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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

A student writes in the Washington University newspaper:



[D]espite the vast interest in, passion for, and intelligence about sports that so many of us possess, "Sports, Media, and Society" is one of the sole sports-related courses offered at Wash. U.

…I guess what I'm proposing is that sports and sports-related subject matter be treated with more respect and more sincerity. Too often, students who choose to write about or research certain concepts or issues associated with sports are not taken seriously. Too often, professors forget that one of the most strenuous, time-consuming assignments of the semester is due the Monday after Super Bowl Sunday.

Do they ever consider how they would feel with a pile of papers to grade that weekend? And besides, the Super Bowl is in and of itself an inter-disciplinary, educational experience. …

[I] don't believe that I, or any other Wash U student, would invest so much time, effort and interest into something that isn't educational or inspiring.





What UD finds intriguing about this woman’s argument is her belief that because she spends so much time thinking about it and doing it, sport should be a featured academic topic. When university faculty ponder the content of their curriculum, they do not ask “What do most of our students spend most of their time doing?” If they did, their courses would be Sex, Movies, Alcohol, Instant Messaging, and what The Onion calls “Television Viewing Skills.”

As to sports being “educational,” well… Everything’s educational, you know. I spent part of today learning how to sing South Park’s Christmas Poo Song with my daughter. I used my memorization skills, my singing skills (we worked out a harmony, so I used my harmonization as well as vocalization skills), my parenting skills (our fun togetherness bonded us as pals, not just Mother and Daughter), my computer skills (I found the lyrics, printed them out) and lots of other skills I don’t have time to list…