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"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
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(Rate Your Students)
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and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
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(Tenured Radical)

Monday, October 29, 2007

UD Quibbles a Bit...


...with an opinion piece by GW's just-retired president.



'...When players on the Duke lacrosse team were faced with charges of rape, many people demanded to know how it was possible that [Duke's president] did not understand that lacrosse players were seen as notoriously "thuggish" and "entitled." Why had he done nothing?... [Trachtenberg defends Duke's president against charges that he didn't act to bring his players under control before the lacrosse mess. Since the players were found innocent, Trachtenberg reasons, they must not have been an established behavioral problem about which the president could have known. Yet several of the players were exactly that, and Brodhead knew it, just as many other university presidents know -- how can they not? -- that some of their athletic teams have more than a few thuggish people on them.] [There's no way the] head of a university with 30,000 students, 5,000 faculty and staff members, and another few thousand adjuncts and visitors [can] control the behavior of all those people.... [Again, when there's notorious misbehavior on the part of certain campus groups -- some groups of athletes tend in this direction -- there's in fact every reason for a president to take note.]

... We [presidents may be] instructed [by our students] that charging tuition is a sign of vice... [GW students have never argued that charging tuition is vicious; they have argued, and their argument has now been taken up by Trachtenberg's replacement as president, that charging excessive tuition is wrong.]'