This blog, as you know, regularly revisits the trash heap that is the Greek university.

It’s not the sort of location you want to visit often; but it’s important to remind ourselves of the bizarre fate of the academy’s iconic homeland.

Most recently, the Athens Bar Association released the following desperate statement:

“The prevalence of lawlessness in [our universities], due largely to the total indifference of the state, not only humiliates and devalues public higher education in our country,” but is an affront to the state itself …

Because of the country’s absurd asylum law, under which police can’t enter universities, campuses have become graffiti-ridden organized crime hotspots. “[D]elirious or half-dead addicts” abound. Violent anarchism against professors and students is also a biggie:

On Wednesday morning, professors and students of the School of Philosophy gathered at the entrance of the campus in order to prevent [anarchists] from entering the premises. Nevertheless, the anarchists entered forcefully and took over classroom 516 again, just as they had done the previous two Wednesdays.

Greek universities have been sordid and comatose for many years. Soon they’ll just be dead.

“[S]ocial media users took to Instagram and Facebook to share their dismay over the advert’s insinuation that the niqab and hijab are restrictive and oppressive.”

How dare anyone insinuate that the niqab is restrictive and oppressive. What nonsense!

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

The racist political ads the article goes on to describe are disgusting. But they have nothing to do with clothing commercials using the hideous niqab as a way to make an obvious point about preferring self-expression to self-erasure.

Egghead sissy out at Maryland, which has learned its lesson…

… and will certainly appoint, as next president, a go along to get along good ol’ boy. Paging John Thrasher!

College Park is happier than a trash can full of vomit.

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

“[S]everal [football] players, including starters, walked out of [a] meeting with” the reinstated coach.

Bad, scary coach stays and university president goes. Datz the way it is, kids.

UD, as you know, is somewhere on the Scrabble spectrum.

She plays one-minute-per-move games against cold brilliant robots on this site, and will only play random boards because when you get a good random board you get all sorts of amazingly high point possibilities – imagine a seven-letter word spanning two triple-word scores…

However. I may be on the spectrum, but I have nothing on this dude, who seems to me well into idiot savant territory.

Witches’ Brew U.

When your university’s long-term president, in his valedictory speech, prominently cites as one of the institution’s pressing future needs closing certain bars, you have a problem. When his ultimate-aspiration summation alludes to mayhem at the hospitals, rage among the neighbors, shootings into crowds, and appalling tailgate conditions, you really do need to ask yourself if the University of South Carolina is a university, or is instead what UD calls a unibrewery.

It’s truly a witches’ brew: Capitalists in the bars hauling in the cash from students; unibreweries afraid to do much because they’re in competition for students with other unibreweries; a larger culture of massive alcohol addiction; guns guns guns guns guns. Mix briskly and stand back.

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

UD thanks Professor Mondo.

Not sure where their dog is, but at today’s Rehoboth Beach Dog Parade…

… a group features a
famous visitor to RB,
Justice Kavanaugh.

**********

UD thanks her sister for the picture.

Cinghiale alla …

romana.

Halloween Nor’easter, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, Yesterday Afternoon

Eh. About Central Michigan University You Don’t Want to Know.

You do want to know? Okay, read these two pages (scroll down).

And now for an update, from a student writing in CMU’s campus newspaper.

[Virtually no spectators showing up for football games] is not exclusively a CMU problem. It’s the exact same problem that many other trivial Mid-American Conference schools face.

… The reported attendance at the CMU-WMU game was 10,097 people. By hand, I counted 255 people on the east side of the stadium at the end of the first quarter.

UD‘s very fond of a statement from CMU’s 2014 athletic director.

Does it matter if you have no one at your game, or 15,000, or 110,000?” Heeke asked. “Does that somehow deem [sic] that you shouldn’t play football at this school because you can’t reach 15,000? [Like a lot of schools, CMU fudges like mad to pretend to the NCAA that it meets the minimal attendance standard.] If the school makes the decision to play football, why should it matter? It’s their decision how they want to manage the game and what they think their expectation is and what makes it a viable program.”

Does it matter that CMU paid this guy – Heeke – $300,000 a year when he made that statement? Does it matter that a public university runs an expensive and totally invisible football program? Does it matter that it has no one at its games? No! If the good people of Michigan, if CMU students and their parents, want to fund a bunch of guys (most of whom aren’t real CMU students) throwing a ball around in a huge pricey stadium GO FOR IT. We all know the state of Michigan’s so rich it doesn’t know what to do with its money.

As always, Les UDs will spend this weekend in Rehoboth Beach…

… at the Sea Witch Festival. Costume parade, dog parade, bonfires, the works. She will blog compulsively from there.

Winter comes…

… to UD‘s bulls.

Red circle, blue background.

Click through the artworks here to see one of our Fangors, for sale next month at the New York Bonhams auction.

This is a man’s man’s man’s man’s …

…world…

But it wouldn’t be nothing – nothing! – without a woman or a girl to abuse.

There’s Oxford professor in good standing Tariq Ramadan, lying through his teeth as long as he possibly could about his apparent rapes and now ah shit okay I did those two… But they were begging for it… There’s Yale professor in good standing Michael Simons who okay yes I was a bad boy but I’m suing you for a trillion dollars for taking away my named chair

Behind every great man is a great man; Ramadan has his powerful male supporters; and then there’s Robert “Two Chairs” Alpern.

Ol’ Justice Buzzard

Ol’ Justice Buzzard
Had only just uttered
A word to his prisoners two;
But then on a dare
The courtroom was bare!
So Buzzard he tore off and flew.

‘Even and Smith’s study didn’t pinpoint what it is about Greek organizations that might hurt [the grades of] their members … but previous research provides a hint. A 2009 study found that Greek-affiliated students drink more than non-Greek-affiliated ones…’

The study goes on to note that despite a schedule mainly devoted to drinking, hazing, parties, football, basketball, and lacrosse, fraternity guys go on to do pretty well in the world.

***********

And I mean duh.

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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

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
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

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
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

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

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