… at the University of Wyoming, is missing.

He was in Japan, hiking to a volcano.

That was Sunday, and he has not yet returned.

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

Lots of detail, and a link to a Facebook group, here.

Dipshitty little plane took me to Fort Myers for my connecting flight to DC.

Hot day, bright sun, and from my window seat I marveled at all the velvet green islands lying flat under white clouds.

“Drug-runners paradise!” I said to my seatmate, who a few moments ago had described his sky diving trips to me.

He couldn’t hear me. Plane got real loud as we leaned toward Ft. Myers, and then it shook like a son of a bitch. “Sein ZOOM Tode,” thought UD, who doesn’t like to fly.

No problem finding your gate, because there’s only one gate.

Cabbie to the airport, a frazzled woman: “I’m so over Key West. I’ve been here too long. I’m movin’ to Miami. My dad’s got a house there. I’ve had it with sweating. Enough sweating. The people I thought were my friends are only out for themselves. I’m getting ripped off right and left. Aren’t any jobs. Cabbie? Cabbies are people with SUCKER written across their forehead. I can’t stand being so far away from any other place. You can’t get anywhere. You can’t get out of the state.”

… if true.

… at the University of Delaware.

Busy day at University Diaries — tons of traffic, and the comments keep coming in. So I’m sitting here riding the currents, writing and linking and reading non-stop.

Just as well. I can’t go in the pool today because I seem to have a mild case of Jacuzzi Rash.

… sort of theory should be aware of this.

… Zinkhan didn’t set the schedule for a planned trip to Amsterdam or even buy the airline ticket for the flight out of Atlanta.

Harmen Verbruggen, dean of Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in Amsterdam — where Zinkhan has taught part-time for two years — invited Zinkhan to help the university start up a marketing master’s program, Verbruggen told the newspaper Tuesday. The dean’s secretary made travel arrangements with Delta Air Lines three or four days before the triple homicide, he said.

Zinkhan’s travel plans had been widely reported as an indication he had planned to flee to Europe after the shootings.

At this point, I’m seeing him push his car into a body of water and then head for the remotest part of the Appalachian Trail he knows and shoot himself.

… reveal the place to be just … a little different.

It’s being sued in federal court, but wants the suit thrown out since Clemson’s got sovereign immunity as an arm of the state.

Let’s listen in as the lawyers have themselves a little parley.

Clemson attorney Tom Bright cited a dozen ways Clemson is an arm of the state, including Clemson money being held by the state and Clemson’s budget being approved by the state Legislature.

“The state controls all manner of activities for Clemson,” Bright said.

Collins countered that Clemson officials for years have claimed it is a municipality with its own magistrate’s court and fire department.

Collins likened Clemson to Humpty Dumpty saying, “When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean, no more or less.”

He said Clemson wants to tell people it is a municipality but then say in court it isn’t.

Moreover, said Collins, seven of Clemson’s trustees are appointed for life, and the state constitution prohibits life appointments to state positions.

“If Clemson University is an arm of the state, all the life trustees are disqualified,” Collins said.

Under Clemson’s unusual charter, seven of its 13 trustees are appointed for life and choose their successors.

Clemson’s Bright said even though some trustees are called life trustees, “it doesn’t make them trustees for life.”…

Removing a Clemson Life Trustee can be done, but it’s tricky.

A Life Trustee may only be removed by action of the other Life Trustees. In the event four Life Trustees believe that another Life Trustee has failed to properly perform the duties required of all Trustees, the four shall present their concerns to the Life Trustee with the longest continuing service (“Senior Life Trustee”), exclusive of the Life Trustee whose actions are in question. In the event two or more Life Trustees have equal years of service, the Senior Life Trustee shall be deemed the Life Trustee whose last name appears first in alphabetical order. The Senior Life Trustee shall convene a meeting of the Life Trustees to hear the allegations and to render a decision. The Life Trustee whose failure has been alleged shall have the right to be notified seven days in advance of the meeting and shall have the right to present evidence in his or her own defense. The Senior Life Trustee shall establish procedural guidelines for the meeting, but in no event shall any attorney be permitted to attend the meeting for the purpose of representing any party involved. Once all evidence has been presented, the Life Trustee in question will leave the meeting and the remaining Life Trustees will deliberate and vote by secret ballot. In the event five Life Trustees vote to remove the Life Trustee, then his or her service on the Clemson University Board of Trustees shall be terminated. An action to remove a Life Trustee shall be effective immediately, unless otherwise specified at the time the action is taken.

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

Update: Some more information:

Unlike situations at many other state public universities, Clemson’s inner workings have rarely undergone scrutiny. The state’s watchdog agency, the Legislative Audit Council, has investigated finances at other top state education institutions but never looked into Clemson’s financial practices, according to its Web site.

Unlike leaders at other colleges and universities, a majority – seven – of Clemson’s trustees are called life members and are self-appointed. They are not subject to direct oversight by the governor or legislature. The legislature chooses only six trustees.

At the state’s 12 other four-year colleges and universities, the trustees are picked mostly by the legislature. Clemson’s life trustees were a requirement set out in the will of Thomas Green Clemson, who died in 1888, leaving most of his estate to found the school.

Not that politician-appointed boards are a pretty thing! Look at Southern Illinois University, for god’s sake. But this here arrangement’s mighty weird for an arm of the state.

… but another solid contribution to UD‘s library of student laments about worthless wired classrooms.

Why aren’t professors and administrators reading the same material, and doing something about it? UD, for instance, would love to read a professor’s description of what it’s like to teach hundreds of people totally ignoring you.

In lecture a few weeks ago, I observed a guy sitting in the row in front of me watching three-fourths of the movie [I’d drop ‘three-fourths of the movie’] “Twilight.” Two seats down from him, two people were going through Google images of Beyoncé. I turned to note this to my neighbor, who nodded while scrolling through her BlackBerry.  [Nice touch – Even the neighbor’s wired.]

These people weren’t anomalies. Though the lecture, delivered by a professor ranked 4.3 in the CUE Guide, was a fairly interesting one, a good portion of the class looked up from their various screens only when a phrase was prefaced with the warning, “This might be on the midterm.”  [Nice conclusion to sentence, but drop the many modifiers: fairly, good, various.]   It looked like in this class, at least in this lecture, intellectualism was dead. [Just make the sentence ‘Intellectualism was dead.’  See how, as is often the case, SOS is largely making your writing snappier by editing out verbiage?]  But I don’t blame the people—I blame the technology.

The introduction of laptops and wireless Internet into the classroom environment has allowed us to prioritize our time in a highly pragmatic way.  [Fuck prioritize.  Ugly bogus word.  Corporate jargon.  Save it for your career as a motivational speaker.  And drop ‘highly.‘]

No longer are the choices in class between doodling in a notebook and paying attention; now we have an entire workstation at our fingertips. We can e-mail, organize, and update away while a professor is explaining easy or boring material that presumably doesn’t warrant full attention. [This responds to cynical laptop-defending professors who insist that using a laptop during class is just another form of doodling.  No it ain’t.]

The problem is that while many initiate these side tasks with the intention of only drifting away from class for a short period of time, we often don’t have that self-control. [Drop often and only.] More and more of our attention is taken up by reading blogs or clicking through Wikipedia, until we’ve de-prioritized listening to everything but the most essential concepts. [De-prioritized!  I’m pukingized.]

This approach may allow for the best economization of time  [Oy.  What are we, a business major?  This is basically a nice, conversational essay, but the writer needs to deal with her ize problem.]—it’s probably possible to fill in gaps in the syllabus during reading period, and those emails need to be sent for tomorrow. However, taking on this cost-benefit view of class time both diminishes enjoyment of the course and contributes to a cycle of indifference under which class quality suffers.

When a successful class is defined by acquiring the minimum amount of necessary information in the minimum amount of time, then something is off. Lectures should be interesting, not just useful for the midterm, and when we budget our class time we give up on this basic intellectual ideal. The nuances that get cut with an economic approach to class time are what make the Harvard academic experience more than four years of test prep. When we drop them, we drop learning for its own sake, that clichéed goal that we laud but clearly do not internalize as we fail the simple laptop-lecture attention test.  [Again, this writing could use some sex appeal, but it’s okay.]

Furthermore, class quality on the whole suffers from individual indifference. After all, if we don’t pay attention to anything but vital concepts, why should professors attempt to engage us anymore?   [Crucial point.  Well said.]  Why should they add details or throw in a joke when we’re not looking to be interested? [The whole throw in a joke thing is important too.  Since the laptops, er, dehumanize the classroom, the professor will understandably decide that there’s no point in bothering to have a personality for the purpose of teaching.  If students want her to be another screen, fine.]  Surely, the prospect of lecturing to 200 metallic screens is a discomfiting one, and even more so when they know that an awkward non-response to a question in lecture means that 200 people are logged onto gchat. [I love the phrase ‘lecturing to 200 metallic screens’.  The word metallic is wonderful.]

The best antidote to the rise of viral activity during class time would be to pull the plug on wireless internet in classes in which it is not academically necessary. [Instead of that lame final phrase, just write ‘pull the plug on most wireless internet in class’.] This would inevitably upset many students. However, such a reaction [Students would be upset, but this would only...]  would only prove the degree to which zoning out in class thanks to technology is ingrained in the way we spend our class time  [Drop ‘in the way we spend our class time’.]. Such paternalism may not be the answer, but certainly something has to change. After all, the lecture hall is beginning to resemble Lamont Cafe, without the lattes.  [Drop ‘After all’.]

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

Bonus extra: The old days at Harvard. James Agee describes one of his English professors:

It’s perfectly impossible for me to define anything about him or about what he taught but it was a matter of getting frequent and infinite vistas of perfection in beauty, strength, symmetry, greatness—and the reasons for them, in poetry and in living….That sounds extravagant—well, his power over people was extravagant, and almost unlimited. Everyone who knew him was left in a clear, tingling daze, at the beginning of the summer.

…is a plan to end industry influence over medical refresher courses. Presently, drug and device makers provide about half of the funding for such courses so that doctors can often take them for free. Even as they have acknowledged the need for other limits, many medical societies and schools have defended subsidies for education as necessary.

“As science progresses, it’s going to get harder and harder to get doctors to keep pace,” said Dr. Jack Lewin, chief executive of the American College of Cardiology. “I think industry has some responsibility toward education.”

By contrast, the American Psychiatric Association recently announced that it would phase out industry funding for medical refresher courses at its conventions.

The institute acknowledged that many doctors depend on industry funding for refresher medical courses but said that “the current system of funding is unacceptable and should not continue.” The report recommended that a different funding system be created within two years.

That would be the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, which has added its voice to the condemnation of widespread conflict of interest in America’s medical schools and in the practice of medicine generally. Its just-issued report on industry corruption of research and care is, says the New York Times, “scolding… damning… a stinging indictment.”

But as to the creation of that new funding system for continuing education courses about which Jack Lewin’s so worried… Let’s see… How do people usually fund their education?

Well, if they’re poor, you know, they get scholarships and take out loans and pay some out of pocket… They take part-time jobs while they’re in school…

Which is all well and good. But how in the world are they supposed to pay when their average salary is $300,000? This is what’s worrying Jack Lewin… It’s getting harder and harder for doctors to keep pace with new information, and how in hell are they going to afford these courses????

————————

Update: I’ve made this point many times on University Diaries. If you kids keep misbehaving…

Much of the IOM report echoes recommendations from the Association of American Medical Colleges, which also supports Grassley’s proposed database. But not all schools have followed that group’s advice. “We give a pretty clear warning,” says panel chair Bernard Lo, a bioethicist at the University of California, San Francisco. “If the [institutions] don’t get their act together, they’re really inviting the legislators to step in.

… is haunting the Democratic party.

I’ve just sent off a post to my blog at Inside Higher Education about Malcolm Lowry and James Agee, both of whom have centenaries this year. The post should be up pretty soon.

UD will be giving a paper at this year’s Malcolm Lowry Conference at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. It’ll be as much about Richard Rorty as about Malcolm Lowry.

From the testimony of Dusty Becker, co-captain of the University of Oregon Ultimate Frisbee team. Becker was appealing the university’s decision to shut down the team’s season after multiple instances of drunkenness, speeding, and playing naked.

“Speeding, drinking, nudity — they’re not bad things … They’re things a big portion of the community doesn’t think are wrong. … To run around naked is just kind of a hippie, ultimate thing… We didn’t think there was anything wrong at the time.”

The appeal failed.

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

Update: A reader, Larry, points out that Oregon might have made a serious mistake. He cites the following:

“A study by Dr. Michael Norden of the University of Washington shows that among all 86 private national universities, those ranking in the top half for Ultimate [Frisbee] have a graduation rate of over 85%, while those in the bottom half graduate just 60%. The difference in the totals of Rhodes scholars and Marshall scholars among their graduates during this decade is even more dramatic – 208 versus 15. (The odds of this happening by chance are truly infinitesimal). Moreover, the top ten schools based on Ultimate ranking have a slightly higher mean graduation rate and more winners of top scholarships than schools chosen by – not only SATs, but any standard metric including: grades, faculty resources, and financial resources.

… Why a game, requiring such all-around athleticism should so consistently be dominated by universities (and presumably students) with off-the-chart academic credentials, is truly a mystery. The top seven schools for ultimate have a mean graduation rate of 95% and nearly as many total Rhodes and Marshal scholars as all of the rest combined. The names speak for themselves: Stanford, Brown, Harvard, Tufts, Dartmouth, Yale, and Princeton.”

More at Dan Drezner.

1.) Zinkhan has been fired from his professorship at the University of Georgia.

2.) UD suggested in an earlier post that George Zinkhan has killed himself. Police now seem to be preparing us for that possibility:

… The longer it takes for authorities to find triple murder suspect George Zinkhan, the more likely it is that the UGA professor did something to hurt himself, police said Monday morning.

“That’s a strong possibility,” said Capt. Clarence Holeman of the Athens-Clarke County Police Department.

… [P]olice have been tracking Zinkhan’s cellphone, credit cards, ATM card and passport, but none of them has been used since he disappeared on Saturday.

No one has reported any sightings of Zinkhan or his vehicle, despite a nationwide alert for both…

3.) If he killed himself, how did he do it?

Like Jerry Wolff, a biology professor at St. Cloud State who killed himself by wandering deep into a national park and letting the elements take over, Zinkhan was a big outdoorsman who wrote poetry about hiking the Appalachian trail. Given his poetry and his love of nature, I’d guess that Zinkhan did something similar. Walked into the wild. Shot himself.

Unless Zinkhan has an accomplice in Amsterdam (where he has a house) with whom he acted incredibly quickly, chances are he’s dead.

… features University Diaries.