‘Man Tries to Drown Girlfriend; Nearly Becomes Murder Victim Himself When She Tries to Saw Off His Head’

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This is the sort of news UD likes to read when she feels herself getting too coastal-elitey.

… presents agonizing problems for universities. How do you mark it communally without risking contagion? What if the student’s family has begged you to preserve its privacy? Students may want to discuss whether it points to larger problems with campus mental health care, or with quality of life at the school altogether.

Like other large urban universities, New York University has had more than its share of student suicides, including suicide contagions. It has had to retrofit its library to keep students from jumping off its high atrium.

This year, there have been two suicides in the med school, and, at the beginning of this month, an NYU freshman threw himself in front of a subway train. In the med school cases, the school announced each death, expressed sympathy, and reminded students of available counseling. It has very carefully not gone beyond this, even when prompted:

[Journalists asked NYU] if the school was concerned over a trend of suicide among medical professionals and if any larger efforts are being made by the university to prevent future instances, but the Medical school’s response didn’t tackle those questions.

“Because of the sensitive nature of this issue, we will not be commenting further,” the spokesperson said.

The school has been even more subdued about the 18-year-old male freshman who killed himself this month. Asked why, a spokesman said:

“If we believe that refraining from sending a broad communication can reduce the chances of a contagion effect, we are more than willing to absorb any resulting criticism.”

The spokesman cited “the university’s own research and personal experiences with suicide along with consultations with national experts.” Rather than make a large public announcement, the school has acted locally, contacting “anyone the university deems … in close proximity to the student: family, friends, professors, floormates and sometimes even the student’s entire school or degree program.”

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The real problem, if you ask me, is that suicide seems to all of us one of the most eloquent things we do. We attach all sorts of broad existential significance to the act, even if most actual suicides are, in the words of A. Alvarez, “a terrible but utterly natural reaction to the strained, narrow, unnatural necessities we sometimes create for ourselves.”

Moons can have moons and they are called moonmoons.

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Autumn Refrain

The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of sun, too, gone . . . the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never – shall never hear. And yet beneath

The stillness of everything gone, and being still,
Being and sitting still, something resides,
Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,
And grates these evasions of the nightingale
Though I have never – shall never hear that bird.
And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,
The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.

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If you’d like more poetic thought on the moon, the full moon, and nothing but the moon, there’s also T S Eliot’s Rhapsody on a Windy Night (for full depressive effect, listen to Jeremy Irons or Tom O’Bedlam recite this poem), and Sylvia Plath’s The Moon and the Yew Tree (go here for UD‘s analysis of the Plath).

Theme of them all? Shall we sum it up?

Regarde James Merrill: AU FOND EACH SUMMIT IS A CUL-DE-SAC

An example of very good writing.

As UD anticipated, not a thing has been done by whatever they’re calling a government in Somalia these days about the deaths of little girls from mutilated genitals. And of course

It is clear to those of us who have worked on the issue for years that the recent deaths we have heard about in Somalia and elsewhere are not uncommon.

[T]he men going to trial [in the national basketball bribery scandal] are facing decades in prison for something that no one truly believes is a crime. We know that the victims in this case — the universities — are not actually victims, that they are willingly complicit in the deals that get done. If they weren’t, would Kansas have signed a 12-year, $191 million extension on their apparel deal with Adidas after Adidas victimized the university by allegedly funneling $90,000 to [one basketball recruit] and $20,000 to [another]?

… at the Schoharie County Apple Barrel
Country Store. She bought pumpkins.

It’s the site of the terrible crash.

The people in the limo
were on their way to
Brewery Ommegang
outside Cooperstown.

A court in Madrid is investigating whether around 500 Italians received express law diplomas from the King Juan Carlos University, the spokesman said. The Italians were granted the degrees despite having little knowledge of Spanish, according to media reports.

In a scandal dubbed “Mastergate”, the university already faces claims of gifting degrees to [Spanish] politicians by allegedly awarding them good grades without them turning up for class.

The allegations forced the resignation of Cristina Cifuentes, former head of the Madrid region, in April and ex-health minister Carmen Monton earlier this month.

The new leader of the conservative Popular Party (PP), Pablo Casado, who has a Master’s degree from the university’s now-closed Institute of Public Law, is also under fire.

Rampant Titleitis (the uncontrollable compulsion to put Dr. in front of your name) keeps claiming ministers in the Spanish government, and might help take down the government itself. And the next government.

Here at University Diaries, we’ve learned, over the years, that most of the world’s countries feature a nice tight symmetry between universities run by larcenists and people from all over the world with money who desperately seek Doctor.

You can tell a Titleitis university by the Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita its director, paid a pittance by the government, tools around town in.

Since the ‘mastergate’ scandal broke, [King Juan Carlos University] has closed its Institute of Public Law and filed a complaint for alleged misuse of funds involving former director Enrique Alvarez Conde.

Spanish radio Cadena Ser has also revealed that Alvarez and his deputy in the institute allegedly received unexplained money transfers of close to €200,000 ($230,000) between 2012 and May this year.

We’re shocked – shocked! – to find degree-selling going on here.

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The last president of King Juan Carlos University.

If I may quote myself.

And damned if we don’t have a tradition. Now comes Hoss Willis (not his real first name, but see if you can watch this tv news report about all the people involved in this latest Baylor University story and not conclude that every one of them should be named Hoss) (as in Hoss) which some guys uh these two guys claim done said bad shit ’bout our womenfolk and plus you know blacks and Jews and all…

UD is curious about one small detail. Pussy singular or pussies plural? Here’s what one attorney charges:

“Willis made [a] comment to the effect ‘the reason Baylor has such highly qualified (black) football players is because Baylor has the best blonde haired, blue-eyed…’ and he used a very bad term relating to the young girls at Baylor.”

I’m thinking pussy singular.

UD also likes the way the news report, whenever it mentions that an investigator flew to France, shows us a picture of the Eiffel Tower with an airplane next to it.

Woman In Burqa Condemns Woman in Chador

Burqa-Wearing Islamic Preacher Slams Muslim Women for Wearing Hijabs

It is because you are so entitled.

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It’s an age-old problem, and it’s hitting, of all places, ‘bama. The smarter your students, the less likely they are to do something as stupid as go to a football game.

So, you know, you make the argument that football deserves all this revenue cuz it’s going to make the school so much better, and in ‘bama’s case it does. It does make the school better. Much smarter students have been enrolling.

However: The fewer your drunken dipshits, the emptier your seats; and ‘bama’s student section is emptying out, man. Big-time.

I believe the pertinent phrase is victim of your own success. Hoist by your own petard.

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You know it’s getting really bad when the local press starts trying to educate ‘bama students in how to be fans.

[I]f Alabama fans really wanted to help create a home-field advantage inside Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday, then they wouldn’t drink (too much) alcohol before the game.

Most Alabama fans don’t know what it’s like to go four quarters in the heat, but it’s tough work. It’s a process, and that process starts long before game time. Look, it’s going to be dangerously hot on Saturday. Don’t be that fan passing out in the fourth quarter. Be safe. Drink something other than Pappy’s whiskey.

These instructions might be meaningful to the great-grandchildren of tenant farmers; I doubt out-of-state merit scholars looking for low tuition will make much sense of instructions about game attendance that involve fine-tuning your alcoholism so that you can withstand hours of torturous heat.

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Tsar Nicky’s anger with his subjects grows with each game. Eventually he will order a random group of non-ticket-holders lined up at the very top of the stadium and shot so as to fall ever so slowly all the way down to his statue. The rest of the students will get the message.

Nice try, babe.

Instead of lying through his teeth about it forever, Jerome Allen has decided to admit that he took mucho money and goodies from stinky Philip Esformes to lie about the basketball skills of stinky’s son so the son could get admitted to U Penn. Once safely at Penn, the kid’s lack of basketball skills immediately rendered him useless to the team; but meanwhile, there he was, at Penn.

He’s a senior now, and, the story of his fraudulent admission having broken, is maybe embarrassed. But when your father’s about to go on trial for the largest welfare fraud in history, his having bought your admission to college probably doesn’t loom that large.

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Penn’s own coverage worries about “a confirmed instance where bribery benefitted a student’s admission into the University.”

In my friend Barney’s obit, the writer, Benedict Carey, not only mentions UD, but links to her.

UD is delighted.

Where UD learned her manners.