Few basketball programs have benefited from recruiting players from Schofield and Lutheran more than George Washington. The Colonials are 24-1 this year and ranked No. 7 in the Associated Press poll. Two of the team's best players, Maureece Rice and Omar Williams, played at schools run by Schofield. The George Washington president, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, had a strong reaction to The Times article.

"I was embarrassed," he said.

Trachtenberg said that he planned to forward the article to the vice president, the admissions office and the athletic director.

Asked if having two players from Lutheran tainted the Colonials' season, Trachtenberg said: "Well, it's hardly good news. I wished they'd all gone to Andover and Horace Mann and finished first in their class. I'm curious how they're doing while they're here."

The athletic director, Jack Kvancz, refused comment. Coach Karl Hobbs said he never met any teachers or counselors while recruiting Williams and Rice, despite their academic struggles at the high schools they attended before Lutheran. He also refused to answer questions about whether he knew the school was unaccredited.

Hobbs defended Rice, a sophomore who will turn 22 in March, and Williams, a 24-year-old senior, by saying that when one talks to the players, it is obvious that they are educated young men.

Hobbs pointed to the lack of resources in inner-city schools. "I do think part of my responsibility as a coach is to offer opportunities to kids that have a burning desire to want to graduate and kids that have the character and the desire to want to succeed," he said.

When ASSU Senate Chair Chris Nguyen brought a water gun to the Undergraduate Senate meeting on Jan. 24 to protect himself from would-be killers, it served as a clear indication that Assassins season was back. Yes, the persistent reality game is once again sweeping Stanford dorms this quarter in a variety of forms. With games running in Freshman / Sophomore College, Rinconada and Branner, the paranoia-inducing game of hunters and the hunted is causing many around campus to guard their backs carefully.

“Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals” defines Assassins as a “lifestyle-invading game.” It is “essentially a live-action roleplaying game,” according to Wikipedia. Players are secretly assigned a target, whom they attempt to kill — by means which vary depending on the rules of the particular game — knowing that they too are being hunted by another player.

Games vary from the extremely involved, with pages of rules and ubiquitous water guns, to the simple. Branner’s game, characterized as an “unofficial pick up game” by its freshman creator Amara Humprey, uses Post-it notes for weapons. Rule concerning safe areas also tend to vary. While class and the target’s living quarters are considered safe in most versions, some games also exempt computer clusters, dorm events and bathrooms.

Assassins has been played at least since the 1980s, according to Wikipedia, and is most popular on college campuses.

“It’s great, especially in the beginning,” said freshman Amir Ghodrati, who leads Branner’s game with nine kills. “But as it goes on, people stop trying to kill each other and it gets boring.”

To keep the game from stagnating, FroSoCo employs a “terminator” rule, where any assassin failing to report a kill within a certain time limit is hunted down by terminators, who are essentially indestructible assassins with the express purpose of removing those who play too slowly.

As of Saturday, five people remained alive in the FroSoCo game, a game rife with betrayals. Freshman Denise Sohn, who on Friday was one of fewer than half of the 78 initial participants still alive, got her first kill while wishing her college assistant a happy birthday.

“People have become extremely paranoid, carrying their water guns around at all times and being afraid to go anywhere alone,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.

Paranoia is both the consequence of and the key to success in this game, said Francis Ring, coordinator of the FroSoCo game.

“Most kills come from stalking people on their way to class,” he wrote. “Also, of course, there are the many betrayals by so-called friends.”

Hoping to capitalize on the popularity of dorm Assassins, the ASSU Student Life Committee sponsored a campus-wide variant in spring of 2002 that drew 35 participants from 19 dormitories.

Few now remember the game.

Andrew Cross, a history major who graduated last quarter, recalled his experience. “I was a freshman and I killed this dude in ZAP,” he said. “And then, somehow I blew the job on someone in Roble and died. It was cool, but not as cool as it could have been.”

Although publicized in The Daily, the game drew relatively few participants.

After the game concluded, game organizer Eric Lai, Class of ‘03, said, “At a school with thousands of students, I know there must be more than 35 people paranoid enough to enjoy a campus-wide version of Assassins.”

But the idea of a renewed campus-wide game has met a lukewarm reception. “I don’t want to play with a bunch of people I’ve never heard of in my life,” said Ghodrati. “It’s not fun.”

“The concept of stalking people you don’t even know would be a little scary, even in a game,” Ring agreed.

In spite of the alleged creepiness, some intrepid souls expressed that they would be interested.

Said freshman Danny Berring, “Is it invasive? Yes. Would my privacy be threatened? Yes. But that’s what makes it fun.”

“If they could get it together again, it would be awesome,” Cross agreed.

All billionaire T. Boone Pickens did was give a humble $165 million to his alma mater, Oklahoma State University, to fund a charity for the benefit of the school's golf program, and that has teed off some folks. According to The New York Times, not long after the money landed at the school, the charity, O.S.U. Cowboy Golf, invested it in BP Capital Management, a hedge fund run by Pickens. Mike Holder, who sits on the board of the fund, says it was his decision to put the money in BP and denies that Pickens made it a condition of the contribution. The billionaire, according to the Times, got a nice tax break for the donation, thanks to a clause in Hurricane Katrina relief law that allowed "a deduction for charitable gift equal to 100% of his adjusted gross income," double the norm. Some lawyers question whether Pickens should get the deduction, given where the money ended up, though they say it's all legit. Making the point that there is no conflict, Pickens spokesman Jay Rosser told the Times, "We've waived all fees and our share of the profits on their investment."

Shares of the company plunged $8.31, or 14.2 percent, to $50.16 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq after earlier hitting a low of $49.51. The stock is down 17 percent so far this year, and has not traded this low since March 2003.

Investors also sent shares of Apollo's biggest rivals sharply lower in trading -- with many hitting new 52-week lows of their own.

DeVry Inc. shares dropped $1.05, or 4.3 percent, to $23.44, and earlier reached a 52-week low of $23.24 on the New York Stock Exchange. ITT Education Services Inc. shares fell $2.69, or 4.2 percent, to $61.76 on the Big Board.

Three key American enterprises have seen costs rise much faster than inflation over the past generation... housing, health care, and higher education. Houses have grown bigger and better.... Doctors do things they could not imagine a generation ago. Costs may have risen faster than quality, but there is no doubt that quality has risen... substantially.

Higher education is similar -- on the cost side. Benefit is another story. There is little reason to believe that undergrads and graduate students are better educated today than a generation ago.... Teaching loads of senior professors have declined; probably teaching quality has declined with it.

The culture of research universities has grown ever more contemptuous of students, especially undergraduates, who are seen as an interruption of one's real work rather than the reason for the enterprise. Which means that, year by year, students and their parents pay more for less. That isn't a sustainable business plan.

If undergraduate education is too often an afterthought, graduate education is too often a con game. A sizeable percentage of PhDs will never get tenure-track teaching jobs, which are the only jobs for which their education trains them. Since no jobs await them, they hang around longer getting their degrees, all the while teaching classes and doing research for their academic sponsors.

It's a great deal--for the sponsors. For the grad students, it's akin to buying a daily lottery ticket as a retirement plan....

PowerPoint briefing,
Eye candy for the big cheese,
Sycophant's wet dream!

Brief CG at noon,
Animated slides and sounds,
Cartoons for morons!

Cheese-meister to brief,
Proud to wear PowerPoint tab,
Future General!

Is the best way to solve the University of California's recent salary scandals really to staff it with more businesspeople?

It is, or at least it's part of the solution according to UC Board of Regents chairman Gerald Parsky. Sitting before a state Senate panel last Wednesday that was convened to hold hearings on reports that the UC has paid out excessive salaries to some top-level executives and administrators, Parsky said the UC could use more staff members with business backgrounds.

While acknowledging that experience in education is important for university officials, Parsky said, "There needs to be a restructuring of the office of the president so appropriate business-management expertise is brought to bear."

That's an interesting take, given the current make-up of the board. Of the 18 appointed regents (19 if you count the student regent), 12 are either executives, officers or founders of major businesses or organizations. Among them are Sherry Lansing, former CEO of Paramount Pictures; Norman Pattiz, founder and chairman of media giant Westwood One; and Frederick Ruiz, co-founder of Ruiz Foods, the top seller of frozen Mexican food in the United States. The top two officers on the board, Parsky and Richard Blum, are chairmen of Aurora Capital Group and Blum Capital Partners, respectively.

Given that repertoire, we question whether the UC really needs more leaders with "business-management expertise."

It certainly wouldn't hurt the UC to have leaders who are business-savvy – though when the university system drops $205,000 a year to pay someone to do essentially nothing, as UC President Robert Dynes admits the university did for former UC Davis Vice Chancellor Celeste Rose, we wonder whether it's common sense, rather than business know-how, that is lacking.

But it's not as if UC officials are entirely devoid of either of the two. They didn't run the UC into bankruptcy out of sheer financial recklessness. They did drop the ball when it came to taking a responsible and publicly accountable approach to salaries and compensation. But that's a problem that can probably be fixed by using resources the university already has at its disposal; it doesn't necessarily require bringing on new ones.

If anything, we would argue that the Board of Regents is stacked too heavily in favor of businesspeople. When the board is mostly composed of real estate moguls and CEOs of financial firms, it creates a perception – especially among students – that they're out of touch with educational needs. The fact that the regents only meet once every two months and rarely visit campuses to mingle with students and staff only compounds the problem.

It wouldn't be entirely fair to suggest the regents – with all their business backgrounds – take on all of the UC's financial oversight.

Still, when the board is already flush with business talent, and then the chairman of the regents stands before a Senate hearing to say the UC should hire even more, we question in what direction the university is headed. It is, after all, primarily a school system, not a business.

Being fiscally responsible and accountable to the public does not require a business degree.

But, it does take time, commitment and a good memory to prevent the UC from reneging on the stringent financial oversight it is now promising. Otherwise, in 10 years, Parsky's successors could find themselves in front of even more panels of inquisitive senators.

[I]ncome at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that’s not a misprint.

Some Harvard watchers attribute [Shleifer's non-punishment] to Dr. Summers's influence, though he formally recused himself from the matter, and they see the entire affair, assiduously detailed by Mr. McClintick [in the Institutional Investor article], as an indelible stain on Harvard's reputation.

..."One reason I was drawn to it was you had this very small group of exceptionally brilliant people, very young people, basically trying to save Russia and then an even smaller group corrupting the enterprise," [McClintick] said. "The wheeling and dealing and the internal dynamics of the group are fascinating."

...There is a wide range of opinion in the powerful circle of Harvard watchers on just how significant Mr. McClintick's article was in galvanizing faculty members. Richard Bradley, the author of "Harvard Rules: Lawrence Summers and the Battle for the World's Most Powerful University," has written frequently about the scandal on his blog (richardbradley.net).

"Suddenly, you couldn't just say this was an arcane legal dispute in which one party had somehow fallen afoul of the law," Mr. Bradley said in an interview. "Suddenly, this was exposed as a really unattractive and deliberate pattern of behavior and cover-up that quite dramatically pointed an arrow at Larry Summers."

...Dr. Summers' recusal, said Robert D. Putnam, a former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, was a turning point.

"When the president responded in a manifestly untruthful way to questions that were asked about the Shleifer case," Mr. Putnam said, "it had a devastating effect on the views of people who were to that point uncommitted, people who, like me, were strong supporters of his agenda."

Others, however, maintain that the events detailed by Mr. McClintick were a negligible factor in Dr. Summers's departure. The report is available at institutionalinvestor.com.

"I would bet you there weren't more than 20 or 30 people who read it," said Alan M. Dershowitz, who has taught law at Harvard for 42 years and who wrote an op-ed about the resignation for The Boston Globe.

"It seems to me it was full of leaps of logic," Mr. Dershowitz said. "Once people made up their minds they wanted to get rid of Summers, they were dragging up anything."

...Michael J. Carroll, the editor at Institutional Investor who first approached Mr. McClintick with the story, said Mr. McClintick's article, the longest published in the magazine since he began editing it in 1999, warranted close attention. "Russia was going to go the way of the West, so in come the best and brightest of Harvard, and this story shows how the best and the brightest started to do things the old Russia way," Mr. Carroll said. Mr. McClintick concurred. "If this case shows anything," he said, "it's that intelligence does not equal wisdom."

Troublesome friends may need to be sacrificed. Many professors were troubled by a lawsuit involving Andrei Shleifer, an economics professor at Harvard, which alleged that he and an associate violated the terms of a federal contract involving a university program. Harvard settled the lawsuit for $26.5 million.

At a faculty meeting, Mr. Summers said he did not know enough to comment. This struck many as a disingenuous. The two men are good friends. And Mr. Summers was also seen as protective of Mr. Shleifer, once telling a dean not to allow another university to poach the economist, according to a deposition in the lawsuit.

The Harvard president might have helped himself if he had nudged his friend to go to New York University, which made a lucrative, ultimately unsuccessful bid to steal Mr. Shleifer in 2003.

Marc Egerson is a freshman for No. 23 Georgetown.

Don Haman, Egerson's coach at Glasgow High School in Delaware, said Egerson earned a core-course G.P.A. under 2.0, scored in the 600's on his combined SAT and never graduated from Glasgow before going to Lutheran [a prep school for athletes].

"I wonder about it myself," Mr. Haman said of Egerson's acceptance to Georgetown. "But I can't say anything if he gets the score and gets into school."

‘We have learned about the importance of private property and the rule of law as a basis for economic freedom. Just after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, I used to be asked a lot: "What do these ex-communist states have to do in order to become market economies?" And I used to say: "You can describe that in three words: privatize, privatize, privatize." But, I was wrong. That wasn't enough. The example of Russia shows that. Russia privatized but in a way that created private monopolies - private centralized economic controls that replaced government's centralized controls. It turns out that the rule of law is probably more basic than privatization. Privatization is meaningless if you don't have the rule of law.’

It’s a fascinating story—it’s historic, it’s dramatic. I’m not sure it quite reaches the level of tragic, but there are tragic elements in it. Above all—and this will get lost in the left versus right sniping you’ll see in the next few weeks—it’s an important story. Ultimately a lot of the issues with Larry were about personality. At the same time, the underlying argument was about what kind of place a university ought to be. Not just any university, but the university I’ve argued is the most important in the world.

…I do get frustrated by ... caricatures of the Faculty, which are ubiquitous. They’re something the Faculty should be concerned about. There’s an odd willingness to believe that the faculty consists of knee-jerk left-wing Sixties-holdover radical crackpots. It’s obviously an unfair caricature of the Faculty. …The caricatures of the Faculty are about anti-intellectualism in the U.S.

'Coming the same month that Summers angered many professors by forcing William C. Kirby’s resignation as dean of the Faculty, the Institutional Investor article [about the Shleifer affair] added still more fuel to the Faculty’s uproar.

“Bill’s resignation was the most important thing behind it,” said Coolidge Professor of History David Blackbourn, referring to Summers’ ouster. But, he added, “Larry’s ...[denying knowledge and involvement in answer] to the question about Andrei Shleifer also really antagonized people.”

…Glimp Professor of Economics Edward L. Glaeser said last week that the Institutional Investor article “is a potent piece of hate creation—not quite ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ but it’s in that camp.”'

Instead of publicizing the revised course on the university's website, Mr. Rancourt posted a description on an independently run website called alternativevoices.ca.

The description said students in the course "may learn some science (risk analysis, nuclear technology, ozone chemistry, greenhouse effect, etc.) and see how science is often misused to maintain the status quo rather than help elucidate the situation. Mostly, though, we will try to 'understand power,' so that we have a clear picture of what progressive citizens are up against."

Mr. Rancourt has defended his actions by saying curriculum changes are normal and professors rarely restrict themselves to what is contained in official course descriptions.

But his colleagues say the course was revised so drastically it no longer had anything to do with physics.

UNIVERSITIES EXIST to pose tough questions, promote critical thinking, and generally challenge complacency and prejudice. When he became president of Harvard five years ago, Lawrence H. Summers determined that the university was not living up to this mission: It was infected by its own complacencies and prejudices, and he did not shrink from saying so. This outspokenness won Mr. Summers support across the university: A new online poll conducted by the Harvard Crimson found that 57 percent of undergraduates supported him -- only 19 percent thought he should resign -- and the deans of several faculties praised his leadership. But Mr. Summers alienated a vocal portion of the Arts and Sciences faculty, which pressed last year for a vote of no confidence in him and recently forced a second such vote on to the schedule for next week. Yesterday Mr. Summers preempted that second vote by announcing that he would step down in the summer. Because of the prestige of Harvard, his defeat may demoralize reformers at other universities.

Mr. Summers fought several well-publicized battles with Harvard's establishment. He refused to rubber-stamp appointees chosen by the faculties, blocking candidates who seemed insufficiently distinguished and pressing for diversity in political outlook. This prompted complaints that he was acting like a corporate chief executive -- as though there were something wrong with that. Next, Mr. Summers had the temerity to suggest that Cornel West, a professor of Afro-American studies, produce less performance art and more scholarship. This plea for academics to do academic work was construed as racist. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Summers criticized Harvard's hostility to the U.S. armed forces and called attention to the cultural gap between elite coastal campuses and mainstream American values. The fact that these commonsensical positions alienated people at Harvard speaks volumes about the cultural gap that troubled Mr. Summers.

Perhaps most explosively, Mr. Summers raised the possibility that the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering faculties might reflect innate gender differences in ability. His claim was not that women were less intelligent on average, but rather that fewer women than men might be outstandingly bad or outstandingly good at math, with the result that the pool of math geniuses from which universities recruit is disproportionately male. "I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true," he noted. But he was immediately branded a sexist.

Mr. Summers can be undiplomatic, as he acknowledged in his resignation letter. But university professors, of all people, should not require mollycoddling; they should be willing to embrace leaders who ask hard questions about how well they are doing their jobs. The tragedy is that the majority at Harvard seems to have known that. But, in university politics as elsewhere, loud and unreasonable minorities can trump good sense.

A few professors said they had rules for e-mail and told their students how quickly they would respond, how messages should be drafted and what types of messages they would answer.

Meg Worley, an assistant professor of English at Pomona College in California, said she told students that they must say thank you after receiving a professor's response to an e-mail message.

"One of the rules that I teach my students is, the less powerful person always has to write back," Professor Worley said.

"Should I buy a binder or a subject notebook? Since I'm a freshman, I'm not sure how to shop for school supplies. Would you let me know your recommendations? Thank you!"

'Two publishers are considering legal action against the poet who has accused Antjie Krog of plagiarism and the award-winning poet and writer is to seek a right to reply in a coming edition of the journal that carried the claims.

In a scathing article in the latest issue of a local literary journal, New Contrast, Stephen Watson, head of Cape Town University's English department, accused Krog of "lifting the entire conception" of her 2004 book on Bushmen poetry, published by Kwela, from an anthology he published in 1991.

Krog's the stars say 'tsau' and Watson's Return of the Moon: Versions of the /Xam are based on the translations of /Xam Bushmen poetry by 19th-century linguists Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm Bleek.


Watson also claimed some paragraphs on the concept of myth in Krog's award-winning book Country of My Skull , published by Random House in 1998, had been plagiarised from British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes's essay Myth and Education.

Eve Gray, the publishers' adviser on copyright and publishing law, said Kwela and Random House had sought legal advice.

"I can't say whether they'll sue, but they... are tentatively considering taking action," she said.

On Sunday, Krog said that the suggestion of plagiarism was absurd.

She had not seen or read Hughes's piece before writing Country of My Skull, she said.

Also, Hughes had referred to the Greek and Christian influences on the Western mind, while she had referred to the apartheid indoctrination that led to the black man's being perceived as a "k....r", enabling the white man to kill what was considered non-human.

Watson maintained these paragraphs by "lazy" Krog had placed her in the ranks of plagiarists with Darrel-Bristow Bovey and Pamela Jooste.

Random House's managing director, Stephen Johnson, said Watson's claims had been examined and rejected.

"We cannot tell whether he is confused or deliberately disingenuous," he said.

"We are dismayed that this lapse should have provoked an altogether unreasonable, venomous and academically shallow diatribe in response."

In an equally strongly worded response, Krog described Watson's criticisms as "vituperative" and "libellous".

Her use of Bushmen folklore was comparable with "Walt Disney accusing one of plagiarism for making poems out of stories of the Brothers Grimm", she said. Poets like Eugene Marais, Jack Cope and Uys Krige, whose works she had read since childhood, had also made references to Bleek's work.

Replying to the accusation that JD Lewis-Williams's words were also lifted, she said: "What... can have caused Watson to overlook the explicit acknowledgment in the introduction as well as on the colophon page?"

Gray said the 19th-century materials were out of copyright and firmly in the public domain. The poems had been attributed to the San authors.'

Professor X enters the classroom ten minutes late, hair askew. Sweating. Laptops, lasers, and highlighters spill out of X’s arms as X proceeds from the classroom door to the podium.

X does not acknowledge the students. In a classroom that seats fifty, there are ten. This is the third class of the semester, and despite daily roll taking and frequent pop quizzes forty enrollees have dropped or decided not to attend.

Three students are asleep; five are internet gambling. Two stare at Professor X from the very back row. They appear to be in a rage.

Another ten minutes elapses as Professor X silently fumbles with Power Point and other forms of technology.

Professor X interrupts the fumbling and leaves the room. After another ten minutes, X returns, carrying a cup of coffee, a cell phone, and a bottle of pills.

More technology fumbling. Occasional muttering of “shit,” and nervous playing with pill bottle.

Power Point mission accomplished. Professor X now takes roll.

X finishes roll. Forty minutes have elapsed.

Professor X speaks.

“I see your classmates have already begun, uh, uh, what’s the word… skipping. I don’t know what’s happened to this, uh, uh, university. It used to have admissions standards. The new president‘s just interested in warm bodies that, uh, uh, pay tuition.”

Professor X does not look at the class. Gazes bitterly out of the classroom windows. “What is it, a million degrees below zero out there? Why are you here? Why am I here?”

Professor X continues gazing, silently, for five minutes. Cell phone rings. “Mm? Yeah?… Yeah?…Yeah?…Yeah?…Yeah?…Yeah?…”

Fifty minutes have elapsed as Professor X snaps the phone shut.

Head down, Professor X now reads what is written on the first Power Point image. X reads the second, third, fourth, and fifth Power Point images. Constantly checks wrist watch.

Ten minutes before the end of class time, Professor X dismisses the class.

“Never mind what is in the book, what about the fact that a minister of state succeeded in banning a book. The same minister who, a few weeks later, when asked about the row over the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, said he preferred that people's feeling[s] were hurt to imposing censorship. He said this in front of a group of journalists and not one of them said, 'Hang on a minute, what about [my] book?'"

Among the considerations board members are weighing is how much Harvard would be further damaged if the discord between the president and many faculty members is allowed to continue, and also what the long-term consequences may be if the board asks for Dr. Summer's resignation, appearing to cave in to the faculty.

Balancing the budget would be a big accomplishment for [the head of sports at University of Hawaii], who has wrangled with deficits every year since becoming athletic director in 2002. The worst year was 2003 when the deficit hit $2.4 million.

The department has operated with a deficit the past four years — three years under Frazier — and has accumulated a $5 million deficit during that time, according to auditors. The department still needs to pay off a $1 million loan from the Manoa chancellor's office.



...This is the second year of the department's five-year plan to eliminate the deficit through increasing ticket prices, private gifts through its fundraising arm, 'Ahahui Koa 'Anuenue, and corporate sponsorships.

Cash flow remains a "top concern" for the department, which does not have sufficient cash reserves to cover operating expenses, according to the audit.

"To fund recent losses, the department has been forced to adopt deficit spending policies, including the use of advance ticket sales, loans from the university and working capital advances," the audit said.

The department still owes Aloha Stadium $341,000 in rent for the 2005 Warriors football season, according to Debbie Ishihara, the stadium's administrative services officer.


…Last February, UH took back from football fans 660 seats in the Aloha Stadium loge area and repackaged them. The seats are now sold at the face value of the ticket plus an additional premium, which was as high as $15,000 in 2005 and could go as high as $20,000 by 2007.


…[T]he department lowered 2005 UH football revenue projections from $4.6 million to $4 million following a subpar season in home attendance. This past season, UH football — the engine that drives the multisport train that is UH athletics — averaged 28,136 fans per home game, the smallest average in coach June Jones' seven years.

"I think everyone knows we did not have the financial windfall we thought we could get in football," Frazier said. "We've gone back and reflected on that already."

'The fact that the university pays eight to 12 students to make sure athletes attend class is pathetic and should frustrate the student body on multiple levels.

The worst part of the entire program is its existence in the first place. Scholarship athletes are given an extraordinary gift -- a free education, some of the best housing the university has to offer and all the glory that comes with being a Division I athlete. It should not be a strain for an athlete to be responsible enough to check him or herself.'

An article in the magazine’s January issue suggested that Summers’ friendship with Jones Professor of Economics Andrei Shleifer protected the professor—who led a controversial Harvard project to advise Russia in the 1990s—from consequences at Harvard.

Seized [on?] by some Faculty members to criticize Summers, the article, “How Harvard Lost Russia,” details the activities of the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) in assisting the Russian government to privatize its economy.

The project, funded by the State Department, drew charges from the U.S. government that Shleifer violated conflict-of-interest policies by personally investing in Russia while running the program.

The article suggests that Summers shielded Shleifer from disciplinary action by the University, which paid $26.5 million to settle the lawsuit.

But in a brief letter dated Feb. 14, Vice President and General Counsel Robert W. Iuliano ’83 says the article does not make clear that Summers recused himself from the University’s decisions about the suit “from the outset of his presidency at Harvard.”

The letter also says Summers did not participate in “judgements regarding whether, when or how Harvard should review the conduct of employees involved in the HIID project.”

Shleifer, who was found liable by a federal court in 2004 for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, paid $2 million to settle his part in the suit.

The article’s author, investigative journalist David McClintick ’62, said yesterday that his article “speaks for itself.”

“President Summers asked me, didn't I agree that, in general, economists are smarter than political scientists, and political scientists are smarter than sociologists?" Ellison said. ''To which I laughed nervously and didn't reply."

No, the book-plus standard for tenure will continue [Benton has just noted the MLA‘s formal position paper arguing against the mindless bookolatry of humanities departments], perhaps sustained by the use of ever-larger subsidies, weaker editing, and smaller print runs, until the publication of most books -- excluding the flagship productions -- with a university press will become of little more significance than having photocopies of your college memoir spiral-bound at Kinko's. [No, not this analogy. The next one.]

…I [having himself, he notes, begun non-university press forms of publishing] no longer feel beholden to the petty rivalries and resentments that characterize academic life. It's like being born again. [No, not this analogy either. The next one.] Imagine it for yourself: There are people out there -- possibly millions of them -- who are willing to pay for the pleasure of reading your work. Those people could give your ideas, expressed in a single mainstream book, the impact of a lifetime of scholarly writing. You can also earn the posthumous respect of Samuel Johnson, as well the relatives who warned you that professors tend to be paupers. Poverty and obscurity, as the world sees them, are not necessarily signifiers of academic virtue.

My experience as a writer in the last year is something like that moment in the 2004 film, The Village [this analogy], when a blind teenage girl named Ivy ventures through the terrifying woods that enclose her 19th-century farming community to obtain medicine to save her dying fiancé, Lucius. Eventually, after escaping from a member of her village disguised as a forest monster -- the one she had been warned about all her life -- Ivy reaches a stone wall and climbs it. On the other side, is the modern world: It is the "real world," from which the elders of her community long ago fled to build a utopia that, in time, became a den of resentments, rivalries, and secrets as bitter as the life from which they had escaped.

After Ivy returned with the medicine, I wonder if she and her husband stayed in the village. Or did Ivy tell Lucius of her discovery, and they went away together to live in the 21st century with all its freedoms and conveniences? Perhaps she kept her secret or passed it along to only a few kindred spirits whom she recognized, the way teachers often do with their students.

Once you realize there's a world outside the academic village, almost any future seems possible.

Like the opposite of haiku - most words used, least expressed.

He is there only to sell his latest book, which of course is mandatory.

Extremely boring text - which he wrote.

...When she's not posing in red carpet wear, Ashley, who's currently a sophomore at New York University, has decidedly less glamorous tasks on her hands, including homework.

Mary-Kate, on the other hand, is taking a leave of absence from her studies, in part to recover from a painful breakup with ex-boyfriend Stavros Niarchos, who's now dating Paris Hilton.

"I miss him and I love him, and I don't speak with him anymore," Mary-Kate told W magazine in an interview published in December. "It's a hurtful and painful subject."

Once her healing process is complete, Mary-Kate reportedly plans to return to school and complete her studies, either at NYU or a West Coast university, though she has unusual curriculum requirements.

"I need to be able to go to yoga and work out and just read scripts and go on auditions, because that's what makes me happy...Like, papers don't really make me happy."

Tomás D. Morales, provost of California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, also spoke to his fellow administrators about accountability. He said he understood the concern of many that “testing has been the central conversation” of the Education Department’s commission. But he said that — like it or not — higher education needs to move toward a “culture of evidence” about what students actually learn in college.

…Alan Jones, vice president and dean of the faculty at Pitzer College, agreed that demands have grown dramatically over the past five years — both from accreditors and the government — for “objective and demonstrable learning outcomes.”

Jones said that colleges need to respond to those demands, but that they need to do so in ways that preserve their values — something he said that may not always be easy. For instance, with regard to measuring what student learning goes on in college, he cited Heisenberg’s view that the very act of observing and recording can change what is being observed and recorded.

The Shleifer affair is indeed a serious matter, but Faculty members’ propriety in bringing it to the scene now is questionable.

The lawsuit was filed in 2000 and settled in 2004. It has been covered comprehensively by this newspaper and in other sources for the duration. True, a recent Institutional Investor article on Summers’ role in the incident does raise concerns about his handling of the events, but the facts of the situation remain at best unclear and are not deserving of a renewed firestorm.

Daneen Furr, the student body treasurer at UNC-Chapel Hill, said students "overwhelmingly oppose" a $50 increase in the university's athletic fee, especially because the fee increased $100 last year. She also said the athletics department has new sources of revenue, including an advertising contract with Wachovia worth $9 million over eight years.

A year after vowing to get its sports program out of the red, Florida Atlantic University is hustling to head off another shortfall -- despite meeting or even blowing past many financial expectations.

Unexpected expenses [Don’t let your eye blow past that “unexpected.” Only idiots don’t prepare for contingencies, and this sports program - like many others - made big promises and didn’t prepare for contingencies.] and lagging corporate sponsorships [FAU has done all it can to prostitute itself to corporations, but apparently it wasn‘t enough.] could put athletics about $300,000 behind on roughly $13 million in spending for the academic year, FAU leaders said Wednesday. But they stressed that they aim to catch up before the academic year ends in June.

They're planning a full-court press on corporate deals. If that doesn't work, they say they can break even by deferring some expenses to the next budget year.

"We're working feverishly to try to close the gap and to make sure we balance at the end of the year," said FAU athletics director Craig Angelos. "... There's no other option."

To FAU, even scrambling for $300,000 feels something like a victory. At this time last year, the university was looking at a $1.7 million deficit, on top of millions more in debts.




Intercollegiate sports have bled red ink since FAU launched a football team in 2001. To make up the difference, athletics ultimately borrowed about $3.7 million from donations, student rents, cafeteria profits and other parts of the university. [Note the list. UD especially likes “other parts of the university.” I wonder what those might be.]

FAU leaders pledged last year to stop that. They hammered out a sports spending plan that breaks even and starts repaying the debts. It includes increasing fund raising, ticket sales [Sales don‘t go up unless you have a long winning streak - another contingency!], corporate sponsorship and other income. But it depends heavily on a sorely contested 17 percent boost in the student sports fee. At $13.75 per credit, it's now higher than any other Florida public university. [Hm, that pesky sports fee again. Students really don’t seem to like how high it is.]

About halfway through the budget year, ticket sales have surged. Attendance at men's basketball games has more than doubled since last year, and single-game football ticket sales nearly tripled, according to figures released Wednesday. Support from collegiate sports groups has brought in $107,000 more than expected. And the sports-fee hike has provided a roughly $1.1 million lifeline.

But corporate sponsorships -- current and projected -- are only 60 percent of the way to a $282,000 goal.

And expenses have ticked up. FAU had to spend an unforeseen $100,000 replacing a videocamera and coaches' headsets, Angelos said. [More unexpected expenses! Who could have foreseen that a videocam and a headset would break? It’s just these acts of God that keep the academic program at FAU down.] When hurricanes [Hurricanes? Florida?] grounded the company that usually flies FAU's football team to games, last-minute airline tickets and charters added another $175,000 or more in expenses, though the university hopes to recoup some of that, he said.

Still, sports finances this year represent "a giant leap forward," trustee Norman Tripp said. "There's a lot of hard work to do, but (sports administrators) are up to the task."




Meanwhile, FAU is considering a deal with outside developers to build an "athletic village": a domed stadium rimmed by student housing, shops and parking garages. The developers would pay for the project, in exchange for income from student and shop rents and as many as 200 stadium events a year. [You read that right, folks. Two hundred events a year!]

The university hasn't committed to the plan. But trustees got a look Wednesday at conceptual sketches of a tree-lined arena neighborhood on the western edge of FAU's Boca Raton campus. A potential timetable envisions adding the 40,000-seat stadium, housing for 2,100 students, a fitness center, 3,000 parking spaces and 65,000 square feet of retail space by fall 2009.

"It's an exciting thing, to think that we might be able to do this," Tripp said.

Still, FAU and the team of developers, led by veteran stadium builder KUD International, say they need to nail down key financial and other aspects of the plan [What? You don’t want to take on yet more debt? Surely you’ve accounted for all contingencies.] before even deciding whether to carry it out. FAU trustees on Wednesday raised a few of the many as-yet-unanswered questions, such as what the developers would charge students for the housing and how stadium events would affect educational goings-on. [Educational goings-on. Cute phrase.]

"When we're looking at having an event every other day, having such a facility in such close proximity to the academic core of our campus has the potential to have a significant impact on the rest of the campus," trustee and faculty leader Roy Levow said. [What are you trying to say, Roy? You got a problem with a university where the only action’s in the athletic village/ shopping mall?]

How can such a smart guy believe in astrology? Believes in a lot of other crackpot nonsense. Totally unclear. Don't know why this was a film course. Spent bulk of time reading a poem.

[N]o syllabus, readings or screening list and it seemed like we just watched whatever [he] felt like showing that day.

Was way more into astrology than writing. I wish I had my tuition back, because my MFA is not worth the paper it is printed on.

If you accidently enroll in one of his classes, withdraw immediately and flee the country.

I WENT TO HARVARD. I WENT TO HARVARD. I ALSO WENT TO INDIA. WHILE I WAS GOING TO HARVARD.

Lose the laser.

Treats you like an idiot very boring and plays with her damn laser too much.

Sat on his arse & had group presentations teach class last 5 wks of qtr.

A vegan rant masquerading as a social issues animal rights course.

After apologizing for being behind in the material and promising a great lecture, after rambling off topic, and after he hung up the cell phone and went back to his off topic ramble, I raised my hand and asked him, “Would you please get to the point?”

Six months after the University paid $26.5 million to settle a government lawsuit implicating Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer, controversy over the case has erupted anew and fed the Faculty’s current uprising against Shleifer’s close friend, University President Lawrence H. Summers.

“I’ve been a member of this Faculty for over 45 years, and I am no longer easily shocked,” is how Frederick H. Abernathy, the McKay professor of mechanical engineering, began his biting comments about the Shleifer case at Tuesday’s fiery Faculty meeting.

But, Abernathy continued, “I was deeply shocked and disappointed by the actions of this University” in the Shleifer affair, which was detailed in a lengthy magazine article that jolted many professors out of their reading period slumber last month.

Shleifer, the Jones professor of economics, was found liable by a federal court in 2004 for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government while leading a Harvard economic reform program in Russia as it transitioned to capitalism in the 1990s. Shleifer settled the case for $2 million.

The article, in the January issue of Institutional Investor magazine, suggests that Shleifer’s relationship with Summers shielded the professor from the consequences of the scandal while at Harvard.

One of Shleifer’s colleagues, Professor of Economics David I. Laibson, yesterday expressed his department’s support for one of its stars.

“By any measure, he is on a Nobel Prize winning trajectory,” Laibson wrote in an e-mail.

Dr. Gerald P. Schatten, a biologist at the University of Pittsburgh who was involved with Dr. Hwang Woo Suk and his discredited claim to have cloned human cells, was accused yesterday of "research misbehavior" by an investigative panel appointed by the university.

The panel found that Dr. Schatten did not learn of Dr. Hwang's fabrications until December, seven months after the article with his claim to have developed embryonic stem cells from 11 patients was published in Science.

The misbehavior, in the panel's view, lay in the fact that Dr. Schatten let himself be listed as senior co-author, even though he had performed none of the experiments, but "shirked" the responsibilities of verifying the data, "a serious failure that facilitated the publication of falsified experiments in Science.."


…Dr. Schatten entered into the relationship with Dr. Hwang "not only to help a colleague whom he admired," the panel said, but also to gain some "reputational enhancement." [Great phrase, reputational enhancement. New one on me. Faint echoes of penile enhancement.] He nominated Dr. Hwang for foreign membership in the National Academy of Sciences and a Nobel Prize. [Why not go all the way…]

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Students on [a Georgetown University School of Foreign Service] Facebook group [complained about a] professor’s … thick French accent.

“Students in the SFS are astonishingly unwilling to listen to foreign accents,” remarked [Economics professor Arik] Levinson. “And you can quote me on that.”

"Dear Psych 208 students: Apparently we goofed."

So began psychology professor Barry Jacobs' email to students Tuesday, one day after he inadvertently disclosed every student's midterm, precept and final grades to the entire class.

…[T]his was not the first time professor Jacobs had made a mistake during the course. "About a quarter of our final exam was completely discounted because the professor accidentally wrote the answers next to the questions," [a student] said. "It was completely unfair."

Julius Hobson, an adjunct associate professor of lobbying at George Washington University, said each chamber of Congress could pass bills that differ on a number of measures, such as the value of gifts allowed, what type of travel is allowed and whether to force further restrictions on so-called 527s political action groups, named for the section of tax code that governs them. 527s have been criticized because they do not face the same spending and contribution restrictions as other political organizations.

'Centuries before becoming shopworn shorthand for countless electronic fads, e meant something. It meant about 2.7, to be inexact.

The little letter actually stands for an infinitely long number, the outcome of an endless equation. It looms large in physics, engineering, statistics and finance.

It even inspired the target for search-engine giant Google's first stock sale: $2,718,281,828.

And so it figures that Florida Atlantic University mechanical engineering professor Isaac Elishakoff and his "Analytical Methods" students sang the number's praises Tuesday -- the seventh day of February, or 2.7. Or, to them, "e day."

The tongue-in-cheek results ranged from sonnet to Seuss ("a true mystery! / Greater than two, but not equal to three!"). There was mathematical rap ("e / that number-one playa") and classic-rock rewrite. Apparently, one is actually not the loneliest number.

E does, arguably, lead something of a wistful existence, overshadowed as it is by its celebrity cousin pi. But e is no less a factor in modern life. It pops up in calculations of compound interest and population growth, among other things, and claims its own fan base among math connoisseurs.

"E is the beef of engineering," says Elishakoff, an authority on the effects of vibration. "All other numbers, we can say, are dessert."

Except, perhaps, on Tuesday, when his students took in e-shaped cookies with their customary diet of varsity-level calculus.

"We learned all this hard math, and now we're just playing around with it," said junior Glen Cabezas.'

After that incident, [the student] said some students felt uncomfortable asking [the professor] any questions, but he felt it was his right as a student to question his professor. When he raised his hand during a lecture with a question about the material being discussed, he said [the professor] called on him, but then reprimanded him for interrupting her.

“I feel that other people were afraid to ask questions. When I raised my hand people would actually say to me, ‘Put your hand down, it’s not worth it...”

He took his concerns to [the professor], but … when they met she told him that he shouldn’t raise his hand during class. …

[The professor] read her lectures verbatim from hand-held notes, and … it was difficult to hear or understand what she was saying. …

Students… started an electronic forum for complaints about the professor and dedicated a Facebook group to their grievances. One student sent an e-mail to the entire class, urging them to take their complaints to [the department chair]…

His prose style, a graceful staccato that packed an aphoristic punch, was vivid and fresh. But -- and it hurts to say this now -- it was the book's searing honesty that set it apart. "Nasdijj" went to very dark places before bleeding on the page, though now it is clear he was shedding crocodile tears. "The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams" became a finalist for the PEN Award for best first nonfiction. I hailed it as a masterpiece.

…Some scholars at CU's Rothgerber Conference, [like] University of San Diego law professor Lawrence Alan Alexander, [argued] …that “crude propagandizing increasingly passes as teaching,” and that the “degree of political homogeneity in academia is mind boggling.”

He said that while academic disciplines like math and philosophy had remained free of a “herd mentality” of viewpoints, others, like history and ethnic studies, have become political battlegrounds. Several state legislatures have recently introduced bills seeking to ensure a diversity of viewpoints at colleges and universities.

…[Robert Nagel, CU's Rothgerber Professor of Constitutional Law] argued that a little outside intervention isn't necessarily bad, as when Gov. Bill Owens' condemned [Ward] Churchill and called for an investigation.

“The unwillingness of university faculties to take seriously the educational value of intellectual diversity on faculties, the well-documented, deeply entrenched commitment to left-wing orthodoxy in many departments, ...is a real threat to intellectual values, and outside intervention may reinvigorate those values,” Nagel said in a prepared speech.

“More generally, reflexive resistance to outside influence as a threat to academic freedom may itself be a threat to academic values,” Nagel added.

Fred Schauer, First Amendment professor at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, chimed in, and said the word of a bunch of professors should be taken with a “grain of salt.”

“Academics talking about academic freedom isn't unlike reporters talking about reporter's privilege, priests talking about the Trinity or Texans talking about oil,” he said.

Who the hell pops in The Matrix and leaves the class, with no discussion as to its implications before or after? Very strange, I feel self-taught and a bit cheated.

Are your parents paying 40k for you to watch Star Trek?

When she comes in unprepared, pops in a Star Trek video.

If you think a philosophy class should perhaps include some of the great thinkers in history, look elsewhere.

'Yale history professor Paul Kennedy is facing five charges, including driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, for his involvement in a car accident that injured a School of Music student last Thursday.

Kennedy ... is facing charges of operating under the influence of alcohol or drugs, illegal operation of a motor vehicle while under suspension, illegal operation of a motor vehicle without insurance, following too closely, and operating an unregistered motor vehicle.

[The student was] transported to the emergency room at Yale-New Haven Hospital following the accident, but suffered only minor cuts and bruises.

...Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said she stands behind the statement she issued Sunday, in which she denied that alcohol played a role in the accident.

"[Kennedy] was tested for alcohol and in the test that they gave him no alcohol was detected," she said.

Klasky also denied allegations that Kennedy was driving with a suspended license, saying that his license is current and valid.'

' At a charity golf outing last summer, the University of Maryland's campus pro was paired with two avid golfers: Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and first lady Kendel S. Ehrlich.

Their encounter at basketball coach Gary Williams's event would lead to a $1.5 million project tucked into the budget for the university.

Nonetheless, Ehrlich delayed spending for a year on one of the campus's top priorities: replacing a pair of leaky, 50-year-old science buildings where laboratories lack reliable power and temperature control for research.

Campus boosters -- already concerned that the governor's budget shortchanged College Park by giving more to other state universities -- questioned the decision to pay for a golf course repair that university officials hadn't thought to ask for.

"The golf course is a wonderful place, but the priority ought to go to what's important to the economic development of the state," said James C. Rosapepe, a member of the Board of Regents appointed by Ehrlich's Democratic predecessor. "Our recommendation was science, and the decision was made to go with golf." '

'The national literary organization that gave the former Chapel Hill writer known as Nasdijj a $1,000 minority author award says it is looking into revelations that his American Indian memoirs are fake.

The PEN American Center awarded Nasdijj, revealed last week to be a Caucasian named Timothy P. Barrus, one of five minority author awards in 2004 for "The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping." He was also a finalist for PEN's award to first-time memoirists for his debut book, "The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams," in 2001.

Stacy Leigh of PEN said Friday that the organization's board will review the Nasdijj entries. Earlier in the week, PEN issued a statement saying that if accurate, the disclosure makes both works ineligible.

"PEN deplores the misrepresentation apparently perpetrated in these two cases and regrets the recognition accorded these books by PEN's literary awards process," the statement said.'

For the second time in as many weeks, a Rancho Mirage City Council candidate is being questioned for exaggerating her academic credentials.

Claudette R. Pais, 64, one of four candidates seeking a four-year term on the City Council in April, took several extension courses at UCLA but never graduated from the university. But she did not make that clear when she applied for a position on the city Planning Commission in 2002. Her application reads: "UCLA; graduate, extension courses."

Pais' opponents are scrutinizing her academic credentials one week after Mayor Alan Seman, 81, admitted in an interview with The Desert Sun that he had lied about his academic credentials by claiming on his resume that he had degrees from New York University and Northwestern University.

Pais says she has not misrepresented her education.

When I asked her Wednesday whether she graduated from UCLA, she said, "Well, extension courses, Cindy. It was business management. Property management. I'm not sure of the title. I took that and public speaking. I graduated from the extension courses. I didn't get a diploma. You take these extension courses and you fulfill whatever it is - the three months or two months - and then when you finish you are considered you graduate from that course. That's what that means to me. I didn't get a diploma. I didn't wear the black cap or anything. "

On her application, Pais also lists: "University of Toronto: major languages, Italian, French and Italian."

She now says she took only a "class" in French.

"Did you attend the University of Toronto?"

"No."

"Did not?"

"Oh, well I took some languages. I took Italian."

"Anything else?"

"No. Just Italian."

"Do you know when?"

"I think in the late '50s. That's the only time I attended that. "

Pais omitted any references to her secondary educational experience in her official campaign statement that is submitted to the Riverside County Registrar of Voters, which is inserted in the voter guide for distribution to voters.

Pais and Seman are in contention for one of the four seats; Dana Hobart and Ron Meepos, both incumbents, are also vying for the spots.

Pais says her opponents are nitpicking by questioning her Planning Commission application.

"This is awful what they are trying to do but I've gotta have thick skin. If they want to nitpick, they better find something really good."

In an interview Monday, Pais told me she completed the 12th grade at Don Bosco Academy, "a convent run by Assumption nuns" in Timmins, Ontario, about 500 miles north of Toronto. By Wednesday, she said she had only finished 10th grade.

KNIGHT COMMISSION'S WORK,
RICHT'S RAISE:
WHAT GIVES?

As a member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, Michael F. Adams deals in ideas and ideals.

As president of the University of Georgia, Adams must contend with other facets of college athletics: avid boosters and the vagaries of the marketplace.

The Knight Commission and the real world of college sports are not mutually exclusive, but they do not necessarily co-exist peacefully either.

On Wednesday, Adams and the University of Georgia announced that Bulldogs football coach Mark Richt had been awarded a new contract.

Richt's deal is worth a reported $16 million over eight years, with incentives that could add $400,000 more to his reward



…In three or four years, coaches elsewhere undoubtedly will have contracts worth $3 million per year. Georgia will have to redo this deal to bring Richt's salary in line with those or face the prospect of losing him to Texas or Southern Cal or Michigan or whatever school has taken leave of its senses.



…If the Knight Commission wants to see athletics take on some semblance of sanity, the first step would be to recommend that institutions take a reasonable approach to the contracts granted to coaches.

College football and basketball programs are engaged in an ever-escalating economic battle over coaches, often at the expense of the athletes.

Colleges are adamant that offering financial rewards to players above a scholarship is beyond their means. Yet Georgia found an extra $500,000 per year for Richt and will give his assistants salary increases, as well. Virginia Tech and Virginia had no problem finding more money for Frank Beamer, Al Groh and their assistants.

Richt's contract also is eight times as long as the contract given to any college athlete. Athletic scholarships are renewable on an annual basis.

Most schools honor scholarships for five seasons. But that is not required.

Ideally, the Knight Commission would address that issue. But as Adams and every Knight Commission member knows, the difference between the ideal college athletic world and the actual college athletic world can be vast.

Advocates of tighter college admission and academic standards should "be careful what you wish for," because sports teams at Ohio State University and the University of Cincinnati are filled with dummies, said State Rep. Tom Brinkman.

Both schools would have to disband teams if Ohio adopted tighter college admission standards, he told a campus forum Monday at Miami University.

The universities don't agree. A spokesman for the University of Cincinnati described Brinkman's comments as "off base" remarks that perpetuate the "dumb jock" myth.

…Brinkman said both schools would have to disband their teams if the state moved to emphasize academics.

"Well, there goes the Ohio State football team," he said. "And the U.C. basketball team."

[Coach Mark] Richt’s [2.4 million dollar] contract is now worth about 21 teachers a year, without incentives.

…[W]ith all the talk of academic rigor and the possibility of a tuition raise, what message does this send about academic priority on campus?

As a sports fan, I’m used to coaches getting paid millions. As a University student, I can’t swallow the new request for academic rigor with the disparity in salaries. This University must recruit faculty like the Athletic Association recruits coaches.

I know the University and the Athletic Association are two different entities which operate with two different budgets. However, it doesn’t seem to me, with a $16 million salary being distributed to a football coach over the next eight years, that we’re drumming up a lot of donations for academic rigor.

COLONIALS FAIL TO ENTHUSE CAMPUS
Matthew Cella

George Washington University students are celebrating the return of their men's basketball team to the Top 10 rankings after a 50-year hiatus -- but you would never know it if you looked on campus.

Hardly a T-shirt advertising the Colonials' logo was sported, a banner draped or a bumper sticker stuck anywhere on campus in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood in Northwest yesterday.

Nothing, despite the Colonials' 16-1 record and an upcoming nationally televised game against Xavier University tomorrow night. Yet, the team's home game against Richmond Sunday is sold out.

"People come here for political science or international relations. They are more concerned about the State of the Union than they are about a basketball game," says Philipp Havenstein, a 20-year-old junior from Detroit who is majoring in political science.

Nevertheless, he says he is an avid fan of the Colonials.


…Parker Bollinger, a 22-year-old senior who grew up in Alexandria, also describes himself as a fan.

He says it is "amazing" that the Colonials has had so much success at a school known more for its academics than for its athletics. But, he says the drawback is that it doesn't get as much support as teams at other schools.

"When you go to the games, it is a good time in the stands, but it's hard to get any of my friends to go," he says.

David Bonett, a 19-year-old freshman from Frederick, Md., brushes aside the notion that the student body is indifferent to the team.

"On game days, you see every other person in Colonial Army T-shirts," he said, referring to a booster club for fans.

In the campus bookstore, a collection of sweatshirts, T-shirts and jerseys advertising the basketball program is prominently displayed to take advantage of the Colonials' successful season.

"There's been more interest in the basketball merchandise," said Patricia Lee, director of the campus bookstore. "This year we even added more to it."

For yesterday at least, there was more of it to be seen on the shelves than on the students.

Georgia officials absolutely did the right thing in giving football coach Mark Richt a contract extension and pay bump that will bring him a minimum of $2 million per season. College football is about capitalism after all, no matter what the NCAA and the well-intentioned folks with the Knight Foundation Commission say.

When major Division I athletic departments operate on $50 million budgets, when bowl games provide guarantees of up to $14 million, when TV networks keep upping the ante for broadcast rights, when the Louisiana-Monroes of the world can receive $400,000 for taking a beating, it's senseless to talk about bringing them back to a simpler, more fiscally responsible era.

That horse bolted out of the barn like Seabiscuit years ago. There's no way to grab it by the reins and bring it back.

So university presidents who enjoy the fruits of successful football programs have but one choice when it comes to the men who coach them.

Pay now in the form of a $2 million contract.

Pay later in the form of alumni discontent if the hotshot coach bolts for a better paying job.



Georgia president Michael Adams is well-aware of these dynamics, and not just because of all the angry mail he received over the dismissal of popular athletic director Vince Dooley. He's a member of the Knight Foundation Commission, a watchdog group of sorts that annually harrumphs about high coaching salaries and low graduation rates. At his core, however, he's a realist.

If he didn't show Richt the money and soon, then it was very possible the beloved coach would show up as a head coach in either Tallahassee or Coral Gables before too long.

"I think (Richt's raise) is prudent despite the numbers," Adams said Wednesday. "We want to compete at the highest level."

Sports agents always talk about getting fair market value for their clients. It's a phrase that conjures up images of the overly moussed Drew Rosenhaus doing his oily used-car salesman act with Terrell Owens.

But if Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis can command $3-4 million in his first college season, then Richt belongs in this new, higher tax bracket.


…If Tennessee folks really think Phil Fulmer should get $2.05 million per season, then Richt also ought to have a decimal point and a little extra because he's 4-1 against the Vols. Heck, first-year Florida coach Urban Meyer agreed to a $2 million before he beat Georgia last October. Of course, beating Georgia became boilerplate language as far back as Steve Spurrier's last contract revision.

Although it's unsettling to see a $2 million coach (Meyer) whose crowning achievement to date was a win in the Outback Bowl, it was interesting to look at the track records of some of the other multi-millionaires pictured on the front of Thursday's sports section. USC's Pete Carroll won an undisputed national championship and shared another with LSU. Texas' Mack Brown took it home this year, while his longtime nemesis, Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, had been there and won that. Fulmer captured the national title in 1998...