… new friends!

The ladies of Dartmouth’s Alpha Delta fraternity like a good branding every bit as much as O did and why not? Like O, they wish to show both passion and obedience to their house overlords… It’s the way of fraternities…

And now Dartmouth has decommissioned them or whatever you call it when universities decide they’ve had enough and they want a fraternity out. Now.

Branded! Scorned as the ones who brand. What do you do when you’re branded, and you’ve no house or land?

Well, you go crying to the Hanover New Hampshire Zoning Board of Adjustment is what you do. No one wants you – Dartmouth doesn’t want you, and Hanover doesn’t want you (“the loss of college recognition means that, under town zoning ordinances, the fraternity may no longer serve as a residence”) – but you want you, with all your long history of naughty naughty ways (the branding’s just Part One).

Last month, the presence of members in the house …spurred a violation notice from Hanover Zoning Administrator Judith Brotman, who informed the fraternity brothers they were no longer allowed to live in the building. In her April 23 letter, Brotman said that “at least 18 individuals” were still on the premises and that continued occupancy would draw a daily fine of $275.

“You typically don’t want so many people living in one building in a residential neighborhood,” Brotman said in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “It’s a health thing.”

As long as Dartmouth was around to clean up its vomit, as it were, Alpha Delta could continue to live in Hanover; without recognition from the school, its grand Greekdom becomes just another nameless faceless all-male cult, largely indistinguishable from the breastaurant-bred, branded boys of Waco.

In fact UD proposes that the Alpha Delta 18 join forces with the Waco 170. Once the AD 18 lose their appeal to the Zoning Board, they’re going to need protection as they hunker down in the only home they’ve ever known. The Cossacks are real well armed.

Most of our schools have built up — call it a great wall — of denial about this. Too much money involved to mess with it.

[R]ight now, France is debating whether to extend the headscarf ban from grade schools to universities as well. Support is wide-reaching and includes former Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on the right and the current minister for women’s rights on the left.

Laura: A Title IX Film Noir

CHE Lives! The Chronicle of Higher Ed
Proves the revolution far from dead.

The broadside published Laura Kipnis
A writer whose way-radical hipness
Lies in her willingness to use free speech.

She uses this speech not only to teach.
She actually writes that way as well.

Some of her stuff makes others feel like hell,
And these have, in the name of Title IX,
Placed her smack in front of a firing line:
A high tribunal looks for a trigger
For trauma or rage or something bigger.

But no worries, mate! As part of her prep
She got to designate a shadow rep,
A sympathetic Northwestern colleague
Speaking for her side about the intrigue.

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

Several weeks have passed since Laura’s trial
And her shadow rep has himself, meanwhile,
Been hauled up on charges. And when these two
Decide it’s time for them to counter-sue?

When people choose to point the trigger gun
For sure the fun has only just begun.

—————-

UD thanks Dave.

Empty stadia, kickbacks, and Blatter:
What to do now that FIFA’s in tatters?
“For our very next step,
We will re-elect Sepp!
Every tea party needs a Mad Hatter.”

… the NCAA.

They’re here. They’re armed. Get used to it.

Ian Buruma:

Western businessmen, architects, artists, university presidents and museum directors – or anyone who needs large amounts of cash to fund their expensive projects – now have to deal with non-Western autocrats… [P]andering to authoritarian regimes and opaque business interests is not a wholesome enterprise. The contemporary alliance of Western interests – in the arts and higher education no less than in sports – with rich, undemocratic powers involves compromises that might easily damage established reputations.

One way to deflect the attention is to borrow the old anti-imperialist rhetoric of the left. Dealing with despots and shady tycoons is no longer venal, but noble. Selling the franchise of a university or a museum to a Gulf state, building yet another enormous stadium in China or making a fortune out of soccer favours to Russia or Qatar, is progressive, anti-racist and a triumph of global fraternity and universal values.

Has to be relevant in some way.

So far I’ve got

ABLEST PERP

BERATES PPL [internet slang]

… due to mercenary incontinence.

… but the ridicule to which he is subjected that does him in.

The Clinic, a Chilean satirical magazine … ran popular internet memes on its website showing photoshopped images of Blatter in jail, Fifa as a mafia organisation, Maradona giving it the finger and the Uruguayan president, José Mujica, describing Fifa as a “manga de viejos hijos de puta” (a bunch of old bastards).

This came closer to capturing the mood on the streets, in stadiums and on social networks, where chatter was more of the nature of “At last!” and “The bastards had it coming!”

On Twitter, the Brazilian commentator Xico Sá called for a minute of noise at Thursday’s football matches to celebrate the arrests.

This is fun.

I hope Blatter has his Ceaucescu moment in public. Like Ceaucescu.

The FIFA thing is happening Way Over There, Way Over Yonder, Way Way Far Away from little New Zealand over here in the far opposite corner… Nothing to see here… We haven’t even gotten the Morse Code clicks on the thing yet… What are you talking about…

One Swiss lawmaker calling for [Swiss non-profit laws] reform has noted contemptuously that that a multibillion-dollar global organization like FIFA “still has the same status as a Swiss mountain village yodeling association.”