Inauguration…

… the University of Florida way.

Your Afternoon Giggle.

Baylor University’s director of sports ministry will leave the school this summer…

[Wes] Yeary testified in defense of former football player Sam Ukwuachu, who was later convicted of sexual assault. Yeary said he would be comfortable with Ukwuachu returning to his home and being around his children.

Yeary also testified that Ukwuachu’s victim told him about the assault. He said he told her that if she would have called him on the night of the rape, he would have given her a ride home.

Yeary was allegedly involved in a separate case involving former Baylor football player Devin Chafin, who was dismissed from the football team June 1.

In a Title IX lawsuit against the university, Dolores Lozano accuses Baylor officials of not adequately responding to her claims of domestic violence against Chafin.

Lozano reported an assault to Yeary, the suit alleges, and Yeary then gave her literature to assist her in spiritual self-worth and preservation.

Oregon Taxpayers: Way to Go!

University of Oregon football co-offensive coordinator David Reaves spent little more than a day on the job but was paid more than $60,000.

… Reaves received $3,750 for 26 hours of work when he resigned Feb. 3 after being arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. [He] also received a payment of $60,000.

Yeshiva University’s Most High-Profile Benefactor…

… Ira Rennert, once again reminds students at the Rennert Entrepreneurial Institute how it’s done.

Loot, loot, loot; and then when you’re caught, appeal, appeal, appeal.

Go to it, kids!

‘I saw some of my faculty colleagues who had publicly acknowledged that they had not read anything Dr. Murray had written join the effort to shut down the lecture.’

What $65,000 in yearly tuition and room and board gets you.

When to the sweet silent thought of Sessions (Sonnet 30)

When to the sweet silent thought of Sessions
He summons up remembrance of things past,
He finds himself caught up in indiscretions
In answer to the questions Franken asked.
Now does he drown an eye, unused to flow,
For Russian friends with whom he used to play,
And weep afresh what he pretended not to know,
And moan the absence of his vieux Sergey.
Now can he grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which he new pays as if not paid before.
But all of this might be excused
If he be granted his recuse.

Onward, Christian Soldiers!

Texas Christian University’s most militant Disciples of Christ are to be found on its football team, where select players routinely fan out among the non-football-playing student population on campus and beat the shit out of them.

The bloodied president of the team’s booster club, The Flagellants, recently issued a statement: “For the greater glory of God.”

Middlebury College: America’s Wealthiest Gated Community

The greatest privilege of all is being able to shut out offensive ideas.

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

Freedom and safety both require a level of risk and a careful balance. Unhappily a free society is simply not compatible with never-ending, numbing comfort. A bubble is its own kind of cage.

‘Kumar pleaded guilty three times from 2009-10 to misdemeanor charges of passing bad checks and also has been the subject of multiple civil suits, which raises questions about the vetting process for hiring her as a tutor.’

The world of professionalized university sports is super-seamy. It’s like a Fellini film with the surreality edited out and the depravity left in.

As UD often notes on this blog, none of us minds the even greater depravity of truly professional sports, where bloodshed doping and cheating are part of the spectacle. In the professional game, these are perennial, structural, cultural elements, like soccer riots in Brazil.

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

But a lot of people retain a misty flimsy sense that a university… as opposed to a thirteen billion dollar professional league… that a university president… as opposed to an NFL commissioner…

So you get this… discomfort, when people are again and again made to realize that the NCAA is the NFL with less revenue (one billion v thirteen), and that major university athletic programs are … well, remove the word university.

Since everyone knows what a joke any academic component of most big-time university sports programs is likely to be, all it takes is for the tiniest shoe to drop for a ton of shit to hit the fan.

Take what’s been going on for a year now at the University of Missouri, where one – count ’em! one! – measly athletic academic tutor suddenly alleged that the whole tutoring of athletes thing was, you know

Now Ms Kumar, like many of the people willing to profit off of the dungheap that is major university athletics, is not, on careful consideration, as pure as the driven snow. Her rap sheet’s up there in my headline. Yet her little peep about the program has a vast expensive arsenal of UM attorneys, investigators, and all the rest training its guns over the program with as much dispatch and authority as the Chapel Hill arsenal.

Yet while that fighting force roots out corruption, there’s still Ms Kumar, waiting with waning patience on the sidelines for her reward. One way or another she intends to make a lot of money – maybe a whistleblower settlement, maybe an exclusive magazine interview, whatever, but the point here is to pay off her debts.

Yolanda Kumar, the tutor at the epicenter of the Missouri athletic department’s joint investigation with the NCAA into alleged academic fraud, touched off a social-media firestorm Friday afternoon by offering to sell [names of campus wrongdoers] in exchange for about $3,000.

So add blackmail to the sordid landscape of higher education in the American heartland.

But this is nothing new for the University of Missouri.

A Whole Trainload of UD’s Favorite Novel!

Start one minute in.

This is the same thing UD saw this morning as she walked home along the CSX tracks from the Garrett Park post office.

An all-Herzog train!

Master Bateman and…

… the rest of the illustrious Exeter crew.

Polish…

joke.

Ole Miss and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

“This is our biggest rival and our most serious game of the whole season and instead of being able to come together as a school, we will be amidst the joys and heartbreaks of rush,” explains a University of Mississippi student petition demanding the rescheduling of fraternity/sorority recruitment week because it conflicts with a football game.

Shortly after the petition began circulating, senior broadcast journalism major Walter Lyle shared his views on the issue.

Lyle listed ‘things on campus you SHOULD be signing a petition against:

confederate symbolism
sexual harassment
sexual assault
homophobic slurs
racial slurs
domestic violence
drug abuse
literally anything else’

LOL.

UD’s Dating Tips

If you’re a much older suitor, it’s not a good idea to use your proximity to death as a come-on.

According to [a UCLA sexual misconduct] investigation, [Professor Eric] Gans contended his advances were welcome, but [Pamela] Thomason said the evidence shows the graduate student repeatedly tried to get Gans to cease unwelcome attention.

“The evidence reflects that Gans exerted psychological pressure on (the student) to submit, including references to his own mortality and to how she changed his life,” Thomason said in the report.

I’m going to be dead in a few months anyway so why not fuck me seems to UD one of the less auspicious approaches.

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

Ever wonder exactly what public relations consultants do?

They keep people from giving interviews and saying things like this.

Gans alleges that the whole situation was a setup by the student’s adviser and the department chair — “who are both women, by the way,” he said — believing that some of his colleagues were jealous of the “extremely attractive, sexy girl” he had as a student and of his academic prowess.

Your Tax Dollars at Work…

killing people.

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

From the indictment.

Around May 2013, the indictment alleges [hospice owner] Bradley Harris texted [a staff member] to take over one patient’s care [from another staff member]. “I told this chick if she would just give her 1 ml of Ativan and turn her she would die,” the indictment alleges Harris wrote.

Harris sent another text, saying, “[expletive] woman is still alive … I need some boots on the ground.”

Stuart stayed in contact with Harris, while she gave medicine to the patient. The indictment stated he then sent a text about the need to medicate in order to justify continuous care: “We have very strict guidelines that we must be providing skilled nursing interventions at least ever[y] hour to stay in there.”

After the patient died, Stuart texted Harris, and he responded, “Nice work.”

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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