… admit you cut corners and pledge never to do it again. Very simple. Your public statement should have two sentences, tops.
People never learn this. Ye olde ego seems to make it impossible. Instead of a brief apology, you get Surprenants. Surprenants are named after ex-Manchester University professor Annmarie Surprenant, who was found to have slapped A‘s on all her student exams and returned them without mussing one eyelash in actually looking at them. (This class management method is especially popular now that online courses are the rage. Venetia Orcutt, an ex-colleague of UD‘s at George Washington University – chair of its physician assistant program! – did nothing for the entire duration of two online courses and awarded all of her students A’s.) Cornered, Surprenant went on and on about her glorious misunderstood being:
I am quite politically incorrect, outspoken and have never adhered to the oft-repeated and probably excellent advice to ‘watch your back’, because I believe watching one’s back will never move us forward.
This makes me an easy target for a certain type of person. Half-truths, false accusations and malicious gossip readily ruin one’s reputation in the eyes of that certain type of person. But in the end it is your work that stands.
Moving us forward… But my work will stand!
And now you’ve got Deborah Martinez, a University of New Mexico public radio reporter who plagiarizes her stuff. Here’s her apology:
“I’ve earned four Associated Press awards over my decades-long broadcast career, producing hundreds of stories with the aim of telling the truth,” she writes in an email … “I made a mistake and was disciplined for it and KUNM and I now move forward with the same goal of informing the public in an open and honest way about news that affects them.”
Moving forward again! Always moving forward!
Scathing Online Schoolmarm doesn’t know quite what to say about people who allow the same self-regard that got them into trouble to generate the apology for having gotten into trouble. This isn’t really about helpful editorial hints. Character is destiny.
During the Dominique Strauss-Kahn business, a writer for the New Yorker noted the anxiety with which “many in Paris” are witnessing “the ‘Italianization’ of French life — the descent into what might become an unseemly round of Berlusconian squalor…” Their country after all had not long ago produced (just like Italy) an accused rapist as a leading candidate for political office. Strauss-Kahn came close to being president; Silvio Berlusconi, convicted of tax fraud and sex with an under-age prostitute, was Italy’s longest-serving post-war prime minister.
UD has always been intrigued by the ways in which states fall into depravity, and the way they care about that (the French care, according to the New Yorker writer) and don’t care about that (the Italians don’t care). Italy is so depraved, and so indifferent to its depravity, that Italianization has become a globally portable noun, toted around to designate a national culture’s relaxed descent into moral turpitude.
Richard Rorty, in his philosophical essays about postmodernism, expressed anxiety about the Italianization of the United States. He routinely described us as “rich, fat, tired North Americans,” cynical about all of our institutions, and sinking back, in the absence of belief in the possibility of social improvement, into our comforting consumer goods (Don DeLillo’s novel, White Noise, is the best fictional evocation of this cultural mood).
But that was only our high culture, Rorty was quick to caution; our elites – financial, intellectual – are Italianizing, as in figures like Lawrence Summers, who despite his remarkable moral grubbiness, seems set to become our next federal reserve chair. (Hm. Not so fast, UD.)
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One way to understand the Oklahoma State University story is to suggest that Italianization has now invaded our great plains states, the country’s symbolic center of rectitude.
Look at Iowa’s long-serving senatorial scold, Charles Grassley, and tell me whether, when you look at him, you can think of anything but rigidly upright stands of wheat. Then look at this dude. The expression on President Obama’s face says it all.
So traditionally America – especially America’s heartland – was the exception, the clean place, the corny, cock-eyed optimist of nations, with the corniest locale the plains of Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. “Blondie and his frau out of the plain states came!” says cruel sophisticated George, mocking the newly arrived wholesome faculty couple in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Now that the plains states are epicenters of football scandal (yes, given structural corruption, there are plenty of other football scandal locations), you see the beginnings of Paris-style anxiety about Italianization even on the plains.
From Penn State to the Miami scandal to Johnny Manziel’s autograph saga to alleged violations at top college football programs across the country, the NCAA has never faced more “culture” issues than it does today.
“Culture” here designates not merely the corruption itself (everyone knows college football is rancid), but indifference to it, everyone’s fine Italian hand waving away any embarrassment or shock over the fact that Nick Saban, recipient of $5.3 million a year from one of the poorest states in the union, routinely tells journalists to shut up when they ask about his dirty program. (“Nick Saban, the Alabama coach, stamped out of one news conference last week like a petulant child, all because reporters dared to do their jobs. He would talk about the football game, not the system of big-time college football, the system that made him rich and famous. Never that.”) Just like Joe Paterno, this guy’s got a fucking statue! These guys are our heroes!
UD’s pretty confident that Saban’s statue will meet the same fate as Paterno’s… But maybe not. Maybe by the time the massive Alabama scandal hits, the process of Italianization will have advanced to the point where no one gives a shit.
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Anyway, my point is that the plains were our last bastion. Now it’s pomo meh. Meh. Rape at Montana, rape at Colorado, pimping at Oklahoma, drugs at Iowa, meh. The plain-spoken plains have spoken. They’re on board. Benvenuto!
Another genius scrutinizes attendance at university football games (especially the BCS) and begins to detect a problem.
There’s no there there.
Football’s not – as all of Gump Nation believes – the front porch of the university. It’s a surly back alley, a scholastic Skid Row, a lunar landscape with losers.
Look at these stadiums. Look at this picture of the second half crowd at the Military Bowl. They’re the last human beings on earth, huddled near the field while a glowing UFO prepares to beam them up.
Once everyone’s gone, it’s the players plus the Masturbation Marching Band, tickling its own glockenspiel.
[A] Louisiana State University assistant professor identified a new species of pancake batfish in the Gulf of Mexico last year, and the discovery was recognized by the International Institute for Species Exploration as being one of 2010’s top 10 new species. While LSU didn’t increase his $85,000 pay, he did get a nice note of congratulations from the provost, he said.
Across the Baton Rouge campus, Les Miles is having a good year, too. His top-ranked LSU football team is undefeated… Miles will make an extra $200,000 on top of his $3.75 million-a-year salary if they win the title, and $300,000 more for winning the national crown.
… “We are not doing this, [said the professor,] for monetary gain.”
… “These coaches aren’t motivated by the bonuses,” said Scott Minto, director of the San Diego State University Sports MBA program. “It is about creating a legacy. National titles do that.”
Alabama Athletic Director Mal Moore said neither [Nick] Saban [$4.7 million annual salary with the chance of an additional $525,000] nor other coaches are in the business for the money.
Nobody’s in it for the money!
The New York Times seems determined to keep writing about the scandal of university presidents serving on multiple corporate boards. Good.
The piece has a headline and a sub-headline.
The Academic-Industrial Complex
A Fear That Academics are Distracted Directors
Some analysts worry that academics are possibly imperiling or compromising the independence of their universities when they venture onto boards. Others question whether scholars have the time — and financial sophistication — needed to police the country’s biggest corporations while simultaneously juggling the demands of running a large university.
Why do the presidents do it?
Moolah.
Bigtime.
The attractions are clear for the president: lucrative extra pay and useful networking, among other reasons. For a dozen hours or so each month for each board served, in addition to preparation time, and their wise advice, they can receive hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Ruth J. Simmons, the president of Brown University and the first African-American woman to lead an Ivy League university, sat on the Goldman Sachs board until she stepped down this year. In 2009, she earned $323,539 from her Goldman directorship, including stock grants and options, as calculated by Goldman, and left the board with stock worth at the time around $4.3 million. This is in addition to her salary from Brown, $576,000 this year.
[Shirley Ann] Jackson earned $1.38 million from her directorships, comprising both cash and stock. That’s in addition to $1.6 million from her day job, including bonuses and other benefits.
Plus you learn new things! One president who was on Merck’s board says: “It was one long seminar in the sciences and molecular biology.”
Great. But if you were taking a seminar, why did Merck pay you? Why didn’t you pay Merck?
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Why do the corporations do it?
Universities are among the few institutions trusted by the public …and companies believe they can associate themselves with this quality by installing an academic on the board.
“Corporations think this is a way of enhancing their prestige and legitimacy, especially in the case of Ivy League presidents,” he says. “I suspect that’s the principal motivation. It’s probably not for their business sense.”
John Gillespie, who has written a book on corporate boards, “Money for Nothing,” says academics are often selected for another reason — because they are less likely to rock the boat than directors from the business world.
Academics may be trained to ask tough questions in their own fields, but when confronted with tricky business issues far above their level of expertise they “often become as meek as church mice,” he says.
Right. They’re learning things. They’re taking one long multi-million-dollar seminar.
One expert on corporate boards does not mince words about one of this blog’s favorite board-sitters, Brown’s Ruth Simmons.
… Goldman Sachs was hurt having Dr. Simmons as a director because she lacks financial expertise and was focused more than she should have been on other things like the firm’s philanthropy… “That seat could have been held by someone who understood derivatives.”
But she was learning!
As for the exceptionally greedy Jackson of Rennselaer:
“[I]t is just physically impossible to do the work necessary to be a good director” on so many boards. The Corporate Library estimates that board members must invest 240 hours a year, including meetings and preparation, to do the work properly. But it can become a full-time job if the company runs into trouble.
Charles M. Elson, a corporate governance specialist at the University of Delaware, is highly critical of university presidents who serve on several boards, although he is reluctant to single out particular directors or companies. “If you see a university president on multiple boards, that’s a problem,” he says. “There is no way you can do the job. Someone has got short shrift.”
As academics serve on a greater number of boards, there is also an increased chance of reputational risk if a company runs into difficulties.
“Woe to the university president who would sit on BP’s board,” says Richard P. Chait, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Erroll B. Davis Jr., chancellor of the University System of Georgia, was on the BP board for 12 years, though he stepped down in April, just days before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, causing the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. His retirement, however, wasn’t enough to protect him from being named, along with other directors, in a small number of lawsuits filed against BP over the disaster.
Plus… He’s only a business professor at Harvard, but… Bill George! Here’s looking at you!
And don’t forget Ruth Simmons. She’s left the Goldman board, but she’ll probably be named in various lawsuits against it.
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I think Phyllis Wise, who has compromised herself and her university by sitting on Nike’s board, puts the matter best:
“Many years ago, academicians tended to be dreamers,” she says. “We assumed somebody else would figure out where the money was going to come from. That notion is no longer the case.”
I mean, I think Wise intends to refer here to the money that comes to the university. But UD prefers to read her statement differently.
Those poor silly old dreamers! They never got rich.
That notion is no longer the case.
The absolute catastrophe that the corrupt state of New Mexico has visited on its public university assumes, with each new scandal, the dimensions of a novel by Cormac McCarthy.
Maybe the darkest pages of All the King’s Men get closer to it. Or the film Mad Max, with its apocalyptic gore. Never, in UD‘s memory, has a university fallen so low.
A local writer, Joe Monahan, attempts to come to grips with the reality that an American campus has been buried. He asks whether it can be unearthed.
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The slow motion destruction of the credibility of the University of New Mexico continues inexorably. It seems no one can or will stop it. Not the UNM Board of Regents. Not the Governor. Not the Lieutenant Governor who would be Governor. Not the powers that be in the Legislature. And not depressed university boosters who remain silent.
The university sails alone in troubled waters, captained by the politics of cronyism. The ship is listing badly, struck by too many torpedoes–the coach Locksley scandal, the faculty vote of no-confidence in the UNM president, the hiring of multiple Governor-backed political appointees and the blatant politicization of the UNM regents.
The leading figures at the helm of the university are locked so deeply in politically incestuous relationships that no one will check the other’s actions. What is to be done?
THE PRESIDENT
The time for bashing university president David Schmidly is past. This administration is effectively over.
Now we can only beseech him to announce that he will resign his position within a year and spend that time attempting to clean up the mess (Ditto for Schmidly’s right hand man, the politically connected executive vice-president David Harris). The president’s best chance to preserve any legacy is to acknowledge that his has been a very troubled tenure, but that in the end reality was recognized.
Once his resignation is announced the president will need to dismiss UNM athletic director Paul Krebs and his key associates. He will also have to hand walking papers to UNM football coach Locksley which could mean a large severance payout, but there is no choice. The damage is done, and irrevocable if the same players remain. The cover-up culture must be purged and with it the elitist salaries and perquisites.
After securing Krebs’ resignation, the president should then consider giving the title of athletic director to UNM Lobo basketball coach Steve Alford. Through this violent storm he has retained his credibility nationally and locally. Paid $1 million a year, Alford should have no problem handling both jobs on a temporary basis.
The search for permanent replacements for Locksley and Krebs should be confined to New Mexicans. There are many fine coaches and administrators at area high schools. UNM alumni, athletic boosters and the sports media cheerleaders need to have expectations dialed down.
In short, the bar needs to be reset on the aspirations of Lobo athletics. Student athletes–especially those in the football and basketball programs–have been subjected to unreasonable expectations which in turn leads to the chaos we now confront. Basketball coach Alford seems to be finding a balance–another reason why we see him as a prime choice for an interim athletic director.
THE GOVERNOR
There is apparently no chance that Governor Richardson will take any action to acknowledge the manifold messes strangling UNM. His forceful political personality, so effective in other matters, overwhelmed the institutional strength of the university and set in motion the events that are consuming the school. But if he were to see the light, he would call for the regents’ resignations and begin replacing them with appointees who are not from the world of politics. (Is that possible?)
THE SENATOR
There is still a chance for the Legislature to prevent a complete shipwreck. We warned during the 2009 legislative session that the decision of state Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Linda Lopez not to hold an intensive confirmation hearing on the reappointment of regent Jamie Koch and the turmoil-ridden campus sent a signal that legislative oversight of UNM was not to be. Lopez could still hold that hearing in January and appropriators could start demanding change in exchange for dollars.
THE HOUSE
In the state House the current leadership is so deeply entwined with regent Koch and regents president and former longtime NM House speaker Raymond Sanchez, we don’t know where to look for reform. But university area state representatives and senators are a start. That would be Sen. McSorley and Rep. Chasey. They have safe seats for life. Where are they?
THE LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish has made education a banner issue, but she has yet to wade into the UNM waters. That will come when the campaign for Governor begins in earnest. But she needs to know now that deep concern is being expressed among major donors and supporters of UNM about her long political relationship with former Democratic Party chairman and regent Koch. It is causing worried speculation that her election as Governor would be more of the same–which in this case means an endless spiral of controversy, cronyism and damage to UNM’s reputation. Will she have the political will to break with the past? Will she send any early signals?
THE OTHER REGENTS
And where are the regents you hear little from–Santa Fe attorney Gene Gallegos, car dealer Don Chalmers, attorney Carolyn Abieta and Farmington’s Jack Fortner? These are all distinguished volunteers, but the time for being bumps on the log is long past. They have the power to pressure the UNM president and even the governor who appointed them. Being an “honorific” regent in the breaking point year of 2009 is not an option.
Change must and will come, but this rudderless ship is headed into the sandbars. How much more damage it will suffer before the rescue party arrives is the dreaded unknown hanging over the home of the Lobos and those who fret for its future.
Joe Monahan, New Mexico Politics
Official statement from the University of New Mexico board of trustees in response to the faculty no-confidence vote in regard to President David Schmidly.
We admit we were all bit piddly
When we voted to hire Dave Schmidly.
But who knew that he’d stink?
He looks good when you drink.
And now it’s too late to do diddly.
