Brown University’s finest.
Steven Cohen remains on Brown’s board of trustees, an inspiring reminder to students there that you can run “the first large Wall Street firm in a generation to confess to criminal conduct,” a firm whose corruption is “unprecedented in the history of hedge funds,” a firm that has become “a symbol of financial wrongdoing,” and still be a Brown University trustee! Go ahead and be HUMongous financial wrongdoers, kiddies! The more money you make, the more likely you’ll be named to the Brown Corporation!
How humongous, you ask? The man’s a fucking pioneer! He’s making history! The SEC, emboldened by its success against Cohen, is said to be going after a number of other university trustees and honorary degree recipients.
[The SEC is] weighing a criminal charge against JPMorgan Chase [headed by Syracuse University commencement speaker/honorary degree recipient Jamie Dimon] related to its role as Bernard L. Madoff’s [Yeshiva University trustee] banker…
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UPDATE: MattF, a UD reader, links to this important background on Cohen. UD thanks him.
‘In April 2012, student activists passed out packets at a campus town hall meeting with information on the school’s financial troubles, and then asked Joel about his salary, asserting that he had taken a recent raise. “I really resent answering this question,” Joel responded, before asserting that he earned $750,000 a year, not the $1.3 million that the student quoted. Joel also said that he had not taken a pay raise in five years. (Joel’s estimation of his own salary is suspect. According to publicly available IRS filings, his total salary in 2011, not including deferred compensation, was $1 million.)’
A Forward piece on Yeshiva University continues:
Its undergraduate schools admitted 84% of applicants for the 2012 academic year, far more than Brandeis, which admits just 39%, or nearby Fordham, which admits 43%. Y.U.’s acceptance rates have long been relatively high, but they climbed in 2012 as the number of applicants dropped. The undergraduate schools received 2,169 applications on the eve of the recession for the 2007-2008 school year; in the most recent cycle the number was down to 1,633. At the same time, tuition for students living on campus has jumped from $44,000 in 2008 to $53,000 in 2013.
Joel refused to comment on his grow-your-own-salary/avoid-responsibility-for-anything leadership philosophy. The Forward did pull up this explanatory remark from a recent public event.
“What I’ve come to realize as a president of a university… after 10 years as president, God rules the world. … I can do my part to partner with God, but ultimately God rules the world.”
Bad university presidents pass the buck. Scorched earth presidents pass the buck to God.
An entire section of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s 2013 book Government Bullies was copied wholesale from a 2003 case study by the Heritage Foundation, BuzzFeed has learned. The copied section, 1,318 words, is by far the most significant instance reported so far of Paul borrowing language from other published material.
… The copied text relates to the 2003 case of David McNab, a Honduran businessman who, along with three American businesspeople, was convicted of multiple felony counts related to the illegal harvest and importation of Caribbean spiny lobster tails in violation of the 1900 Lacey Act.
Male Empty Stadium Hysteria (MESH) rages on, this time in response to student indifference at Mr UD‘s University of Maryland. UM’s got a great winning record, and still students aren’t showing up for football games! Or they’re clearing out at half-time!
A local commentator (quoted in my headline) exhibits a classic MESH symptom:
Saturday, I wanted to puke. As the Terps were fighting desperately to hang on to beat Virginia – a rival they were playing for the last time – the Cavaliers were driving into the teeth of a student section that was, I don’t know, three-quarters empty.
UD doesn’t want to nauseate this man yet more, but she would note that his point about only six Saturdays a year cuts both ways. As in – yeah, only a very few days out of the year, but every UM student has to dish out tons of money for the program and spend hugely on game day and sacrifice lots of other varsity sports for the sake of the football program etc. etc. etc. Really, quite an immense burden for six Saturdays a year.
Of course, all this means is that you’re going to have to pay new presidents of jock-schlock schools even more. Sports whores don’t come cheap.
… or are leaving en masse after the first half, this one would have to be ranked very high indeed. It’s written by a local booster/newspaper columnist about Florida A&M, whose marching band two years ago hazed one of its musicians to death. Multiple manslaughter trials are ongoing. Why aren’t students going to the games? Hm. Hm.
The columnist’s one oblique reference to the pesky group manslaughter problem is this:
Last season, … the Marching 100 was idled and Future and other rappers were brought in for halftime performances …
Idled? Why?
And given the program’s violent propensities, does the choice of Future as their half-time stand-in seem to the writer a good one (sample lyrics here)?
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The writer approvingly quotes one of his readers on the lack of fan support:
“If we treat our loved ones, friends and co-workers, wives and husbands the way we treat our beloved FAMU, with all its faults, and rebuilding seasons, no wonder marriages fail, friendships don’t last and we can’t even sell tickets to the game.”
Sweet phrases like rebuilding seasons are, uh, sweet, but, you know, until we learn how many dozens of FAMU band members are going to jail for how long I’m not sure we can start talking about this being the rebuilding season … To everything there is a season lalala, but group killing’s post-season seems to last a little longer than a few months. Ongoing disgust and embarrassment may account for a significant number of empty seats. People may remember, for instance, that FAMU blamed the murdered student for his own death.
As the University of Miami is also discovering, you don’t send your school barreling down shit’s creek for years and then, once you’ve paid your fines and sent people to jail and accepted – in the case of FAMU – the resignation of your president, turn around and welcome those tens of thousands of happy fans who’ve just been panting in the background, waiting to watch you play football again.
Having so many games available on television makes it tough to attract big crowds to the stadium.
That’s why North Carolina senior associate athletic director Rick Steinbacher says the challenge is to “try to make that in-stadium experience as unique and as special and as exciting as it can possibly be so it’s harder to choose to stay home than come to the game.
“Give the fans something unique and make them feel part of something when they’re in the stadium in a way that you don’t when you’re at home,” he said.
… tradition; the university itself is clearly proud of it, since after decades of totally pissed vileness it continues to respond with soft words… Continues to set things up on campus to achieve optimal pillaging. They riot when they’ve been sleeping; they riot when they’re awake; they riot when they’ve been bad or good — so let them RIOT for goodness’ sake!
U Mass Amherst is one of those schools which (let’s be honest) knows it would have to shut down if it didn’t admit its cohort, and the U Mass cohort happens to be gangs of alcoholic bullies from the eastern seaboard. Similarly, if Ole Miss systematically shunned Confederacy loyalists with a big thirst, they’d lose a significant chunk of their incoming class. Most universities are dominated by a representative slice of the American pie; U Mass Amherst, Ole Miss, LSU, Clemson, Auburn, Alabama, Cal State Chico … these schools are not. They play the role of the freaks of this blog, the frenzied teetering muttering mad uncles of the American university family. When you give their students guns, as at Oklahoma State, you witness all manner of amazing things.
… UD allowed her students today to persuade her to use the enormous monitor superimposed over the whiteboard in her way-smart classroom (it has all the techno bells and whistles) in order to show them a short YouTube.
This is her honors seminar in modernism and postmodernism (main text), and she was talking about postmodern music – specifically Michael Daugherty’s Dead Elvis.
She was reluctant to do things this way, though she could see how watching it while talking about it together had its attractions; and she was reluctant mainly because she was convinced simply getting the thing going would waste class time. But this guy in class just strode up to the podium, pushed a button and then another button, and there it was on the screen.
And UD will admit that it was rather wonderful watching this ten-minute performance with her class and being able, in real time, to talk about the elements of Daugherty’s composition. She had sent the students the YouTube earlier that day, but there hadn’t been enough time for everyone to see it; and even if there had been, there’s no denying that watching it together was a good thing.
So I suppose I’ve broken a techno-barrier.
Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods,
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt,
And night by night the monitory blast
Wails in the key-hold, telling how it pass’d
O’er empty fields, or upland solitudes,
Or grim wide wave; and now the power is felt
Of melancholy, tenderer in its moods
Than any joy indulgent summer dealt.
Dear friends, together in the glimmering eve,
Pensive and glad, with tones that recognise
The soft invisible dew in each one’s eyes,
It may be, somewhat thus we shall have leave
To walk with memory,–when distant lies
Poor Earth, where we were wont to live and grieve.
… as the title of that great book had it, is a real mystery. But one thing UD can conclude from following universities like Ole Miss is that the whole idea of democracy doesn’t seem to have penetrated very far. There was the state rep who in 2011 introduced Mississippi House Bill 1106:
AN ACT TO AMEND SECTION 37-115-1, MISSISSIPPI CODE OF 1972,
1 TO PROVIDE THAT THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI SHALL BEAR THE
2 NICKNAME “OLE MISS REBELS”; TO PROVIDE THAT THE UNIVERSITY’S
3 MASCOT SHALL BE “COLONEL REBEL”; TO REQUIRE THAT THE UNIVERSITY’S
4 BAND SHALL PLAY “DIXIE” AND “FROM DIXIE WITH LOVE” AT HOME AND
5 AWAY FOOTBALL AND BASKETBALL GAMES AT WHICH THE BAND, OR SOME
6 PORTION OF THE BAND, IS PRESENT; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.
YOU VILL PLAY DIXIE OR ELSE, YOU HEAR?
And now there’s the letter just sent to all Physical Plant employees by the Director of said plant, in which he excoriates an employee who was found to have been rooting, electronically, for LSU during an Ole Miss/LSU football game. See, you’re in Mississippi. Ain’t none of your high and mighty “free speech” here…
[T]he posted [pro LSU] comments have been viewed negatively by the administration and have brought into question the individual making the comments and his ability to make sound and wise decisions.
Oh, and another thing.
[U]nder no circumstances should an employee don any clothing while on the clock that is not reflective of support for the University of Mississippi.
Bit of linguistic ambiguity there, eh? Can you just, uh, wear clothing? Or is every day on the clock an adventure in Ole Miss worship?
Anyway. If you’re on the Old Miss campus, just check this UD post for what you can sing, wear, and say.
On the up side – You can drink anything.
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UD thanks Marcie.
Just in time for Halloween, this surreal photo from Austin, Texas, where this blog’s administrator (aka UD‘s niece) lives. It was taken this morning during a huge rainstorm, and shows, just south of the river, the city’s statue of Stevie Ray Vaughan.
But it’s all so trivial.
If things get any hotter for Paul on the plagiarism front, UD recommends his team dig up the spokesperson for Newt Gingrich during his presidential campaign. That guy really knew how to defend his guy.
… in and that’s the kicker, ain’t it? I mean, lots of people are on them; but do the little buggers actually work?
The New York Review of Books (scroll down) has for awhile been the go-to place for essays by writers who question the utility of antidepressants for many (not all – some people do benefit from some antidepressants) of the people prescribed them; but obviously, as The Guardian‘s headline suggests, the subject – as vast stretches of Europe and America chomp down on them – is very much out there.
If the very question as posed seems to you outrageous, impossible, obscene, consider for a moment the way antidepressants are made. Not that you really want to know. It’s like the thing about how sausages are made. Better not to go there.
But let’s go. Let’s ask why Louisiana’s attorney general is suing Pfizer, maker of Zoloft. For $987 million. Or so.
Attorney General Buddy Caldwell claims Zoloft is barely more effective at treating depression than a placebo, but Pfizer has persuaded doctors and consumers otherwise…
Long before Zoloft was approved by the FDA, Pfizer knew it had “serious issues with efficacy” because in early Zoloft trials, the placebo group actually had better results, the state claims.
“These early trials showed that ‘placebo still seems to be the most effective group’ and that “there is still no striking evidence of beneficial drug effect with placebo often being the superior treatment,'” the complaint states.
“Nonetheless Pfizer chose to go forward in attempting FDA approval.”
The attorney general claims that to do this, Pfizer published only information that pertained to Zoloft efficacy, and suppressed conflicting studies.
Pfizer then engaged in a “ghostwriting program to misleadingly enhance Zoloft’s credibility,” the lawsuit states. [Note: Most American med schools have no policies at all on the practice of ghostwriting among their professors.]
… Louisiana claims that despite numerous studies that show that Zoloft is “no more effective than a sugar pill at treating depression,” Pfizer’s ad campaign included a large sales force that visited healthcare professionals on a routine basis, took them out to luxurious diners and events during which salespeople promoted Zoloft.
Laissez les bons temps roulez! And as for those sad sacks – let ’em eat expensive sugar pills.
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One more note: Pfizer will settle. A thousand million dollars is nothing to Pfizer. Cost of doing business.
