from the elites (His only loss to them so far is when they ganged up on his pet project of establishing a school of chiropractic medicine at FSU.), has sent a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger letter to the FSU community:
Four experienced law enforcement officers were on site and none saw any indication of the driver being under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The implication that anyone involved in the accident had anything to do with a burglary is totally unsupported and offensive. Finally, there is no indication of any special treatment of the student-athletes by the officers involved.
Alcohol, drugs, burglary, special treatment… There’s a lot the president had to cover in this letter, and I like the way he tucked it all in to one paragraph down toward the bottom… I also like the way the phrase hit-and-run did not appear in the letter…
I think if we can keep muddying the waters (yes/no to internal investigation) and if FSU can keep the denials coming, we should be able to weather this.
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Only thing I’m worried about: What if the New York Times decides to investigate the courses the guys have been taking?
… as your university’s faculty continues to game the athlete-eligibility system (The Tragic Fates of Petee and Boxill are possibly staying your jockshop’s hand of late), do not worry. Do not waste one sporty moment worrying that a rich enterprising country like yours will be at a loss to fashion new forms of system-gaming in order to keep the quarterback on the field 24/7.
In fact, La Nouvelle Vague is already firmly in place… It’s been there, really, all the time! Like that scene at the end of The Wizard of Oz when Glinda tells Dorothy “You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.” Ever since universities discovered online courses, the eligibility problem has been solved. You yourself might have taken one or two of these in college – to pass that pesky statistics requirement without learning statistics, for instance… Some anonymous grad student drudge (or the drudge’s designated-drudge – there’s of course no way to know who’s actually giving and who’s actually taking an online course) cluttered your computer screen with messages for a few weeks, and you (or your friend who knows statistics) wrote back, and then you passed statistics.
Because online courses are profitable (you can enroll zillions of students at a time and pay the drudge or whoever doodoo), most American universities are as we speak enlarging their offerings like mad. No one’s going to notice the athlete-component of this vast enterprise.
Online is in every way a cleaner solution than independent study. There’s absolutely no messy wasteful human interaction with online, whereas under the ancien régime, Julius Nyang’oro had to meet the athletes and frat guys at least once, if only to inform them they’d never see him again. Nor is there, with online, any noticeable record of your having done the humanly impossible – conducted in one semester three traditional classroom courses plus 150 independent studies. (Petee’s downfall came when one of his colleagues for some reason got wind of his teaching schedule and found it… odd enough to report him.) With online, you can have 5,000 students in five classes and no one will look at you twice. Everyone understands that responsibility for online classes at the American university is far too diffuse and complex (tons of people have a hand in any online course: there’s the instructor, the instructor’s assistants, the on-campus tech group, the for-profit company overseeing implementation and management features, university administrators doing various forms of surveillance, etc., etc.) for anyone to understand what’s going on. Online courses have evolved to the point where they run themselves. They’re animated templates, perpetuum mobiles whose first note merely needs to be struck in order for the whole thing to beautifully play itself out.
The perfectly named Mr Thrasher
Thrashed this way and that at a basher.
“Yes, P.J. hit and ran.
But when he left his van
He moved like a hundred-yard dasher!”
… is that the attention of the first-string press (to put this in terms that people at FSU might be able to understand) has now decisively been drawn to all of this nation’s jockshops. The heavy hitters (still trying to keep this comprehensible to the folks down there) of American journalism, the elite squad of long-form writing — they’ve all assumed a very tight huddle right on top of schools like Florida State, and they’re peering intently down at them.
What you have to understand is that backwaters like FSU traditionally get covered only by the local booster wins-and-losses press. If anything having to do with their corruption manages to get published, it’s going to be written up by the local cynical wags as the big ol’ joke corruption is in Florida. Think Carl Hiaasen. That’s the prose model.
But now you’ve got these guys in New York takin a fine-tooth comb to the way we been doin things down these parts for a long time. Take for instance this paragraph in a New York Times article one of UD’s readers, John, just sent her:
The Tallahassee police said officers have discretion in deciding when to press charges and issue citations. They provided The Times with seven other cases in which someone hit a car and left the scene but were not charged with hit and run. A review of those cases, however, found that none was comparable in severity or circumstances to the Oct. 5 crash. Four involved cars bumping into each other in parking lots, one caused no damage at all, and the other two were very minor; in no case did a driver abandon a wrecked vehicle in the middle of the night and flee the scene after totaling someone else’s car. Notably, most of the seven crash reports contained far more narrative detail about what happened than the report on the Oct. 5 accident.
That pesky Oct. 5 accident! Happened to involve some of our Most Valuable Players, sure, and, sure, they fled the scene, but no one was hurt and, you know, they’re just kids. Yes, yes, driving on a suspended license, overdue fees from an earlier speeding ticket, whatever. Who said it’s any of your business?
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UPDATE: Don’t wanna say I told you so about ol’ FSU, but a reader sends me the response of the FSU fans to the New York Times article.
Before I tell you what they did, recall the reaction of Penn State fans to the Sandusky scandal. Do you remember? When Penn State finally fired the man who helped make it possible for Jerry Sandusky to do what he did for so long, the fans rioted. As Gawker put it in a headline: Thousands of Students Riot Over Firing of Child Rapist’s Protector.
FSU fans launched a Twitter block. They flagged the article as spam. They made it so you can’t read it.
She taught
160 independent study courses between spring 2004 and spring 2012…. [I]n spring 2005 she taught 20.
Let’s just start with that. Let’s start by trying to imagine what her daily life must have been like with 160 independent studies taught alongside a classroom teaching load.
Then let’s add her directorship of an ethics center. Her work as a summer school administrator for the philosophy department. During these years she was an academic advisor to the athletics program. She was associate chair of her department. She was Teaching Coordinator and Director of Undergraduate Studies for her department. She sat on a quadrillion university committees.
In addition: “UNC women’s basketball coach Sylvia Hatchell said Boxill completely oversaw the teams’ academics, making herself available for players at all hours of the day.”
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It might seem a small point, but
[UNC’s] highly autonomous academic culture [the sort of culture that makes things like independent studies possible] is exactly what led to UNC’s academic-athletic scandal, according to the Wainstein report.
Datz right, kiddies. Thanks to Jan and Julius and Deborah and a whole, whole lot of other people, you can kiss any autonomy goodbye if you teach at unannounced spot checks to make sure all faculty are meeting their classes Chapel Hill. Keep your nose clean and fill out all your paperwork by five, sucker.
It might seem a small point. But it’s the biggest of them all.
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Jan’s a sports-lover and it’s obvious that she’s very competitive.
UD has some very bad news for Jan.
I know, I know. She’s handling a lot of bad news just now, and it’s not nice to pile on. But I think she will appreciate knowing this, because I know she’s the sort of person eager to lift her game.
Thomas Petee, of Auburn University, taught
152 [independent studies] in the spring of 2005, [and] 120 in the fall of 2004.
Chapel Hill: 20
Auburn: 152
That’s a pretty shitty showing, Jan. If you don’t mind my saying. It’s pretty obvious which of the two of you was doing more for your school.
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UD thanks Dave.
… are the words of wisdom you need to hear as you seek to understand what has been going on in Morgantown. From her you-are-there perch in WVU’s sociology department, Karen Weiss has written Party School, a first-hand account of what Clifford Geertz might have called “deep play” at America’s colleges. These are excerpts from an interview she gave at Inside Higher Education:
Many residential universities, such as the so-called party schools … have become so well-known for their super-charged party environments that it would be very difficult to change the culture without negatively impacting enrollments that are now dependent upon the lure of this party scene. Moreover, many of the disruptive behaviors that I document in the book (e.g., burning couches, riots) have become “traditions” for both current students and alumni. As such, traditions are very difficult to change.
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[People who live in bad neighborhoods] feel terrorized, they change their routines to avoid certain streets, they don’t leave their homes at night. In many college towns, residents are beginning to experience similar problems (albeit less life-threatening) as a result of a minority of extreme partiers who make life uninhabitable [I think Weiss is conflating two phrases here: life unendurable and neighborhoods uninhabitable.] for their neighbors.
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While it is easy to see why bar and club owners are reluctant to eliminate drink specials or other promotions – after all, they make their profits from student drinking – it is more difficult to understand why university administrators, police and local town officials have not been more effective in reducing some of the problems caused by the party subculture. In the long run, it really boils down to a rather controversial reality: the party school is itself a business, and alcohol is part of the business model. Schools lure students to attend their schools with the promise of sports, other leisure activities and overall fun. Part of this fun, whether schools like it or not, is drinking. Thus, even as university officials want to keep students safe, they also need to keep their consumers happy. This means letting the alcohol industry do what it does best – sell liquor.
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That last bit is way important. All prospective university students interested in drinking know where to go – Cal State Chico, UWV, University of Georgia, University of Texas, almost anywhere in Wisconsin – to fit in. It’s like – who doesn’t know that Key West is a better place to drink yourself silly than Salt Lake City? And just as Key West’s business model – the thing it does to attract tourist dollars – involves the provision of alcohol every five steps or so down Duval Street, so central to UWV’s business model – the thing it does to attract applicants – is the provision of alcohol five steps off campus in every direction. Many of its most high-profile traditions (Weiss cites couch burning and rioting) are about alcohol.
You expect eighteen year olds who may have chosen WVU because the joint is gin-soaked not to drink gin once they get there?
You expect UWV to change its business model?
As Weiss points out, it’s not just a business model. It’s a way of life.
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Update: DRC, a reader, updates UD on the student. He has died.
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Don’t forget: The president of West Virginia University is Gordon Gee.
From one scummy sports program to another.
If you’re the University of Louisville, you’re looking desperately for people like Chapel Hill’s Leslie Strohm. The University of Louisville is one of the worst jockshops in America. It must be thrilled that it has wooed Strohm away from Chapel Hill.
Strohm was one of the key players behind a public records battle with the media as reporters attempted to look into a scandal involving student athletes and allegations of academic misconduct. UNC, with Strohm’s legal advice, used the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to deny numerous public records requests at the height of the scandal.
Attorneys for ABC11 and eight other media organizations sued UNC, claiming the university was illegally stifling public records requests stemming from the initial football investigation that led to NCAA sanctions.
Among the records the media was fighting for: un-redacted phone records, player parking tickets, and a full list of tutors including salaries.
ABC11 and other media outlets won the lawsuit, and the records were released.
Okay, she lost that one; but Louisville knows it’s going to have to do some major stonewalling of its own as national attention turns to our sports factories and the way they run.
And Strohm – well, she’s been through baptism by fire. She’s been at Chapel Hill. Time for her to turn her talents to another, uh, troubled university.
If you’re a student thinking of suing a university for retaliating against you because you complained about being sexually assaulted by a professor, learn something from the failure of a Northwestern University student’s suit along those lines.
The judge … rejected the student’s claim that NU retaliated against her suit by rejecting her for a fellowship and denying her refund for a study abroad program deposit. In her original suit, the student admits an outside company rather than the University denied the refund, the judge noted in the ruling. The judge also said the student did not allege her fellowship rejection was “causally related to her threats to bring suit.”
Resist, when suing, the temptation to throw in everything but the kitchen sink.