The shooter is at large.
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The victim, Ethan Schmidt.
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There are reports that the shooter is another professor. And that the shooter may have gone off campus after the shooting and killed him or herself.
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Begins to look maybe like a romantic entanglement.
Police said they are looking into the possibility that an earlier shooting in Gautier, Miss. — a five-hour drive from Delta State on the gulf coast — is connected to Schmidt’s slaying.
Officer Matt Hoggatt said the Gautier police department received a call shortly after 10 a.m. reporting a shooting at a residence located there. When police arrived at the scene in Gautier, they found a woman dead inside.
Hoggatt said that the suspect in the Gautier slaying is a man who at one time taught at Delta State and is believed to be romantically connected with the female victim, who lived with him at the home in Gautier. Hoggatt said that the suspect in the Gautier killing is believed to be the perpetrator in the shooting of Schmidt at Delta State, but declined to say what connects them.
The suspect’s vehicle was found on the Delta State campus Monday, but police have not yet found the man.
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A photo on the school’s website shows [the presumed shooter, Shannon Lamb, and Ethan Schmidt] standing together, smiling at a 2013 holiday party. That same year, Schmidt thanked Lamb in the acknowledgments of his book.
At Rutgers University, it’s OFFense, DEFense, and SUSpense, as eager fans wait to see who’s been suspended today.
It’s just the very very beginning of the season, and Rutgers has already tossed SEVEN players, which UD thinks (she is not sure) is a new world record.
Today’s guy – something about a big fight outside the Rutgers stadium after a game – brings this hour’s total to lucky seven.
The team’s indiscretions have gone from a list to a mnemonic device:
[P]ossible violation of impermissible contact stemming from an email [the coach] allegedly sent to a faculty member regarding the academic status of a player … the arrests of six players who have since been dismissed from the program over the last 10 days… [the suspension of a player because of a fight]…
Say that five times fast!
(Forgive the out of focusness.
I’m still learning.)
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UD‘s front stoop.
More front stoop.
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A typically messy God
knows what container
planting in the foreground;
in the background,
pachysandra, driveway,
lawn, butterfly chairs,
and a family
walking their dog.
The University of Memphis is a stinker of a sports factory with a venerable history of violations and voided seasons. Mafia-style basketball coach John Calipari brought his special approach to coaching to UM a few years ago (he’s now at Kentucky) and got them wins and voided wins in time-honored fashion and fine. We all know the deal and who cares about the voided part? We still won. We won the way you win in big-time university sports: Hired an incredibly expensive cheater (“Cal probably doesn’t have to cheat now as much as he used to, but he’s still the standard. The rest of us can’t even deal in his league. He’s the best.”) who cheated us there. So?
Oh but now some moral purists at UM are balking at honoring Calipari at a campus event as he’s inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame because oh no he was a cheater and because of him we had to void our wins.
Listen up.
[F]ans are mad… because Calipari left in the midst of an NCAA investigation into Derrick Rose’s eligibility, which eventually voided the 2007-08 season and the Tigers’ Final Four appearance. This is rich, because they sure didn’t seem to have a problem with Calipari’s methods when his teams were marching deep into the tournament every year, even though his previous Final Four appearance with UMass was also voided because Marcus Camby accepted money and gifts. They also think he stole Xavier Henry, who had signed a letter-of-intent, and DeMarcus Cousins, who had verbally committed, away from Memphis as he left, as if those players should’ve been forced to attend Memphis after the coach that recruited them left.
John Calipari is a good basketball coach and a great recruiter, and in some ways his open recruitment of one-and-dones and promise to get them ready for the NBA is the most honest arrangement in college basketball. Sure, he almost certainly looks the other way as his players and programs commit NCAA violations, but it’s not as if Memphis didn’t know that when they hired him, and it’s hardly as if he’s the only college basketball coach doing so.
Or put it like this:
[Memphis fans are upset because] Calipari’s 2008 Final Four run with Memphis was vacated by the NCAA after star player Derrick Rose was found to have cheated on his SAT. (Even though Calipari himself was never found at fault — and even though rule-breaking and rule-bending is ingrained in the culture of supposedly “amateur” college basketball.)
… their name.
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… $285 worth of merchandise was stolen from the campus store during a time when the store was open only to members of the football team.
Only way to make sure you’re not only caught but correctly identified.
[Indiana State Police recently] executed a search warrant at his apartment and reported finding a Colt .45 handgun, 47 grams of cocaine, 13 grams of heroin, three half-smoked blunts and $920 in cash…
“[Antonio Allen] will practice tomorrow,” [Indiana State football coach Mike] Sanford said Wednesday.
Run away! Run away!
If you actually show up for the emergency meeting about your criminalized football team and the man who recruited it, it’s liable to be embarrassing. Reporters will almost certainly ask you for a comment, the way they did ol’ Martin up there. And what can you say?
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UD found a great comment – she recommends board members use it, or something like it – in this comment thread:
This is dumb, can we move on, this has zero impact on the academic integrity of the average student at Rutgers, stop blowing it up because of 1, or 2, or 3, or 4, or 5 players.
What’s great about this comment is that its player list can be easily expanded as more are arrested. In fact the current number is six, not five, so depending on when the board member uses it she can add numbers to reflect the latest total…. Stop blowing it up because of 1, or 2, or 3, or 4, or 5, or 6, or 7, or 8, or 9, or even ten players.
Like Yeshiva University’s Richard Joel, Robert Barchi of mega-scandal school Rutgers is essentially a rich guy who wants to be left alone to attend corporate board meetings with people like himself. He doesn’t wanna know from his school’s massively catastrophic overspending on athletics, and he certainly doesn’t wanna threaten his classiness (doctor, university president, corporate seat holder) by grubbing around with lowlifes like sadist coach Mike Rice and recruiter-of-criminals coach Kyle Flood. (The governor of the state has expressed a close variant of this approach: “I certainly have a lot more important things than worry about what wide receiver is suspend[ed] for a few games recently. Being governor of New Jersey and running for president is a little more important than that.”)
So as per usual, as the fact of his football coach having recruited a bevy of armed home invaders becomes national news, Barchi’s remaining above the fray.
In this he represents – as you know if you read this blog – one of the, er, dominant typologies among jock school presidents.
Some JSP‘s are totally happily down and dirty with their having to devote their entire tenure to football and basketball scandals (these include not only … problematic players and coaches, but also regular gigantic buyout payments and litigation costs when coaches are fired or leave or whatever, plus other pesky matters like the new stadium that fucked the institution’s budget but good and sits empty because no one attends games, post-game student riots, drunk and disorderly tailgates, that teensy academic scandal over in communication studies, etc., etc.). But some JSP‘s, like Barchi, come to the job with a sense of themselves incompatible with, say, spending days desperately lobbying the state legislature for alcohol sales in the stadium. They just don’t see themselves as liquor shills, and you’re not going to get them to do this sort of thing, however much money the empty stadium is hemorrhaging. He’s a high-ranking academic officer, dammit, and there are certain duties he will not perform.
But if, on your presidential daily rounds, you refuse to visit your school’s field of dreams, its denizens are going to feel offended. Like this guy. He’s really pissed with the president, and he’ll tell you why.
First, though, he wants to share a photograph with you. Granddad Flood cradles an awed baby in his arms right after a win on the field!
Okay, now that we’re in the Coacha Inconsolata mood, let’s roll.
The writer begins by quoting another local scribe shocked at Barchi’s refusal to help Coach Flood out of this latest mess:
Ask President Robert Barchi to step in and help? He can’t even pretend he likes the big-time athletics part of his job…
How can he not like the big-time athletics part of his job? What’s not to like?
And now the writer, noting the fact of Barchi having left Flood to twist slowly slowly in the wind, expresses his incredulity:
The president of the university – the president of a school embroiled in all sorts of negative publicity, with a coach who is the most visible face of said university – hasn’t spoken with the coach about the latest issue? Really?
Football’s the front porch, which means coach is the front face, and if you’d just rather not deal with that, if you prefer a sense of yourself as resident in a cloister rather than a flophouse with a wraparound porch, you’re going to avoid the coach.
Now the writer quotes another outraged Rutgers fan.
[T]o leave Coach Flood facing the media alone for the crimes by students and student athletes announced this week just isn’t right… Rutgers is the size of a small city and will have its bad elements who should be disciplined and prosecuted as appropriate.
The pertinent crime committed was the recruitment of criminals. That crime was committed by Flood alone – he being the ultimate decision-maker (you don’t actually think there are admissions committees that look at these guys, do you?). As for the bad elements, when these turn out to be not just players but coaches like (base salary close to $700,000) Mike Rice, you’re not just talking elements. You’re talking about entire enchiladas (which is why no one’s surprised that Flood also turns out to be fucking with the academic staff).
Okay, so get out your hankies – time for the Coacha Inconsolata final appeal:
Flood has been standing alone. Facing the media….alone. And representing himself, his team, his university – and mine – with dignity and forthrightness. Alone. And that is shameful and wrong.
BWAH!
If you’re a current student at Rutgers University, this is what you have to look back on as football season gets under way!
If you’re not a current student, apply today, and join the fun!
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1. A portion of the team is an armed home invasion gang.
Lloyd M. Terry Jr., 20, of Wrightstown, was arrested Wednesday and charged with armed robbery, armed burglary and conspiracy to commit the armed robbery.
Terry is the sixth football player at the university to be charged this month with either the home invasions or a separate assault of a student in April…
In all, 11 current and former Rutgers students are facing charges in these two cases.
2. Although the football coach (salary well over a million dollars) recruited and/or retained these players, and has even reportedly put pressure on faculty to give passing grades to one of them so as to allow him to stay on campus, he remains in good standing.
3. Although a number of Rutgers students have been assaulted by football players, you can rest assured that “university officials [have] announce[d] efforts to bolster security on campus.”
“[T]he university will begin reaching out to nearly 10,000 students who live south and west of the College Avenue Campus to offer window alarms and light timers and advise them on ways to be more safety-conscious.” Number one way: If the football team shows up wanting your stuff, give it to them.
… but the captain of Pace University’s football team has managed to squeeze a lot of striking if slightly incoherent stuff into this picture… the Confederate flag… the Ku Klux Klan… the Nazi salute…
Some students got hold of it and complained, and now Tyler Owens is suspended from the team.
I think before doing a major official wee-wee on the White House lawn, the school should … Well, as the joke about the strong brew in an Australian town has it, the koala-tea of Mercy is not strained. Give the jerk a break.
… Richard Joel steps down as president, leaving this junk bond status entity to … Well, what does University Diaries live for but to watch universities implode? Let’s see whether Zygi Wilf, for instance, transfers his attentions from running the Vikings to running Yeshiva, where he is already a trustee.
… as in real actual fact checkers… might have helped here; but, really, in a context of close to zero critical capacity in regard to contemporary American poetry, plus an eagerness for ethnic balance, what do you think is going to happen?
Ol’ Yi-Fen is refreshingly honest:
“As a strategy for ‘placing’ poems, [using as Asian name in place of my all-American name] has been quite successful for me,” [Michael Derrick Hudson] said, noting that “The Bees” had been rejected 40 times under his own name but only nine times under the pseudonym before it was printed by the journal Prairie Schooner.
And then picked up for this year’s Best American Poetry collection.
Will it make Best of the Best?
UD doesn’t think so. UD notes that the poem and the poet have given the poetry world major tsuris. Yi-Fen Chou Michael Derrick Hudson looks headed for inclusion in Least-Liked American Poets 2016.
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A far more elaborate Asian-author hoax is discussed here (the discussion includes a quotation from Margaret Soltan UD SOS). It’s also mentioned here, in connection with this latest Let’s Pretend.
Yet more on the Araki Yasusada hoax here. Funny how everyone’s reminded of it.
(My 2000 article on Yasusada is here, but you need to have/buy access.)
(Plus I wrote a follow-up to that piece:
“The Bicameral Mind: Response to Bill Freind’s ‘Just Hoaxing’.” Angelaki 6.3 (2001): 221-24. MLA International Bibliography. Ames Lib. 31 Mar 2008.)
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A limerick? Must I?
Okay.
I cannot help noticing how
When I put words like Yi, Fen, and Chou
At the top of my page
I become all the rage
But everyone’s mad at me now
