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(Tenured Radical)

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

SOS: Scathing Online Schoolmarm:
Dave Frohnmayer Thinks You're Stupid

I've wrestled with my conscience over subjecting this morning's prose from the University of Oregon's president - an opinion piece in response to a faculty piece in the same paper which pointed out that the president's sports-obsession is destroying the school - to SOS scrutiny.

The president's love of sports has taken a toll not merely on his prose style (assuming he, rather than a staff member, wrote the piece) but on his ability to reason. What purpose is served in close analysis of the efforts of such a person to express himself? Isn't it a species of cruelty to play with this person's words, as a cat plays with a mouse?

Yes. Let's go to it.



President Frohnmayer takes a peaceful, non-conflictual approach to the subject:

In my 12 years as president of the University of Oregon, I have watched debates that pit the various elements of higher education against one another.

These debates assume that the success of one comes at the expense of the other - research or teaching, undergraduate education or graduate, in-state students or out of state.

These are false dichotomies.

Equally spurious is the debate that pits athletics against academics. To argue that one must choose academic excellence or athletic excellence is an oversimplification.


These are actually very true dichtomies, as the president knows, or ought to know, and there's no dichotomy more spectacular than that between sport and educational seriousness. I wonder whether Frohnmayer has asked himself why the Congress is bearing down on the NCAA's tax exemptions for university sports activities. Certainly the government understands that the dichotomy not only exists but has become so sharp that little to no discernable educational activity for many of their students exists at more and more big sports schools. Why should taxpayers support highly profitable sports programs that don't educate their athletes?

The president next falls into the saying-it-makes-it-so trap. Just as Donna Shalala thinks that saying her university is a serious academic institution makes it one, so President Frohnmayer thinks that repeating boilerplate from UO public relations materials makes their content true.

Another way of saying this is that President Frohnmayer thinks you're dumb. He figures he doesn't have to make a case for his claims, the way the faculty, in their piece, did (scroll down).

Academic quality is the cornerstone of our identity as a public research university. It is defined in our mission statement, "a community of scholars committed to the highest standards of academic inquiry, learning and service."

Duck athletics is an integral part of this university, and we should demand and expect the same degree of excellence on the athletic field as we do in the classroom.

The relationship between sports and academics is kept in proper perspective by basing every decision related to athletics on the fundamental principle that athletes are students first.

We take great pride in such measures of our academic success as the graduation rates of our student- athletes.



Cornerstone, mission statement, community of scholars, integral part, excellence, athletes are students first, take great pride... This is hollow language.

The president will note, irrelevantly, that the sports program pays for itself...

I mean, not only is it irrelevant to whether it's destroying the university that the sports program pays for itself; stressing this meaningless fact enables the president to avoid taking up the big story everyone's talking about in regard to college sports: The possibility that - precisely because of indifference to educational values and hot aching passion for games among administrations like Frohnmayer's, the government might withdraw education-based tax exemptions.

Final paragraph:

Our mission is to achieve excellence in all areas of the university - the classroom, the laboratory and the athletic field. From Bill Bowerman to our prize-winning faculty to our 19 Rhodes Scholars, the UO legacy for academic and athletic distinction can and will continue side by side.


Side by side we'll stride into the dawn of academic and athletic excellence! Take my hand and go with me there!

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