In midsummer, and especially at the June solstice, the sun over St. Petersburg refuses to set. At about midnight, an eerie luminosity deposes the reign of night or day: the resulting silvered penumbra features hauntingly in the painting and photography and literature of the place. Because of the prevalence of water and the multicolor of the buildings — typically painted in pastel green, pink, blue, and yellow — a sort of trance descends over the retina. Best of all is to absorb it from a riverboat, slipping along the river or through the backwaters. Alexander Pushkin’s famous poem “The Bronze Horseman,” which is ostensibly about the massive, rearing statue of Peter the Great, becomes entwined with the city’s “limpid twilight’s moonless shine” and the golden cloudland of the light, for soon one dawn succeeds another with barely half an hour of night.

On a day of trauma and grief for that city.

… as Horatio has the gall to tell Hamlet when Hamlet alludes to the massive, two-decade academic scandal at the University of North Carolina.

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Hamlet’s sports-loving buddy dismisses all that’s been happening at UNC as a bunch of rumors. It’s as unreal as all that stuff they’re whispering about Penn State…

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Or, as Nietzsche famously said, “We have sports in order not to perish of the truth.”

The New York Times alludes to UD’s buddy, University of North Carolina professor Jay Smith.

And … who else? Who else among the UNC faculty bothered asking? The cardinal rule of being a professor at a football factory is to shut the fuck up.

Or no:

Some faculty members took the role of useful fools, vigorously defending the indefensible.

Useful, and richly rewarded.

Meanwhile UNC has consistently treated Jay like a pariah.

If you’re having trouble understanding this treatment, look to the trustee at Penn State complaining the other day about Jerry Sandusky’s “so-called victims.” Victims! You’re talking about young men lucky enough to be forcefully anally penetrated by a coach so famous a brand of campus ice-cream – The Sandusky Blitz – was named after him!

… at Yeshiva University, where his hijinks have long since made him a folk hero. But he’s outdone himself with his latest comments about an invited campus speaker he didn’t like.

The Yeshiva Commentator newspaper asked Schachter why he and one of his fanboys tore down posters publicizing the event.

“I don’t have to be insulted in my own institution. I have rabbanim in New Jersey who are always attacking me, always attacking all the faculty here in the Yeshiva. So it’s bad enough that they attack us in New Jersey, in the newspapers, and so on. We have to invite them into the Yeshiva to be mevazeh all the rebbes? They give an opinion that none of us know anything, they know better than all of us – I think that’s a chutzpah. Congress wouldn’t invite a communist to speak in Congress to explain communism. We’re not interested in communism. [The speaker] represents a different shittah, a total insult to all the rebbes in Yeshiva.”

When pressed if he takes issue with a specific article or statement issued by [speaker] Rabbi Klapper, Rabbi Schachter responded to the author, “You were born yesterday. I’m a little older than you. We have known the man for many years. He doesn’t represent our hashkafah at all! I think there are more important things to write in The Commentator. I said a fantastic shiur [Talmudic study lesson] today and yesterday – why don’t they write that up? Why do they write stupid things? This is not newsworthy. The shiur that I said is newsworthy.”

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

Schachter also

object[s] to the study of the Christian Bible, … sees the work of Geoffrey Chaucer as expendable and [thinks] that 50 percent of an art history course is probably ‘avodah zara and gilui arayot’ (idolatry and licentiousness).

Schachter told a gathering of Orthodox leaders that

Jewish communities should set up their own review boards to evaluate any complaints of child sexual abuse and determine whether to bother with the police. This contradicts state laws on mandatory reporting for teachers, counselors, physicians and such.

Schachter further discouraged police involvement by warning that accused abusers could wind up “in a cell together with a shvartze, in a cell with a Muslim, a black Muslim who wants to kill all the Jews.” Shvartze is a harshly derogatory racial term.

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To be read by only those with the very strongest stomachs.

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The women all grab their phylacter
When they hear the approach of H. Schachter
He tells them they’re apes
He covers up rapes
He’s a one-person shonda enactor

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

Yeshiva University: A financial and moral ruin overseen by clowns.

“Kids were holding them down in the locker rooms, there was a lookout at the door watching for coaches not to come. They hold them down and stick various items up their rectum… including Coke bottles, deodorant bottles, steel pipes, baseball bats, and broomsticks.”

… “Some kids, mostly [high school] athletes, are calling the victims ‘rats and snitches,’” [one resident] said, noting that most of the alleged victims have remained anonymous. “A lot of people are saying they feel bad for [the accused], that they didn’t do anything too extreme.”

On Tuesday, at least one student, he said, was wearing a shirt adorned with a photo of one suspect’s face.

… “What the boys did was disgusting and terrible, but none of this would be allowed to happen if these kids were better monitored. I guess the teachers are too busy stealing money, having sex with students, and looking at child porn to watch the kids,” one mother said.

“People forget, don’t they?” she said, echoing other parents who pointed to the La Vernia [Texas] School District’s record of scandal:

In January 2016, a math teacher quietly resigned amid an FBI investigation—child-pornography charges followed months later. (He pleaded guilty to one felony and is due to be sentenced in May, according to court records.) In 2015, a 26-year-old physics teacher was arrested for the alleged sexual assault of a student. Then there were the allegations of theft and embezzlement, the suicide of a vice principal at the junior high school, and that time a seventh-grade teacher (and niece of a local sheriff) led police on high-speed chase and was jailed for possession of methamphetamine and assault on a public servant. She served five years’ probation after a stint in rehab.

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

“This is Small Town USA,” [a parent said.]

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UD thanks John.

… boring.

UD admires this Baylor University student’s opinion piece – it’s well-written and straightforward about the depth and viscosity of shit in which his school currently swims.

He begins with a handy review of the Baylor “Rape Riot” Bears – their alleged deeds, their upcoming trials… He might have mentioned the “52 by 31” lawsuit as well, but he’s writing under space limitations.

[T]hese things won’t be going anywhere. Baylor will likely have four former football players on trial for sexual assault during the next calendar year, and it will undoubtedly be in the news… So, my fellow Baylor students and fans, prepare for more bad headlines. Know that when you check the news, Baylor and sexual assault will continue to be paired together. Be ready to hear tasteless rape jokes and calls to shut down our football team from rival fans and people in far corners of the country whose only impression of Baylor is the dark things they see in the news.

At the end of the piece, he grasps for some hope – see my headline – and of course UD can’t blame him. But that very hopeful list of his – interim prez, new coach and athletic director – goes in the opposite direction, methinks. I mean of course what else can a school like Baylor or North Carolina or whatever do when its purulence oozes out for the world to see… Naturally the thing you do is bring out the new linen… But those of us who follow universities closely know that instability in the positions that matter (forget prez; at schools like these all you need for prez is someone who gets out of the way of the AD and the coaches) is simply asking for more trouble. Basically your choice in these positions is The Corrupt Veteran or The Deer in the Headlights. Neither turns out well.

… and University Diaries can’t wait for what’s next.

UD‘s posts on Auburn, one of America’s most scummy sports factories, are here.

Grabbing the guarded by the short hairs: Higher ed in Saudi Arabia.

After white nationalist Richard Spencer did his thing at Texas A&M awhile back, the university changed its policies so that now all approved speakers need sponsorship by a campus organization.

An official campus spokesperson explains:

As one of the stewards for protecting and enhancing the brand, this is particularly troubling to me as the influx of these outside groups may connote to your viewers [she’s talking to CNN] an environment of acceptance by our campus when none are actually our students or faculty.

This is an official spokesperson. This is a person who gets a salary to talk like this.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Let’s scathe.

These words usher us into the depths of the deepest forest. To follow this sentence is to follow Hansel and Gretel as they stray farther and farther from any known world, into an enigmatic and malign witchery. It is to search hopelessly, desperately, for a referent, a subject, a predicate… to scratch your head and say steward for? Isn’t it steward of? When she uses the word “brand,” does she mean university? Does she mean reputation?

When you get to “this” (‘this is particularly troubling’), it is to ask What is this? To what does it refer?

And influx? I wasn’t worried about massive numbers of neonazis pouring into Texas A&M until I got to influx.

And why the constipated connote when she means express or signal?

By the time we’re into the completely nutty windup (‘an environment of acceptance by our campus when none are…’) we may be too addled to realize that the spokesperson’s final statement is overwhelmingly likely to be untrue. Surely some Texas A&M students – maybe even some faculty – have white nationalist sentiments. Did Spencer speak to an empty room? Were no members of his audience affiliated with the … brand?

Speak simply and directly, darlings.

———
UD thanks John.

For twenty years, the state of Illinois has been on the verge of doing something drastic about Chicago State University. Through seven million CSU presidents, fourteen million embezzlement scandals, twenty million expensive whistle blower lawsuits, and thirty-seven trillion misappropriations of taxpayer-provided funds, CSU has kept on keeping on. And now comes its most amazing accomplishment: The reduction of a university to a Samuel Beckett play.

Go to its campus and see the windy nothingness of Waiting for Godot. No one is there. Occasional buildings rot among the weeds.

Wait a few moments and onto the stage wander Vladimir and Estragon, two trustees who for the last decade have been sniping at each other about what’s best for the school. Listen in on their endless irritable exchange, an exercise in hilarious self-delusion about the Endgame their project has become.

Chicago State University poses the question: Can a university exist without students?

And the answer is: Actually, yes.

As long as the people of Illinois are willing to continue subsidizing a university run solely for the faculty and administration – ultimately of course run solely for the administration, because someone has to do the job of eliminating all of the faculty positions – there’s no reason why CSU can’t go on forever. Or at least for a very long time. The trick will be to eliminate faculty positions… very… slowly… In order to justify the continued existence of the administration. When you run out of faculty, simply hire more faculty – you need an administration to do that – and then gradually eliminate that faculty.

Rinse. Repeat.

Colin Bancroft is the author.

The original.

Whether your campus administrators are protecting coaches at Penn State or professors at Berkeley or athletes at Baylor…

… Seems as though there’s eventually an awfully high price to pay.

… this (hysteria here) to Harvard’s reaction to this.

Berkeley’s Center for Social Ontology
Specializes in Dad/Babe pornology
Its director John Searle
Is in search of a girl
To help him explore his pathology