Eh. About Central Michigan University You Don’t Want to Know.

You do want to know? Okay, read these two pages (scroll down).

And now for an update, from a student writing in CMU’s campus newspaper.

[Virtually no spectators showing up for football games] is not exclusively a CMU problem. It’s the exact same problem that many other trivial Mid-American Conference schools face.

… The reported attendance at the CMU-WMU game was 10,097 people. By hand, I counted 255 people on the east side of the stadium at the end of the first quarter.

UD‘s very fond of a statement from CMU’s 2014 athletic director.

Does it matter if you have no one at your game, or 15,000, or 110,000?” Heeke asked. “Does that somehow deem [sic] that you shouldn’t play football at this school because you can’t reach 15,000? [Like a lot of schools, CMU fudges like mad to pretend to the NCAA that it meets the minimal attendance standard.] If the school makes the decision to play football, why should it matter? It’s their decision how they want to manage the game and what they think their expectation is and what makes it a viable program.”

Does it matter that CMU paid this guy – Heeke – $300,000 a year when he made that statement? Does it matter that a public university runs an expensive and totally invisible football program? Does it matter that it has no one at its games? No! If the good people of Michigan, if CMU students and their parents, want to fund a bunch of guys (most of whom aren’t real CMU students) throwing a ball around in a huge pricey stadium GO FOR IT. We all know the state of Michigan’s so rich it doesn’t know what to do with its money.

How to Talk in a Public Forum about University Athletics if You’re Central Michigan University.

A perennial jockshop joke on this blog, CMU is shutting down the academic apparatus of the school to put on football games no one attends. Faculty is too expensive there, which creates a drag on the school’s sports subsidy.

Explaining this to professors and students in an open forum is certainly a challenge, but UD finds CMU’s approach to it impressive and instructive (pay attention, Rutgers).

1. Provide a safe house for the president [“CMU President George Ross was not in attendance.”]. A popular variant of this is to have the president attend, but be sure she has just been appointed the most recent of twelve or so interim presidents in the last three or four years. This allows the president to be there, but to explain in answer to all questions that she doesn’t know anything.

2. In their answer to all questions, administrators in charge of the public meeting must never use the phrase “student education,” and instead always use the phrase “student experience.” The adjectives holistic, organic, comprehensive, all-around, full, multifaceted, diverse and community may precede the phrase.

3. Constant references to the infinite delicate complexity of the budget are a must; the audience must be made to understand that a vanished faculty and behemoth empty stadiums and a president who presides over this outcome always getting raises are all, according to the math, budget imperatives that keep the university in glowing health.

Central Michigan University: America’s #1 Most Desolate Campus.

Desolation is too abstract. UD realizes this. UD realizes that outside of this blog you are never going to encounter a list of America’s most and least desolate universities. You will find Best Dorms, Worst Faculty – that sort of thing. But desolation… an atmosphere of sorrow and lostness… an air of wreckage and ruination…

After covering CMU for years (here are her CMU posts), and taking into account the latest news story out of that campus, UD has concluded that nowhere else among this country’s many colleges and universities are you going to find the intensity of drunken depressed spiritlessness that you will at CMU.

I mean, what part of this account of a CMU environmental studies professor who shot at two vacuum cleaner salesmen is not desolate and desolating? It’s pretty sad to contemplate being traveling vacuum salesmen making cold calls. It’s also sad to contemplate their ringing the bell at a home inhabited by an inebriated (the professor’s five charges include possession of a firearm while under the influence) professor waiting to empty his shotgun into whoever appears on his property.

This story is Desolate Meets Desolate, and the outcome of their meeting displays the seriocomic Surreal America theme of every Thomas Pynchon novel you’ve ever read. Booze, gunplay, farce, desperate escapes in trucks crammed with vacuum cleaners… This is CMU.

Disorder and Early Sorrow…

… is one of UD‘s favorite (translated) literary titles; despite its sad content, the words themselves have a lilting poetic something (say them out loud a few times), with their thrice-invoked or…er…or

And everyone knows that sorrow is a beautiful word, sounding the dignity of its emotion in its soft open letters. Give a title sorrow and watch it soar: I Am a Maid of Constant Sorrow. The Sorrow and the Pity. The Sorrows of Young Werther. The Sorrow of Love. Infant Sorrow.

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart.

Every bond is a bond to sorrow.

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

UD often thinks of Disorder and Early Sorrow as she follows our collegiate football players into the big leagues. Plenty of them escape disorder and early sorrow, but some do not, as the media’s current disordered darling, Antonio Brown, abundantly demonstrates. A non-graduate of appalling (feast your eyes) Central Michigan University, the man is an absolutely brilliant athlete. Tens of millions of dollars in professional contracts have been thrown at him, and he’s pissed virtually every cent of it away. These two commentators may disagree about whether he should be allowed to keep playing football, but they seem to agree that something’s wrong with the guy’s brain.

And yet, and yet. This writer notes that in one of Brown’s many rageful Trumplike tweets he makes “an interesting point.” Brown bitches that our old friend Richie Incognito remains in the game even though he appears to be violently demented; why shouldn’t Brown, who rolls the same way, continue to play? “AB is not wrong, is something I never thought I’d say. It was absolutely confounding when the Raiders signed Richie Incognito…”

UD has been waiting for this comment…

…or call it a philosophy…

As university students abandon football, coaches and presidents have at the very least a rhetorical problem. They will never of course drop football, because they can always make a profit sending their players out to play one massively losing game after another for the money. On the other hand, the fact that, for instance, at Central Michigan University, “[o]nly 102 students attended the last home game against Eastern Michigan,” does sort of need to be dealt with. The stadium’s capacity is 30,199. That was a home game.

So, you know, some new philosophy, some new rhetoric, some new position-taking is going to have to happen in response to – uh – queries about this situation. Here’s the CMU athletic director (salary: close to $300,000 a year):

“Does it matter if you have no one at your game, or 15,000, or 110,000?” Heeke asked. “Does that somehow deem [sic] that you shouldn’t play football at this school because you can’t reach 15,000? [Like a lot of schools, CMU fudges like mad to pretend to the NCAA that it meets the minimal attendance standard.] If the school makes the decision to play football, why should it matter? It’s their decision how they want to manage the game and what they think their expectation is and what makes it a viable program.”

See, to UD, this is where things start to get interesting on the American university campus. This is where there’s suddenly an intellectually generative convergence between things like philosophy and literature – as in those famous lines at the end of Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man”

… the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

– and the sports program. These are difficult, paradoxical lines, easily seen, now, as expressing what you see when you look at the nothing that is Kelly/Shorts stadium.

What does it matter, asks the AD, if there is nothing?

If a quarterback falls in Kelly/Shorts, does it make any sound?

Discuss.

“It’s amazing how much money CMU students have to pay in tuition and fees to cover the huge deficits in our athletic department.”

Readers who have followed my coverage of hapless Central Michigan University will be unsurprised by this headline in the school’s newspaper:

OTHER STATE UNIVERSITIES ARE FLOURISHING; WHAT’S WRONG WITH US?

(My headline is from the article’s comment thread.)

It’s not just those huge athletic deficits – the product of years of all-American asininity about the glories of football… oh, here’s another post about the glories of CMU football… It’s also about a truly pathetic board of trustees… a pass-the-buck president… And a general no-one’s-home aspect to the place. Of course students are beginning to notice.

‘The situation often degenerated into an embarrassing spectacle revealing just how low CMU could sink in the name of game-day attendance and NCAA Division1 status. The focus on the game became secondary and was often replaced with hours of binge drinking by thousands of people crammed into the student lot. Alcohol fueled anti-social behavior soon became the norm for many people basking in the ambiance of a true CMU tailgate experience. Public urination, disorderly conduct, fights, profanity, indecent exposure, alcohol poisoning and destruction of property were the rule of the day.’

Central Michigan University (go here – scroll down – if you have the stomach) is a Division I unibrewery with a losing team. The only fiscal solution to this problem is full-throttle student bacchanalia in the parking lots of games no one attends. The presidents of div I unibreweries spend most their time tweaking alcohol policies with an eye to two things:

1. maximum consumption; and

2. the mobilization of personal responsibility rhetoric.

“Got to allow alcohol so they can sell tickets for this crappy football team.”

Once again a commenter on an article captures the essence of a situation. Central Michigan’s lousy football team drives people away.

Students stay away, and they don’t even pay for tickets. So the problem is the desolation of the empty stadium.

Like a lot of other universities with this problem, CMU is now trying to solve it by dousing the students with drink. There used to be a limit on how much you could put away, but now —

For the upcoming fall tailgating season, the university released a new policy that changed some of those former guidelines, including the limit on alcoholic beverages per person and mandating students stay in a specific lot.

Students can now reel from tailgate to tailgate, and they can drink all they want.

CMU is spinning this desperate strategem as a great advance in safety … or something… UD‘s having a little trouble understanding the athletic director’s statement about it.

“If you look at this policy compared to the previous policy, there are no significant changes, but there are a series of very very important changes,” Deputy Director of Athletics Derek van der Merwe told Central Michigan Life. “Every aspect is stressing responsible behavior and defining acceptable behavior. We want responsibility, and that’s left to the individuals.”

Some universities are impeccably run. Some are corruptly run.

And some, ol’ UD can’t help concluding, are just spectacularly, consistently, shockingly, stupid. You sort of feel as though they mean well, and that they have a shaky though sincere sense of what a university is… sort of… And that if you met the folks in the administration you’d say Hale fellow well met! and definitely enjoy the sincere handshake this person would offer.

But one of the trustees holds a diploma mill degree and anyway many of them never show up for meetings… And there’s just a general sense of malaise because they don’t have funds to pay faculty much of anything but they have ten million dollars to give to a new sports arena, only they lie about taking that money from university funds… until they can’t lie anymore because a local journalist won’t let them… and the new president (stupid universities have major president-turnover) instead of saying all the serious and good things he could say by way of acknowledging and trying to right things, etc., says Hey don’t look at me I just got here!

There’s just a no one’s home, not much going on upstairs feel to places like Central Michigan University… a laxity… as in that Dickinson poem… first chill, then stupor, then the letting go…

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

UPDATE: There are two detailed comments from CMU faculty members on this post’s comment thread. Take a look.

Get ready, Kentucky! Bigger, louder, sponsor information!

Daktronics Inc., in conjunction with the University of Kentucky, are pleased to announce the addition of an integrated, high definition football video and sound system for Commonwealth Stadium, home of the Wildcats. The debut for the multi-million dollar system is scheduled for the Wildcats’ 2011 home opener September 10 vs. Central Michigan. … The most visible components of the system will undoubtedly be the two high definition Daktronics HD-X video displays to be installed behind each end zone. Measuring approximately 37 feet high by 80 feet wide, each display will provide live and recorded video in high definition, with picture in picture capability with multiple zones to show scores, statistics, and sponsor information. …

Yes, your Adzillatron can never get enough upgrades. There’s a lot of sponsor information to pound into your head, and students love to pay for the privilege.

University: Job 1

From Central Michigan Life:

“We as professors need to be flexible with electronic usage i[n] the classroom,” [Central Michigan University journalism professor Mary Pat Lichtman] said. “But there needs to be cooperation from the students.”

Lichtman said college should be treated as a job with professors as students’ employers, and added that if students wouldn’t text in a meeting they shouldn’t do it in the classroom either.

A Retired, Absentee Trustee with a Degree from a Diploma Mill

She doesn’t even have a job to go to. But Dr. Marilyn French Hubbard (she has no right to the Dr. title, having picked it up at a diploma mill, The American Institute of Holistic Theology) can’t seem to be there for Central Michigan University trustee meetings — and she’s vice-chair of the trustees.

And that’s just the beginning. Student editors at CMU’s paper want to know about another trustee, Gail Torreano:

Thursday’s Board of Trustees meeting was the second of the last four that Trustee Gail Torreano has not attended.

Such a record is detrimental to improving Central Michigan University, especially in a time of vital transition and economic uncertainty.

As such, Torreano should respectfully consider resigning from her position on the Board.

… How can the public take Torreano seriously if she is incapable of showing up to meetings that are planned months in advance?

… With the exception of 2009, members of the board only have to attend five meetings a year, all of which are scheduled far in advance.

If she cannot come to the majority of meetings, she should not be part of the important decision-making the Trustees are responsible for.

… Aside from Torreano, the attendance at Thursday’s board meeting was fair, at best.

Trustee Marilyn French Hubbard was available via conference call.

She spoke only to give her consent when votes were taken and did not contribute at all to discussion.

Even Trustee John Hurd left a few minutes early, so only four members were physically there until the end.

And this, only days before a new president comes on board.

Why was attendance this weak for a Trustees meeting?

This is supposed to be CMU’s governing body, the people who have the last say on any major decision at the fourth largest institution of higher education in the state.

Family emergencies and other similarly important matters are excusable, but not much else.

CMU doesn’t need trustees who are absent when they are called upon. Students are expected to be responsible for themselves. The Board of Trustees should do the same.

Really, even by board of trustees standards (UD has learned, in the writing of this blog, just how low these can be), CMU’s lot is disgraceful.

Headline on a Professor’s Obituary…

… in Central Michigan Life newspaper:

PROFESSOR DAVID CURRENT’S DEATH
WILL NOT CHANGE CLASS SCHEDULES

UD Reads a Confusing Letter, and then Does Some Research.

Since I’m following the faculty plagiarism case at Central Michigan University, I’m checking the local paper, where I just found this letter, from an ed student there:

Having been a student involved in the secondary education math program, I feel as though I should express my frustrations with those leading me in my schooling.

To graduate with a degree in secondary mathematics, one must take a series of cohorts that covers various math topics. While one going into the teaching field would expect to be taught various strategies and approaches to teaching math, this was not the case in several of these classes.

Throughout my course of study, I learned how to use the N-Spire, an expensive calculator that my professors expect administrators and math teachers to incorporate into the curriculum. I felt as though I was being taught to use an expensive piece of equipment to market to my future employers.

While I was not pleased with the education I was paying for, I kept my mouth shut because my professors stressed the importance of students being able to explore mathematics using tools such as the N-Spire.

They constantly reassured us that what we were learning was based on research that proved that this calculator is a crucial tool for learning through exploration…

The student concludes by complaining about the faculty plagiarists… I think. It’s a badly written letter. Very confusing. But it’s obviously got something to do with the multiple, still-anonymous plagiarists on the math faculty.

As UD scrutinized the letter, it seemed to her that the student was complaining about the commercialization of CMU’s classrooms. She seemed to be saying that, like medical school professors who in various ways hawk pharma’s newest pills to their students, some education school professors at her university turn their classrooms into extended advertising for devices a corporation is hoping Michigan’s teachers will buy for their classrooms.

So UD went here, to a page featuring Dennis St. John, one of the math professors listed on the plagiarized NSF grant.

This page, announcing a course featuring N-Spire and sponsored by its maker, Texas Instruments (you can register for the course through TI’s website), is offered at an off-campus location, but is a CMU course… St. John is pretty much described as a TI salesman:

He has presented workshops and institutes for Texas Instruments for the past twelve years. He … has published numerous activities and one book with Texas Instruments…

What’s going on?

Professors Behaving Badly

We’ve recently seen two math professors at Central Michigan University (whoever they are; the school won’t say) plagiarize both their NSF grant application and research conducted in their project itself. CMU must now repay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the NSF.

Now there’s the Auckland University English professor who cut and pasted his way through his latest novel (and probably did something similar in earlier novels, though no one, far as UD knows, has checked):

Plagiarism was revealed in Witi Ihimaera’s newest novel when a book reviewer googled phrases from The Trowenna Sea.

… In her blog, Jolisa Gracewood said that while reading the novel, she had a feeling something was not right with parts of the text.

“Google was my first port of call – it turns out that Google Books is bad news for authors, in at least one more way than previously suspected …”

However, there was “no joy” in stumbling across 16 examples … [The author’s university department forgave him immediately, calling sixteen examples of plagiarism from a variety of sources ‘an oversight.’]

Gracewood said that as a writing teacher, “I’d occasionally come across a phrase or a paragraph that was somehow out of kilter with the surrounding text. It’s a curiously physical phenomenon: the hairs on the back of your neck go up, and your heart sinks.

“Sometimes it’s a false alarm,” she said. “But I never expected to encounter that feeling as a book reviewer, let alone with a new work by a respected writer.”

Ihimaera, a professor at Auckland University, declined to be interviewed, but he apologised for “inadvertently” using other authors’ work [in sixteen inadvertent instances].

… Listener examples of Trowenna passages put to Ihimaera include paragraphs from author and journalist Peter Godwin, American academic Karen Sinclair and works edited by Charles Dickens.

“The tragedy is that this is a very, very fine piece of New Zealand fiction,” he said. [Tragedy. Sniff.]

“It deserves to be read and it’s a terrible shame that this has happened.” [Not that he did this. That this happened.]

It wasn’t really, as Gracewood graciously claims, Google Books that outed this man. It was Gracewood’s impressive sense of prose — the way style always displays the mark, subtle or not, of one person only; the way language flows or doesn’t flow — that revealed this imposter of a book.

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

Update: Commentary in the New Zealand Herald:

… What is curious is the attitude of the university. The Dean of Arts, Jan Crosthwaite, says the university has investigated “and is satisfied there was no deliberate wrong doing”.

Excuse me? How do you plagiarise in a way that is not deliberate? How do you plagiarise by accident? If you have plagiarised, presumably you had the other author’s work next to you as you typed, knowing you were using another person’s sentences. How do you do that unconsciously?…

Pretending it didn’t happen is the sort of thing a very provincial university will do.

Someone should check through this professor’s other books. UD is pretty confident, having followed tons of plagiarism cases on this blog, that he’s done it before.

If so, it will be amusing to watch his university immediately dismiss, say, five books worth of plagiarism as inadvertent.

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