Once you finally get Steven Cohen off your board of trustees, here’s one hell of a target of opportunity: Daniel Vasella.

He just got here. Get him while he’s hot.

… here. (Read the rest of my WKU posts here, if you can stomach it. Scroll down.)

Next, enjoy this beautiful observation from a faculty member at a university meeting last week.

Dick Taylor, an assistant professor in the school of journalism and broadcasting, asked [the president] if money spent on the football coach could be used towards education.

“In my three years, I’ve watched just the football coach … go from 250,000 a year to 450,000 a year to 850,000 dollars a year,” Taylor said. “I really wondered if the money could be better spent in what our core is which is educating students to get jobs.”

LOL.

Sports school presidents only say the truth on their way out the door and down the stairs.

UD has seen it again and again.

Here’s the latest case – the outgoing president of jockshop University of Nevada Las Vegas confides in an exit interview:

If we had paid as much attention to what the quality of the incoming deans were, as we were for a football or a basketball coach, I know this institution would already be at least on a peer with Harvard or anybody else. The level of scrutiny over athletics is a conundrum.

Yes, fine, go ahead and segregate by gender at university events, says this British group. Separate but equal, dontcha know. Works every time.

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“Outrageous.” Yes. Keep it coming.

He walked through empty downtown Dallas, empty Sunday in the heat and light. He felt the loneliness he always hated to admit to, a vaster isolation than Russia, stranger dreams, a dead white glare burning down. He wanted to carry himself with a clear sense of role, make a move one time that was not disappointed. He walked in the shadows of insurance towers and bank buildings. He thought the only end to isolation was to reach the point where he was no longer separated from the true struggles that went on around him.

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Something about the time of year depressed him deeply. Overcast skies and cutting wind, leaves falling, dusk falling, dark too soon, night flying down before you’re ready. It’s a terror. It’s a bareness of the soul. He hears the rustle of nuns. Here comes winter in the bone. We’ve set it loose on the land. There must be some song or poem, some folk magic we can use to ease this fear.

UD is very proud.

In his letter, President Joel wrote that the current fiscal crisis will force YU to “reframe the way we educate.” Joel noted, “conventional models crumble beneath the weight of fiscal hardship,” and discussed the need for a “new strategic vision” to increase revenue and efficiency in new graduate programs and online education.

This blog has followed, with disgust, Yeshiva University’s longtime irresponsibility in every imaginable institutional sense – hiring, trustee appointments, presidential compensation, intellectual freedom (put YESHIVA in my search engine for details). Now the Post-Bernard Madoff bill’s come due, and the only thing missing from the president’s statement is his acceptance of responsibility and his resignation.

“Yeshiva has suffered philanthropic walkouts,” writes the school paper, putting the matter diplomatically. Remember Andrew Sole’s letter, written all the way back in 2008, to Yeshiva? A letter the school blew off? Sole called for the resignation of the entire board of trustees.

… [H]arm has come to this distinguished University, both in financial loss and worse, in reputation. It is my view that the harm today is directly attributable to the failed performance of our trustees. As fiduciaries they lost sight of their primary mission, to safeguard the long-term interests of Yeshiva University. Whether their activities were merely negligent, or worse, that judgment is best left for others.

In my view it will take a generation to repair the damage inflicted upon Yeshiva. And that is very sad. But what would be even sadder, and which would also give grave concerns to Yeshiva’s many supporters, would be for the University to continue to allow the current Board of Trustees to serve as fiduciaries going forward.

The honorable course (and we have seen virtually no honorable behavior in American corporate boardrooms, nor in our public servants, in 2008) would be for the University’s President, and its legal counsel, Sullivan and Cromwell, to demand the immediate resignation of the entire Board of Trustees.

Fuck that! said Yeshiva. We like our boys (it’s almost all boys; they all seem to be in each others’ pockets; and one of them – Zygi Wilf – just got convicted of racketeering). We’ll just go our own way, and Sole can drop dead.

(This must have been one of the strategies featured in Leadership in the Non-Profit World, a class Yeshiva’s president gave just last January, with a guest lecture from the former president of George Washington University, a longtime defender of Yeshiva University’s way of doing things. Here’s President Trachtenberg. [You need to be a CHE subscriber to read the full contents of the article.])

But Yeshiva has dropped dead. Expect it to go almost entirely online, in the cheesiest, most desperate, way.

… you get a prize. But this paragraph is good for your early morning amusement:

In an attempt to find out what disciplinary steps [Frostburg State University] might be taking with [Arthur] Siemann, The Bottom Line asked an administrative assistant at the Cordt’s P.E. center for a comment. We were referred to the Dean of College Education, Dr. Clarence Golden, then the assistant Dean, Dr. Roger S. Dow. Dow declined to make an official statement and referred us to Dr. William P. Childs, Interim Provost, who also declined to comment, but referred us to Elizabeth Medcalf, FSU’s Director of News and Media Services. Medcalf explained that, due to the privacy issues involved, no official statement could be made as to the disciplinary actions taken towards Dr. Siemann. Thus, The Bottom Line is unable to report as to whether Siemann has been put on Administrative Leave with or without pay.

LOL.

After wrapping up his last experiment on the day that he was supposed to retire, Sanger did not again work in the lab and spent the rest of his life gardening.

… 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.

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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.

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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…