… but – as we learned from that ol’ rascal Rand Paul – some opt for snarling full-frontal attack on the unmaskers. It’s not, in the long run, a winning strategy, as the latest snarler will soon learn.

She’s Sulura Jackson, principal of Chapel Hill High School, and if reports are correct she’s been plagiarizing as long as the senator. And just like Paul, she’s royally pissed that anyone has the unmitigated gall to call her on it.

Jackson acknowledged she will use form letters, books and articles to inform her writings, but she denied any wrongdoing.

“I’m not under the impression that I can’t use that,” Jackson said. “This is not anything that I’m selling. This is not anything that I’m using for personal gain.”

Jackson indicated she was surprised some teachers are angry, adding that had they questioned her, she would have cited her sources.

“I’ve never intentionally said these are my words, these are my thoughts,” she said. “I’m getting these thoughts from other places. I don’t pull them out of thin air. I’m always reading.”

But the documents, which are signed by Jackson, seem to contradict that statement.

…Jackson [further] said it’s unfair to [compare her plagiarism to her students’ plagiarizing]. “It’s like apples and oranges,” she said. “I don’t think you can put those two together because students are submitting work for a grade. I’m not submitting it for a grade. I’m not submitting it for any kind of compensation.”

That last bit is … UD doesn’t know what to call it. It goes beyond the president of Kean University explaining that the conduct code for students certainly doesn’t apply to him. The bit about compensation is … I dunno. It’s only 8:30 AM and … you know… you need to draw together some energies to deal with these things… She’s not being paid for her writing … But of course this is a crucial part of her job for which she’s compensated… Giving speeches and releasing statements and all… Whereas … Did she say students are getting compensation for their writing…?

For an award-winning principal this woman is both confused and – like the senator – queenly. Rand Paul and Sulura Jackson have perfected off with their heads arrogance. UD doubts it will carry either of them through.

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

UPDATE: The school board will discuss a personnel matter in their meeting this evening. It is appalling but not surprising that leaders of the school system have defended this woman. UD has seen this haughty contempt for students and their parents in several of this country’s public school systems.

… and – look out – he’s at it again, stirring up hornets in Huntington. A local Marshall University basketball booster is outraged that Brozik, a professor there, made a student attend class.

Brozik … wouldn’t give Yous Mbao, a 7-foot-2 senior center on MU’s basketball team, an excused absence to play in the Herd’s 119-77 win over Rio Grande at the Henderson Center.

Had Mbao played, the win might have been 199-77!

[I]nformed sources say Brozik allegedly told Mbao his grade would be dropped two letters if he weren’t in attendance for a group presentation that Tuesday evening.

… What an injustice.

… If his name sounds familiar it’s because Brozik is the same professor that was outspoken in his criticism of Marshall’s financial support of the school’s athletic department. His rhetoric created a controversy and notable media attention.

The unfortunate part is when a few dissidents, such as Brozik, achieve notoriety while the silent majority of Marshall’s faculty is supportive of MU’s athletics.

The faculty at-large deserves better.

It’s also unfortunate that Marshall’s athletic department didn’t stand up to Brozik in Mbao’s behalf. It should have. It’s time to stop the nonsense.

(Yeah, ol’ Dallas outspoke for sure on Marshall University’s sports-fucked finances and general mental debility. We covered this notorious dissidence here.)

Marshall professors deserve to be at a university where coaches tell them when students can and cannot attend class. Why then do they not rise up as one and break their silence? Why should they get the short end of the stick, when professors at plenty of other schools have the right to plead with coaches for permission to have athletes attend class?

The athletics department itself fell down on this one, passively allowing a professor to apply attendance policies to athletes.

The article is clearly a call to arms. Expect professors and coaches to rally at Marshall’s central quad on behalf of their rights.

… in Spring 2013; he helped his father with his gubernatorial campaign in 2009. But if reports are correct, something went very wrong: Gus Deeds apparently stabbed his father, Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds, and then shot himself to death.

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

UPDATE:

[Gus] Deeds, who had withdrawn last month as a student at the College of William and Mary, underwent a mental health evaluation on Monday at a local hospital performed under an emergency custody order, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. But the son was released from Bath County Community Hospital because no psychiatric beds were available across a wide area of western Virginia, the paper reported.

… tries to liven up a dull Garrett Park Town Council meeting.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Some very nice writing in this review of the Republican primary in Wyoming. Concise, amusing, and, at times, fierce writing.

There’s an intriguing point/counterpoint in these two Eastern Echo articles dealing with the cosmic nullity that is the Eastern Michigan University football program. As the first student points out, when there’s no there there there’s every reason to stop pretending there’s a there. There.

Year in and year out, money continues to be wasted on a program in which virtually no one shows up to watch. … [There] are better things to do with the $2.47 million in the football budget instead of wasting it away with a sub-par product…

The writer calls for the university to shut down the program.

The other student argues that…

He doesn’t really argue. Even on the level of content, it’s hard to follow what he’s saying, since he doesn’t know what a semi-colon is. But his main point seems to be that the school has produced some NFL players.

Plus, some really impressive things are happening in the program. For instance, they just fired their crazed homophobic coach – and breaking his contract will only set the school back a few hundred thou. Oh, and

I would argue that wins and fans go hand-in-hand. If you want fans in the seats, you have to put some wins on the board.

Well, Coach English was trying to do that by calling everyone a faggot! What do you want?

Sure, some commenters point out that putting wins on the board actually doesn’t – at EMU – put fans in the seats. Like, I mean, really; (note semi-colon) no one at your school gives a shit about football…

Some universities are such class acts that UD has trouble covering them. Take the massively inappropriately named Kean University.

Kean’s on probation because… well… because everything, including having a president who apparently lied on his cv and blamed the lies on his staff. My headline is taken from an article about the board of trustees having enthusiastically backed the president in his time of trial. What a relief for him to know that only Kean students are expected to act with integrity.

Oh, plus the university’s associate vice president for academic affairs is a plagiarist. A top-flight plagiarist, though. When stealing large chunks of text, she’s careful to replace the name of the school in the original text with the name Kean University.

Source document:

“It is vitally important to Parkland that meaningful research focus on the factors which influence student decisions, to ascertain which ones have a positive influence on student retention behavior. In addition, a key to help retaining students is the ability of Parkland to identify ‘at-risk’ students early enough to permit intervention strategies to work.”

VP Academic Affairs document:

“It is vitally important to Kean that meaningful research focus on the factors which influence student decisions, to ascertain which ones have a positive influence on student retention behavior. In addition, a key to helping to retain students is the ability of Kean to identify ‘at-risk’ students early enough to permit intervention strategies to work.”

She even found an obscure school (top-flight plagiarists know to look for obscure sources for their material) to steal from!

Despite all her hard work, the woman has been asked to resign. I’m sure the accreditation people won’t notice this latest awkwardness.

… has always been a problem for American universities, especially in the heartland. The University of Iowa’s amber waves of grain alcohol (UI, the nation’s number one party school, has an enthusiastic promotional relationship with Anheuser Busch) are getting ruffled lately by folks who think using your university as a promotional arm of the gambling industry as well as the alcohol industry is unseemly. The university points out that it’s all very nuanced:

Iowa … is paid to advertise Riverside Casino & Golf Resort, but removes the word “casino” in signs at Kinnick Stadium.

So what’s your problem?

And as for all the scratch-ticket game deals between the Iowa Lottery and UI … hello? Have we heard of ca-pi-tal-ism? UI’s got a brand new Adzillatron, and the only naughty thing college students love that isn’t being shriekingly massively constantly hawked on that screen is sex.

UD understands, however, that UI is in negotiations with Roxxxie’s Iowa State Fairest of Them All Bawdy House even as we speak. The plan is to drop the word “bawdy.”

… has died.

UD‘s 2007 interview about her can be found here.

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From a Paris Review interview:

Oh, Germany last year, my God! That was the most disastrous trip. It was some academic institution in Germany. I said to them, “Look, I want to do what I always do. I’ll read the story and then I’ll take questions.” They said, the way academics always do, “Oh you can’t expect our students to ask questions.” I said, “Look, just let me handle this, because I know how.” Anyway, what happened was typical in Germany: We met at four o’clock in order to discuss the meeting that was going to take place at eight. They cannot stand any ambiguity or disorder — no, no! Can’t bear it. I said, “Look, just leave it.” The auditorium was very large and I read a story in English and it went down very well, perfectly okay. I said, “I will now take questions.” Then this bank of four bloody professors started to answer questions from the audience and debate among themselves, these immensely long academic questions of such tedium that finally the audience started to get up and drift out. A young man, a student sprawled on the gangway — as a professor finished something immensely long — called out, “BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.” So with total lack of concern for the professors’ feelings I said, “Look, I will take questions in English from the audience.” So they all came back and sat down, and it went well . . . perfectly lively questions! The professors were absolutely furious. So that was Germany. Germany’s the worst, it really is; the end.

Surely you didn’t think the emerging details of the Virginia State University attack (at a banquet) on an opposing team’s quarterback would make things look better? Not only does it seem to have been a planned, group assault against a totally unsuspecting single individual (he had left the luncheon to use the bathroom), but in its immediate aftermath, at a public event honoring various players and their conference, the two teams came close to an all-out melee.

And look. I can understand (see this post’s title) how distraught onlookers might tell reporters that it reflects badly on historically black universities; but, as a daily chronicler of American universities, I can assure you that this event, while certainly a step forward on our path toward the brutalization of institutions of higher learning, differs little from the hazing and rioting endemic on a whole bunch of campuses. Hazing, rioting, and, for sports factories like VSU, the games themselves brutalize our schools. In this particular case the opposing quarterback got his lights knocked out the day before the game, under dramatic circumstances; but of course he’s getting them knocked out, little by little, whenever he plays. A fine thing for universities – to be the means of delivering brain injury to their students.

Anyway. The comment thread on the article to which I’ve linked you is also instructive. Just as plenty of people think Richie Incognito did what needed to be done to toughen up a cowardly teammate, so a number of commenters don’t see the what the big deal is here. Why cancel the game just because our team got together and beat the shit out of the quarterback the day before? Use your second-string quarterback.

UD sometimes feels as though she should issue warnings:

WARNING: THIS UNIVERSITY IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

U Mass Amherst, Chico State, University of Rhode Island: Certain schools feature violent people – often violent drunks – and should be avoided.

Virginia State, where only a few months ago two students were hazed to death, should definitely come with a warning. At a recent event celebrating its athletic conference, its football team beat an opposing quarterback so badly the game that had been scheduled for the day after the banquet has been called off.

The guy “was allegedly beaten by a group of Virginia State football players in a bathroom of a WSSU campus building during the CIAA football banquet.”

Winston-Salem State Chancellor Donald Reaves said in a statement Friday night, “I am saddened to report that at today’s CIAA pre-championship game luncheon held at the Anderson Center of the WSSU campus that our starting quarterback, Rudy Johnson, was viciously beaten by one or more members of the Virginia State football team.

“There is no excuse for the behavior of the Virginia State players. One suspect has admitted to his role in the attack and has been arrest on criminal assault charges. The University Police Department is attempting to identify the other VSU players who were involved. Today’s event was supposed to be a celebration for both teams and for all the players who were being recognized for an outstanding season. The actions from the Virginia State players certainly changed the outcome for everyone.”

Most teams wait until they’re on the field before beating the crap out of the quarterback. VSU can’t wait.

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

Wow. Yet more violence at Virginia State University.

Just sayin’! Not sayin’ Rule By Females would necessarily be better. But when you run a blog about universities and it’s all about undergraduates like Richie Incognito and trustees like Steven Cohen and coaches like Mike Rice you do wonder about Rule By Males.

When you see – frequently – headlines like this

WHY REPLACE A STADIUM THAT’S
ONLY HALF-FULL ON GAME DAYS?

it has to go through your head to consider whether men are led through life by anything other than dicks and wallets. I mean, why are Colorado State University and the University of Nevada Las Vegas (scroll down) going to build massive expensive empty new stadiums? CSU Athletic Director Jack Graham’s “dream of playing with the big boys,” says one local critic, really shouldn’t result in a university spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a slightly better located, slightly expanded, void.

Various fans explain to the newspaper that they go to the games, they get excited when they go to the games, and they get excited by the thought of competing with other schools on the basis of the magnificence of their stadiums …

Anna Nicole Smith, Jerry Springer, and now – of course – Rob Ford.

This Quinnipiac University student has a point. It makes no sense for professors to have strict attendance policies in classes where attendance is pointless.

But of course precisely classes in which attendance is useless tend to be those with the strictest attendance policies. After all, the entire class – not just this student – can reason their way to non-attendance of a class in which attendance is pointless. And they do; they do.

Which leaves the professor in an embarrassing position. She comes to class to turn out the lights, put her head down, and read aloud her prepared PowerPoint script. She seems to think that’s what Quinnipiac is paying her for: She is to appear twice a week, set up a PowerPoint, and read the slides out loud.

But if there are no students in the room, she not only enters, twice a week, a theater of the absurd; she also worries that word will get around that although her enrollments look fine, the reality is that no one attends any of her classes.

No one is going to be more frantic about mandatory attendance than this woman; it’s the only way she can maintain the fiction that she’s a professor and not a robotic data dumper. Of course she’ll encourage her students to use their laptops during class (she’s way tech-friendly; it’s so cutting-edge… So much better than turning on the lights and looking at people and talking to them … ), which will soften the blow for them… Give them something to do while she’s reciting the alphabet.

Muff diving vers le nord.

The mayor’s exact statement.

Background.