The Soul of Man Under Southern Frat Boy Football Fandom.

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Mom gets in on the act.

… the lower depths? Do you THINK she wants to read about, much less write about, the lurid sub-basements of the American university?

Well yes okay. She does rather enjoy it.

And yet for years now, on this blog, she has noticed that she’ll do almost anything to avoid writing about fraternities.

Imagine you’re starting out as a reporter at a local paper, and you’re told that your first assignment will be a multi-part series on the systematic abuse of dogs at puppy mills. That’s the sort of excitement with which I go to details of stories about those brick colonials set aside on the American campus for the purpose of concentrating young men willing to drink themselves to death so that someone will like them. Cover this rape, UD! Cover that sadistic haze! UD: Learn the folkways of lads who ladle gin… anally!

Louis-Ferdinand Céline captured the inside of many fraternities better than any other writer:

It so happened that just to one side of my bench there was a big hole in the sidewalk, something like the Métro at home. That hole seemed propitious, so vast, with a stairway all of pink marble inside it. I’d seen quite a few people from the street disappear into it and come out again. It was in that underground vault that they answered the call of nature. I caught on right away. The hall where the business was done was likewise of marble. A kind of swimming pool, but drained of all its water, a fetid swimming pool, filled only with filtered, moribund light, which fell on the forms of unbuttoned men surrounded by their smells, red in the face from the effect of expelling their stinking feces with barbarous noises in front of everybody.

Men among men, all free and easy, they laughed and joked and cheered one another on, it made me think of a football game. The first thing you did when you got there was to take off your jacket, as if in preparation for strenuous exercise. This was a rite and shirtsleeves were the uniform.

In that state of undress, belching and worse, gesticulating like lunatics, they settled down in the fecal grotto. The new arrivals were assailed with a thousand revolting jokes while descending the stairs from the street, but they all seemed delighted.

The morose aloofness of the men on the street above was equated only by the air of liberation and rejoicing that came over them at the prospect of emptying their bowels in tumultuous company.

The splotched and spotted doors to the cabins hung loose, wrenched from their hinges. Some customers went from one cell to another for a little chat, those waiting for an empty seat smoked heavy cigars and slapped the backs of the obstinately toiling occupants, who sat there straining with their heads between their hands. Some groaned like wounded men or women in labor. The constipated were threatened with ingenious tortures.

When a gush of water announced a vacancy, the clamor around the free compartment redoubled, and as often as not a coin would be tossed for its possession. No sooner read, newspapers, though as thick as pillows, were dismembered by the horde of rectal toilers. The smoke made it hard to distinguish faces, and the smells deterred me from going too close.

Now imagine a second pink marble staircase that takes you even lower than this.

You are now in SAE, the only fraternity with two mentions on this list. The fact that a chapter of SAE is currently dominating domestic news because its members do racist chants (to the tune of the only song they’ve all been able to learn: If You’re Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands) is kind of weird if you ask ol’ UD. This sort of thing is way mild for Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

… has kept after his employer, the University of Minnesota, in the matter of Dan Markingson and research ethics. Elliott and others have long argued that Markingson was too mentally fragile to have given informed consent to take part in a UM clinical drug trial, and that his suicide during the trial might not have happened had he not been “coerced …into participating … and then exploited…”

The university has been singularly and stupidly determined to deny that anything at all is amiss in any of its research protocols, and Carl has been subject to pressure and ridicule on that campus. Finally, however, something like victory might be in sight:

University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler told faculty leaders Friday that the university will change the way it treats human test subjects.

Last week, a review of the university’s human research practices criticized the school — and, in particular, its psychiatry department — for not doing enough to protect vulnerable adults in its research.

One doesn’t want to get too excited, though. As Carl points out:

The danger lies not just in the particular circumstances that led to Dan’s death, but in a system of clinical research that has been thoroughly co-opted by market forces, so that many studies have become little more than covert instruments for promoting drugs. The study in which Dan died starkly illustrates the hazards of market-driven research and the inadequacy of our current oversight system to detect them.

[W]hat (the NCAA) did to Jim Boeheim, I think has really been sad, and I think you’re going to see an appeal process by him. What about the millions he’s raised for cancer? I don’t want to hear it. I happen to be a big fan of Jim Boeheim as a human being and as a person.

Many N.C. State fans stopped their “Wolf! Pack!” chant during Syracuse’s starting lineups long enough to strongly boo Boeheim when he was introduced. Others sang the chorus from the Village People’s song “YMCA” during Syracuse’s early possessions as a reference to some of the violations outlined in the NCAA’s report that were connected to a local YMCA.

Another fan held up a sign: “Jim, will play for grades.”

(For earlier posts on what UD calls coacha inconsolata, just put the phrase in my search engine.)

“Shouldn’t we start holding presidents, chancellors and the heads of departments accountable? …. They lay it all on the coach.“

Seven times in 27 hours!  An English comp instructor’s dream!

I had to let it happen, I had to win

Couldn’t stay all my life legit

Looking out of the window

Staying out of the fraud

So I chose winning

Running around, trying everything new

The NCAA wouldn’t matter at all

I never expected it to…

Don’t cry for me, Siracusa!

The truth is my contract buyout

Leaves me a rich fucker

So farewell you suckers…

Now that the entirely random (all are called to cheat; few are chosen) Adzillatron of Fortune has swiveled its gigantic screen in the direction of Syracuse University, and now that the nation’s media is riveted to that school (you can’t buy this kind of publicity), it’s time for UD not only to remind you of her way-beyond-legendary column on the subject of professors and big-time sports; it’s also time to put in a word for the ladies.

The guys?  Sure, sure, the guys.  King Coach, the Coach God, with his massive salary and pep talks about character;  the “Vice Chancellor and Athletics Director” (think I’m kidding?  when you’re the absolute bottom of the barrel, you better believe you make your AD a chancellor);  the president of the university, docile, kittenish BFF of his coachly master… We’ve seen this adorable bumbling crowd so many times…

But without the receptionist in the background of all this high-profile bonding, athletes would never be able to stay eligible.  People forget that at schools like Chapel Hill and Syracuse, the entire elaborate system gets sacked and broken like Joe Theismann without those sweethearts over in the corner stamping AAAAAAA all day.

… judge that Syracuse University has misbehaved.

I guess they would know.

Read the hilarious everything plus the kitchen sink list of violations that these two wise men of the university athletics scene perceived within the Syracuse program here.

It would take an Ionescu – or a Molière ? – to capture the absurd convolutions in this NCAA decision, with Hypocrite #1 sternly determining the proper punishment for Hypocrite #2…

But let’s not go there.  Let’s instead enjoy some highlights:

Syracuse had a written [drugs] policy; however, the head basketball coach and athletics director admitted they did not follow the policy. The athletics director said the department followed an “unwritten policy” because the written policy was confusing. As a result, basketball students who tested positive on more than one occasion were not withheld from practice and games, as the written policy directed.

One, two.  When you can’t count, things get confusing!

These guys could count high – like, up to a million in salary and shit… But the lower end of the scale… (UPDATE:  Sorry: Two million.)

Syracuse discovered and self-reported 10 violations in this case, which primarily involved men’s basketball but also football. The self-reported violations, dating back to 2001, include academic misconduct, extra benefits, the failure to follow its drug testing policy and impermissible booster activity. The other violations found included impermissible academic assistance and services, the head basketball coach’s failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance and monitor his staff, and the school’s lack of control over its athletics program.

Well, that says it all, doesn’t it?

And it says it all for most other big-time athletics programs.

Sometimes shit happens and the school ethicist has to resign.  But most of the time most of the programs look exactly like Syracuse.

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Syracuse/Basketball:  The legend continues.

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Okay.  One more thing.  UD wonders how Syracuse faculty – even students? – feel about the man who earns by far the highest salary on campus also running – for years and years – a program so filthy that even the NCAA had to notice.  UD suspects no one cares.

Or worse:  It seems to UD that Americans admire slimy winners – Ira Rennert, Donald Trump…

But it’s not just Americans.  It seems to be universal.  Russians absolutely adore Vladimir Putin.

Syracuse to Jim Boeheim:  Kick me again, Master!   (“Syracuse loves basketball more than life itself, and Boeheim probably more than basketball…”)

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And there’s more!  UD‘s pal Dave sends her this absolutely wonderful description of the way online courses work in the athletics program.  As you know, UD has long called online courses the salvation of university athletics programs, especially now with the Independent Study scam on everyone’s radar… And you wanna know why?  Read and learn.  Learn how Coach Boeheim earns two million dollars every year.

[A]thletics staffers were actively posing as basketball players, logging into their university accounts, and reading and sending emails to professors as if they were the players.

No student!  No muss, no fuss!

A Deadspin writer summarizes:

Rather than requiring the players hand his assignment to a tutor, getting it back completed, and turning it into his professor, Orange players could stay out of things altogether and let the tutors just pretend to be them at every step.

And it never occurred to any of those professors all those years… I wonder why not.

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More boys in the band.

West Virginia was placed on two years’ probation for 360 infractions in 14 sports in its speakeasy. For all this, though, exactly one person was punished — an assistant women’s gymnastics coach. Gymnastics! Assistant! Crack down on a women’s sport! Hey, now that’ll get all those assistants in football and basketball to straighten up and fly right.

Not only that, but the director in charge of the Mountaineer speakeasy, Oliver Luck, was himself not implicated. No. Instead, he moved on — are you ready for this? — to the NCAA, where he is now executive vice president of regulatory affairs.

LOL.

UD‘s backwoods, this morning.

Rah! Rah!  …

… (What’s the third one?) …

As ever, the blessings of the wired classroom.

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Bringing it into the classroom is not very smart. Get rid of laptops in the classroom.

I wonder if university administrators will ever get the message.

Sarah Collins, [a University of Southern California] sophomore, said she wished more professors required laptops and phones to be turned off during class. “It was just nice [in a recent no-laptop classroom] to have everyone in the present, and it led to more participation.”

Brown University, USC… Students are beginning to ask their professors to help them out here.  Will their professors listen?

… know hope.

Watch the guys here.  Yay.