Archive for May, 2010

Father Knows Best: When You’re Losing the Audience, Unleash the Kids and Pups

Published May 30, 2010 Politics 4 Comments
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Even though the BP oil spill has cast a dark cloud of terrible catastrophe over the Gulf of Mexico, it’s not without its silver lining. I’ve taken enormous delight giggling as I read the faux critiques of President Obama’s insipid reaction to the spill.

Dana Millbank, Maureen Dowd, Thomas Friedman, David Broder are all on the same page: the president’s trademark intellectual, reasoned approach to this crisis cannot stand. Americans, especially those cracker-types who live way down yonder, are just too ignorant to appreciate a brainy law professor analyzing, synthesizing, and analogizing his way to solving a grave national crisis. The pundits agree that the president needs to dumb down, so he can meet the people at something approaching their lowly level.

But the critiques soon turn to hosannas when all four of them quote exactly the same passage from the president’s press conference. As Mr. Friedman said, better late than never the president transforms himself into everyman:

It took almost the entire press conference at the White House on Thursday for President Obama to find his voice in responding to the oil disaster in the gulf — and it is probably no accident that it seemed like the only unrehearsed moment. The president was trying to convey why he takes this problem so seriously, when he noted:
“When I woke this morning and I’m shaving and Malia knocks on my bathroom door and she peeks in her head and she says, ‘Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?’

Sometimes Malia doesn't bother to knock.

Leaving aside my perception that the president’s comment sounded just like everything else he says—words robotically delivered by someone whose mind is elsewhere—it’s indeed a sad reality if our president takes things “so seriously” only when one of his kids asks him a question. Almost as sad as the rhetorical Kama Sutra-positions Mr. Friedman et al assume when claiming that mentioning Malia makes the president look “empathetic.” In order to show empathy, you must also have respect for the individuals with whom you are forging an emotional bond.

Earlier in the press conference, though, President Obama showed just how paltry is his respect for the fishermen, shrimpers and oil workers whose livelihoods have been threatened when he said:

But, look, we’ve gone through a difficult year and a half. This is just one more bit of difficulty. And this is going to be hard not just right now, it’s going to be hard for months to come. … The Gulf is going to be affected in a bad way. And so my job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands this is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about.

Translation: “You-all havin’ a hard time? Well, times are tough all over. I’ll sleep on it.” Respectful. Empathetic.

Given the successful exploitation of his younger daughter in last week’s press conference, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if on his next visit to the Gulf of Mexico the president brings along Bo, who is after all a Portuguese water dog. Imagine the brave companion animal paddling through murky tides valiantly rescuing all manner of despoiled water fowl as his master stands barefoot in the sand looking earnestly out to sea.

Bo's stunt double patiently awaits his moment in the surf.

WC Fields is credited with some great lines about children and animals: Never work with them. Any man who hates kids and dogs can’t be all bad. Do you suppose if Fields were around today he’d also say “Never trust a president who uses his daughter as a prop to give you an even break.”

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Now We Know What Darrel Did! EXPANDED AND ENHANCED EDITION!

Published May 26, 2010 College Presidents , Higher Education 5 Comments
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Dear Readers: For those of you late to this saga, please check out College “Confidential,” Costa Rican Edition: What Did Darrel Do? for background.

The Wyoming Tribune-Eagle has published the “CARE Team Report,” in its entirety. Late yesterday, a judge lifted the restraining order prohibiting the newspaper from doing its job.

As long as we have the First Amendment, we'll have a reason to be optimistic.

As one might expect, the details of the report do not a tale of illicit sub-tropical romance tell. All in all what happened in Costa Rica, or rather who it happened to, should have stayed in Cheyenne. For those of you who do not care to plod through sixteen pages of highly repetitive verbiage, I’ll summarize: a student with severe psychological problems was a member of the group who traveled to Costa Rica to do field work. The student had medications with her, but apparently took them irregularly. The burden of caring for this student, which included dispensing her medication, taking precautions to keep her from cutting herself or otherwise doing herself harm, comforting her during periods of agitation, and monitoring her behavior 24/7 fell to students and faculty on the trip. The students and faculty member who describe what they had to do to keep the disturbed student glued together for the duration of the trip document extraordinary compassion on the part of individuals neither trained nor compensated to take on such tasks.

President Hammon, in his statement, denies any prior knowledge of the student’s condition, other than that she was taking medication. Fair enough. But after learning that the student was unable or unwilling to take the proper dosage of her medication, after knowing that the student was actively looking for ways to cut herself, after knowing that the student had bashed her head repeatedly against a sink to induce bleeding, after knowing that the student repeatedly stated she heard voices, what does Darrel do? Let him tell you in his own words: “I visited with [her] and discussed her situation. In essence I gave her six items she had to do in order to stay on the trip….after visiting with her I felt that she would complete and adhere to what she and I had talked about.” (See page twelve of the CARE report for the rest of the president’s remarks.)

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Almost as stupid as attempting to block publication of the CARE document. But not as stupid as what Darrel did next. The student wanted to purchase a machete to bring home to her father as a souvenir of la vida loca; unbelievably, President Humminna-humminna-humminna agrees that a big, sharp, lethal blade would make a swell gift for dad, and lets the student make the purchase. The same student who was not allowed to use a butter knife at dinner? The same student who had the desperate urge to cut herself so that the consequent bleeding would make the voices in her head go away? The same student who more than once on the trip stated her desire to kill herself? Yup. That student. Says the president, he authorized the purchase only after “some negotiation, and compromise and against better judgment.”

At this point the sorry tale ends with President Vanilla Clusters telling the student she must return the machete, the student’s running into traffic then taking refuge behind a semi, and a daring rescue effected by “Jose, the tour guide.”

All (sin Jose) make the long trip home to Wyoming in one piece. There the story picks up when alarmed students notify the college that maybe somebody better look into the poor girl’s choice of major: nursing.

This saga is a classic for a case study in higher education administration, and it raises a number of challenging and interesting issues: Did the student fail to make appropriate disclosures? Did the college–as certainly seems the case–fail to set appropriate pre-conditions for allowing students to participate in off-campus programs? What protections, if any, was the student entitled to under the Americans with Disabilities Act? Quite apart from the student-related issues, there also remains the question of the very poor decision to keep the CARE report confidential. What would have been a one-day story on the local level escalated to a sensational article in the national press, and an opportunity for the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle to engage in a crusade on behalf of the First Amendment.

I’ve gotten out of the habit of dispensing advice to college presidents–they rarely listen, anyway–but have two things to say to President Hammon: 1) If you’d come clean in the first place, a sanitized “executive summary” of the report would have probably satisfied even the most puriently curious onlooker. 2) “Negotiation” and “compromise” are concepts the deeply disturbed have difficulty understanding, no matter how hard they may try or dearly they may want to.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave...

Alas and alack. It's no longer possible to enjoy President Hammon's deep thoughts and poetry. He's locked up his blog so inquiring minds can no longer get to know the inner Darrel and his passion for Honey Bunches of Oats, with Vanilla Clusters.

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Liar, Thief, College President: The Tragic Story of Ben Johnson

Published May 25, 2010 College Presidents , Higher Education 10 Comments
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Sometimes a college president’s road to malfeasance ends not with a punch line to a bitter joke, but in genuine tragedy. Such is the case of Ben Johnson, the former president of Peru (Nebraska) State College, who offed himself on April 12.

The walls of his handcrafted house of cards were falling down all around him. In 2009, a year after his retirement, he paid a $1200 fine to the state for failing to disclose a deferred compensation deal, to the tune of nearly one-half million dollars, he’d negotiated with Peru State’s foundation. A deal supposedly unreported to the Nebraska State College Board of Trustees.

But the paltry fine was nothing compared to the revelations that came to light in the weeks leading up to his suicide. State auditors had uncovered that Johnson used about $43,400 from a university-related account to pay personal bills. The account was funded by profits from the college’s book store funneled into a “presidential discretionary” account through the same foundation. Apparently, Johnson had access to the account even after his presidency ended. According to the Journal-Star.com, the account remained open until Johnson himself closed it in 2010—two years after his retirement.

Better late than never, though, Nebraskan state officials finally did get around to looking into Johnson’s “discretionary” spending, and found, in addition to the clothes, meals, entertainment and travel Johnson helped himself to, Johnson had other things, of a more indiscrete variety, to keep secret. The Journal-Star.com continues the story:

During the investigation, [State Auditor] Foley’s staff also discovered problems with the resume Johnson used when applying for the Peru State presidency:
* Johnson was found guilty of a felony — making an untrue statement and/or omission to state material facts to investors — in 1989 and spent almost nine months in a California county jail in the early 1990s, according to the audit.
According to Foley, documents show Johnson was found guilty of selling limited partnerships improperly in excess of $100,000.
* Johnson’s Jan. 28, 1999, cover letter seeking the Peru State job was on Thomas College letterhead. Johnson signed the letter as a vice president at the school, but he had been terminated from Thomas College in Thomasville, Ga., two months earlier.
Johnson later filed a civil suit against Thomas College for breach of contract. The school responded that Johnson had misrepresented his qualifications in applying for the job.
A court dismissed that suit in October 1999, four months after Johnson was hired at Peru.

Former Peru State College President Ben Johnson was a serial conman, thief, and liar. As jaundiced a view as I might hold of colleges presidents, most of them, even I will acknowledge, cannot boast of possessing such a resume. It’s probably true that more than a few have a handful of questionable expenses charged to their discretionary accounts, but it is also true that many expenses that look “questionable”—meals, travel, mostly—really are expected and job-related costs an honest college president must incur. No, Ben Johnson is a poster boy for malfeasance in higher education to be sure, but not only presidential malfeasance. This time the rot really and truly started at the top, with the Nebraska State College Board of Trustees who apparently did no diligence, let alone due diligence, in hiring Johnson back in 1999. The rot also permeated the foundation’s board, which did not properly oversee foundation funds, if indeed it exercised any oversight at all.

I am flabbergasted no reference checks undertaken at the time of Johnson’s hiring revealed his termination from Thomas College and the reasons for it. I am stunned that no background checks revealed his conviction as a felon and his time in stir.

With nary a mention of his crimes or his sad demise, the Peru State College web site has nothing but kind words, and many of them, for the late Ben Johnson. Apparently his tenure there helped turn around a failing campus. Too bad there was nobody around to do the same for the people who held the campus and its funds in their trust.

Suggestion for the Nebraska State College Board of Trustees: Use this the next time you check the references of a candidate for a college presidency.

Dear Readers: I would like to explore Johnson’s life and work more; if you knew or worked with him at Peru State, Thomas College or elsewhere, please write to me at callmemiss1@gmail.com. Many thanks.

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With Friends Like These: Edley and Dowd Throw Kagan Under the Bus

Published May 21, 2010 ...and their Stereotypes , Faculty , Higher Education , Politics , Single Women 4 Comments
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What a brutal week Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has had. In a Washington Post op-ed Berkeley Dean Christopher Edley uses her to front an incoherent apologia on behalf of academic “elites.” Dean Edley’s essay, a gloating reminder of just how much power certain admissions officers wield, does nothing to enhance Miss Kagan’s chances for confirmation.

Dean Edley: Which one should I choose to keep out the smelly populists?

Then New York Times spinster Maureen Dowd weighs in with a column superficially taking critics to task for their curiosity about Miss Kagan’s marital status. Miss Dowd’s column is in reality a thinly veiled screed of self-loathing unmarried women everywhere would do well to avoid.

With friends like these, Miss Kagan must be thinking, who needs Republicans?

“With friends like these” is something single women everywhere wonder about all the time.

The thesis of Miss Dowd’s column is that women of a certain age undergo a transition from “single” (juicy and available) to “unmarried,” (still available, but juiceless) and Elena Kagan, at age 50, has made such a transition. If this sounds suspiciously like the “change of life” to you, then you are on to Miss Dowd’s hideously ageist indictment of her own gender, which renders an entire sex useless after its menses cease. Miss Dowd is not simply characterizing some unknown troglodyte’s perception of single women, she is describing her own.

“For some reason, Kagan’s depressing narrative,” Miss Dowd opines, “is even more depressing because it’s cast in the past tense, as if, at 50, Kagan has resigned herself to a cloistered, asexual existence ruling in cases that touch on the private lives of all Americans.” Who, besides Maureen Dowd, has decided that the accomplished Elena Kagan’s narrative is “depressing”?

Lest any reader doubt that Miss Dowd is completely in agreement with the bigoted view of single women she purports to decry, take another look at her final paragraph:

Why is there this underlying assumption that Kagan has missed the boat? Why couldn’t she be eager to come to Washington to check out the Obama-era geek-chic bachelors, maybe get set up on a date by Michelle Obama, maybe host some single ladies fiestas with Sonia Sotomayor, maybe even sign up for JDate with a new and improved job status?

In other words, Miss Dowd’s cure for the “unmarried” woman: find a man, anyone will do. We’ve come long way, haven’t we baby?

Look, Maureen, it's a MAN!


Even the most enlightened among us think that spinsterhood is condition that requires a cure. I ran across this gem in today’s Inside Higher Education. Here are the opening lines from the “Mama PhD” blog, a regular feature of IHE:

Once, years ago, I found myself at a party talking about what it would mean to divide by zero. (No wonder I was terminally single at the time!)

Fantastically, the post goes on to congratulate several about-to-be alumnae, all seniors at Ursuline College, a Catholic institution for women. The author of the blog, Rosemarie Emanuele, is a faculty member at Ursuline, and she delivers the predictable pre-Commencement palaver about the wonderful new lives these women are about to discover. Ursuline is an interesting place. Its educational philosophy, in part, commends the college to help “students achieve their educational and career goals by emphasizing the whole person.” Too bad Professor Emanuele believes the only “whole” people are the married ones, in that the unattached have a “terminal”—her word, not mine—condition and presumably won’t be around long enough to achieve their goals.

I hope I’m around long enough to see the end of this socially acceptable bigotry, the glorious day when women are judged not by what’s on the third finger of their left hand, but by…well…just about anything else would be an improvement.

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College “Confidential,” Costa Rica Edition: What Did Darrel Do?

Published May 18, 2010 College Presidents , Higher Education , Life and Culture 3 Comments
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Dear Readers: Please continue and enjoy this post; then check out Now We Know What Darrel Did! EXPANDED AND ENHANCED EDITION! for the thrilling denouncement and trenchant commentary.

The ides of May have come and gone, so for the next several weekends we’ll be inundated with feel-good stories about college grads so newly commenced that the sheen from their alma maters’ placentae is still visible. I wish those women and men prosperous and happy lives. Amidst all the sweetness and light that envelopes graduation day—a truly joyous moment in the academic calendar—however, it’s business as usual for those the new baccalaureates leave behind.

Consider this juicy item, for instance.

Way out west in Wyoming, Laramie County Community College (LCCC) president, the poetry-writin’, hook-baitin’, cracker barrel philosopher Darrel Hammon, is in hot water. To answer your first question: no. Darrell Hammond is the Saturday Night Live guy. Darrel “One ‘L,’ No ‘D’” Hammon is the college president.

The First Darrell: I'm not a college president, but I played a real president on TV.

To answer your second question, “what’d the other Darrel do?”: I don’t know. It’s all very mysterious. The Wyoming Tribune-Eagle reports—and Inside Higher Ed passes on—that LCCC has denied a Freedom of Information request for a report detailing irregularities that took place on a 2008 student trip to Costa Rica, chaperoned by President Hammon. The Tribune-Eagle primly notes that, “Testimony given at a recent employee hearing noted that some of the report was critical of the president.” The comments that follow the story are not so discrete. Says “I Went to Costa Rica”: “I saw first-hand [how] badly Hammon messed-up….”

LCCC, in refusing to comply with the FOI request, cites FERPA (Federal Education Right to Privacy Act, which gives students certain guarantees to keep some information about them confidential) as its reason for withholding the report. This is stonewalling, pure and simple. Even if I didn’t know that FERPA protects students, not college presidents, I would recognize the stonewalling because, I blush to admit, it was a big part of my former life as a college administrator, and I was very, very good at it.

The stonewalling here is not good. Hiding behind FERPA encourages lurid suspicions. “The college can’t release the document,” says the Tribune-Eagle, “because it identifies a student, [college spokeswoman] Hoglund wrote in a letter to Bruce Moats, attorney for the newspaper.” So now, thanks to Loose Lips Hoglund we know that whatever President Hammon did in Costa Rica involved a student. Let’s let our imaginations run wild, shall we?

A rare sighting of the Costa Rican toucan: it uses the scrubber in its beak to whitewash reports.

Methinks President Hammon and his Central American fiasco is a subject I’ll be revisiting once the report is released or leaked, as inevitably it will be. So for now I will leave you with samples of his poetry and his thoughts about the natural world that I gleaned from his blog. Those of you with strong stomachs may also wish to visit his Facebook page.

Here’s an excerpt from “Life Can Be Such a Jab,” his credo in free verse:

I tread on,
like a good trooper,
finally realizing that I control
change, I control my life,
and sometimes it doesn’t go
the way I thought it would,
but it goes
and I go with it.

You have to admire the mind and the ego at work here: I am in charge the poet says, except when I am not, but in that case I will say I am.

Here’s President Hammon musing about the cycle of life:

The entire lawn, in fact, looks like one giant field, now covered in snow. Gone is any semblance that spring might be oozing its way through winter. Even the north window is plastered halfway up with that thick, sticky snow.

But I remember back to this morning as I sat complacently at the breakfast table, eating a blueberry bagel, smothered with strawberry cream cheese, and spooning Post’s Honey Bunches of Oats with vanilla bunches, methodically into my mouth, while watching Mr. Robin, sitting atop the fence.

Ah, the snows may blanket the earth many times before true spring finally throws off the shackles of winter. But I know that spring is here for the robins have returned, and the green things are just biding their time while singing soft lullabies beneath the snow.

Provides 4 grams of fiber for a beleaguered college president's RDA.

I especially like the part where the president placidly masticates Honey Bunches of Oats, and I appreciate his keen eye for the evocative, aromatic detail of the vanilla clusters.

Something is giving off an aroma at LCCC; here’s hoping the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle keeps sniffing to find out what it is.

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Will Justice be Served? The Parallel Cases of the Professors Okosun and Kagan

Published May 13, 2010 Faculty , Higher Education , Politics 14 Comments
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Earlier this week The Chronicle of Higher Education broke startling news:

May 11, 2010, 10:31 AM ET
Tenured Professor at Northeastern Illinois U. Has Bogus Ph.D.
A professor with a Ph.D. from an unaccredited, now-defunct institution was given tenure last year by Northeastern Illinois University. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Theophilus (T.Y.) Okosun, a professor of justice studies, received his Ph.D. from the California-based Pacific Western University, which was deemed a diploma mill in a 2004 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office. Mr. Okosun, a native of Nigeria, said he wasn’t aware that Pacific Western was unaccredited when he attended. Northeastern Illinois declined to reveal exactly when it learned that the professor’s Ph.D. was not legitimate, but officials said that Mr. Okosun had been given tenure for his teaching ability.

For an extra $500 I can get a supersize PhD?! Sign me up!

The full story of Professor Okosun’s deception was first reported in the Chicago Sun-Times.

What interests me about this story is, well, everything.

First, it shows the extreme lengths the academy will traverse to “diversify” its faculty. As a job applicant, Mr. Okosun no doubt racked up double diversity points, for being (1) a person of color and for being (2) “international.” Double points for this criterion, critical as it is to an academic appointment, quell any reservations a search committee might have about a terminal degree from a dodgy institution. It’s not even surprising that Mr. Okosun’s transcript, thesis, and recommendations were given no more than a cursory, if even that, review. If the hiring department, in this case “justice studies,” was desperate enough to diversify its ranks, why then the answer to its troubles was as plain as the nose on Mr. Okosun’s face.

Consider, too, the subject area of Professor Okosun’s undocumented expertise, the aforementioned “justice studies.” Here’s how the University of Northeastern Illinois’ web site describes the department. Justice studies:

offers a variety of challenging and well-taught courses on various aspects of justice. This major prepares you for services in various departments of justice in The United States as well as within international justice systems.

I did not—I could not—make this up. The definition wins the hat trick for using the term “justice” no less than three times in describing the word, “justice,” it seeks to define. Oh, the injustice to grammarians everywhere!

Those of you really, really turned on by the prospect of plunging into the exciting world of “justice studies,” where you can learn about, you know, justice, may want to delve further into NEIU’s web site for in-depth information about the department:

In Justice Studies we seek to discover the social and historical roots of justice and injustice and examine how popular understandings of these shape public policies, including those of the criminal justice system. We study systematic explanations for the failure (or triumph) or [sic] justice in society and explore the potential for transformative justice. Through critical inquiry, social science investigation, and experiencial [sic] learning, Justice Studies students develop an understanding of social and economic justice issues and critical criminology, which studies the structural roots of crime and takes up the legal and social concerns of diverse, urban, low-income, and disenfranchised communities whose members are often clients of the criminal justice system.

Don’t you love it? “Criminal justice clients”; in the English-speaking world, these would be miscreants, offenders, lawbreakers, felons…criminals. But I suppose in our consumer-driven society, your neighborhood B&E guy is not just a thief, he’s a client.

After 6 p.m. clients must use the night entrance.


Given the sophisticated level of discourse and reasoning evidenced by the justice studies department’s self-definition, I am dead certain Professor Okosun fits right in. After all, he wasn’t granted tenure (job for life) on the basis of his scholarly track record; his sinecure was awarded for his “exceptional” teaching. So says NEIU’s chief academic administrator to the Sun-Times:

Northeastern Illinois Provost Larry Frank wouldn’t say at what point in the tenure process the school learned the degree wasn’t valid. But the school allowed Okosun to pursue the lifetime employment contract — without a Ph.D. — based on his teaching skills. Okosun eventually demonstrated to faculty and administrators that his teaching is so “exceptional” that he is worthy of tenure, Frank said.

“You already have to present yourself as a superior teacher or scholar to be tenured,” said Frank, who as provost is the school’s chief academic officer. “So ‘exceptionality’means better than superior.”

If Provost Frank’s high standards aren’t enough to convince you that Professor Okuson is qualified for his life tenancy in the groves of Academe, then you will probably find Elena Kagan a tough sell for Supreme Court Justice.

Dean Kagan has had a remarkable academic career. According to SCOTUSblog,

[Dean] Kagan has published six scholarly law review articles, all of which predate her receiving tenure at Harvard in 2001. Her earlier articles focus on First Amendment doctrine, while the last two discuss administrative law.

She has also published numerous book reviews, encyclopedia entries, and tributes to figures in the law.

Except she hasn't written a book.

The collected works of Elena Kagan.

“Numerous book reviews, encyclopedia entries, and tributes to figures in the law” do not a tenure file build. In most instances, writing for an encyclopedia and opining in memory of a deceased colleague are not considered assets in one’s quest for tenure. Most (but not all) book reviews aren’t, either. Six articles, moreover, in a career that spans nearly a quarter century is not much of an output. Oh, I am sure they are fine articles. Superior articles. Maybe even “exceptional” articles. But a basis for tenure? Pretty flimsy. A substitute for judicial experience when evaluating Dean Kagan for the Supreme Court? Maybe not, but as the Boston Globe assures us, “former co-workers, however, counter that her job performances provide ample evidence of a considerable intellect.”

Professor Okosun and Dean Kagan are poster children for tenure’s dirty little secret. The standards for achieving a lifetime academic appointment demand excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. Except when they don’t.

Tough call, isn't it?

Is the tenure system corrupt? You decide.

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More “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Hypocrisy: Why Elena Kagan Should Tell All…even if she has nothing to tell and it’s none of our business anyway…

Published May 11, 2010 ...and Politics , ...and their Social Life , ...and their Stereotypes , ...in the Work Place , Higher Education , Politics , Single Women 5 Comments
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I wish Supreme Court Justice-nominee Elena Kagan all the best, just as I do any woman being considered for a tough, important job. I even feel a passing kind of kinship with her, perhaps because she is from New England and the academy and she’s unmarried. Full disclosure: I’m pudgy, too.

But you know what? I also know if I met her, I wouldn’t like her. Because she represents the very worst of academic-lefty do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do kind of double standard. It’s OK for Miss Kagan to keep the details of her private life out of the limelight. Fine. Great. Personally I think she probably doesn’t have time to have much of a private life. But it’s not OK, then, for her to have banned ROTC recruiting from Harvard Law School, when she was dean, because of the persistence of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” President Clinton’s brilliant, Solomonesque solution to keeping homosexuals in the armed services.

Miss Kagan can keep her mouth shut to land the job of her dreams, but she does not accord G.I. Joe or Swabby Sue the same privilege. Score one for the hypocrites.

Miss Kagan has made this her motto. How times change!

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is one of the precious few policies of President Clinton that I respect. Indeed, my respect for the policy, and the president’s wisdom in promulgating it, has only deepened. Here’s why: “don’t ask, don’t tell” actually preserves the recruits’privacy, in exactly the same way that Miss Kagan has so carefully preserved hers.

In practical terms, what I believe this policy acknowledges–and this is why it is so brilliant–is how we behave in groups and as individuals. Imagine a barracks’full of green recruits. Some from the inner city, some from the rust belt, some off the farm. Their degrees of sophistication and of exposure to a world wider than ten city blocks or the north forty are as varied as their skin tones. What’s job one with this untested mass of muscle and testosterone? Assessing then building individual fitness, physically, mentally, and, in the sense of group cohesiveness, socially. Job one point two? Cementing that group cohesiveness, so that this company of men can, in times of duress, think and act as one. These early days of making a fighting force out of young and ignorant strangers are really hard: why make them more difficult by introducing the exotic element that even unto today homosexuality represents? Let group-think prevail, until the group is forged and the individual bonds of its member are strong. At that point, “don’t ask, don’t tell” ceases to matter, because that gay guy over there has become your point man, and you’ve learned he’s a tough fighter and a good poker player. You’ve learned something about diversity that I assure you no college kid attending LGBTQ workshops would recognize if he/she/te fell over it.

Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Don’t change the policy. Do call Elena Kagan on her hypocrisy.

On a different subject entirely: Yes. As a single straight woman of a certain age, it annoys the heck out of me that it’s a common assumption that spinsters are lesbians. Yes. Elena Kagan is entitled to her privacy. But not at the expense of her intellectual honesty.

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Move Over, Amy Bishop: It’s STILL All About Process

Published May 7, 2010 Amy Bishop , Higher Education , Students 2 Comments
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Shush…be quiet…listen carefully: those mewling sounds you hear ever so faintly are urgent cris du coeur on behalf of former University of Virginia student George Huguely from academics worried about his right to “due process” from the university.

This would be the same George Huguely who has withdrawn from the University of Virginia and therefore no longer subject to any of its processes, due or otherwise. The same George Huguely about whom the Charlottesville police report:

After waiving his rights under Miranda – the suspect, George Huguely – said that he was involved in an altercation with [ex-girlfriend Yeardley] Love and that during the course of the altercation he shook Love and her head repeatedly hit the wall. Huguely admitted that he kicked his right foot through the door that leads to Love’s bedroom. Huguely also said he took Love’s computer, which had emails on it, and hid it.

Of all the mewling, though, the cake-taker has got to be the inane essay “Virgina and Duke,” by one KC Johnson, self-identified as a “professor of history at Brooklyn College and author of Durham-in-Wonderland, a blog about the Duke lacrosse case.” Professor Johnson’s essay, which I take to be a shameless advertisement for his blog of somewhat limited appeal, is an exquisite example of what happens when a specialist in an arcane field attempts to comment on something outside the narrow focus of his expertise. So accustomed is he to seeing a teeny tiny scrap of the world through a glass eye, darkly, that when the big picture is revealed to him, he misses it entirely. A twenty-two-year-old woman was murdered by a drunken thug, who admitted his crime and his efforts to cover his tracks to police. Here’s what Professor Johnson, in the May 6 Inside Higher Ed, has to say:

No handbook exists for how a university should respond to the killing of a student, much less a killing in which the accused is another student. ….At Virginia, a crime obviously occurred, and according to police, Huguely confessed to forcibly entering Love’s room, shaking her, and “repeatedly” hitting her head against the wall. Huguely’s attorney hasn’t denied the police account, but has suggested that Love’s death was “not intended,” and thus, presumably, is manslaughter rather than murder.

….[S]hortly after the arrest, Virginia’s president, John Casteen, issued a statement that offered a tentative legal judgment — affirming that Love “appears now to have been murdered by another student.” And later that afternoon, Virginia’s executive vice president, Leonard Sandridge, appeared at a press conference with Charlottesville police chief Timothy Longo in which Longo, much more than Sandridge, upheld the presumption of innocence and reminded viewers that the facts were “alleged.” It’s rather striking when a police chief comes across as more sensitive to due process than a prominent administrator from one of the nation’s leading universities.

….[Casteen and Sandridge’s] initial responses to the Huguely case did indicate an indifference to the concept — perhaps unsurprising for senior administrators who operate in an academic environment in which due process is frequently honored in the abstract but not in practice.

Miss Love’s suffering, which must have been horrific, at the hands of George Huguely, pales in comparison to the injustice George Huguely has himself suffered by the callous disregard for his due process by “senior administrators.” News flash to Professor Johnson: Those senior administrators showed admirable restraint. Mr. Huguely is no longer a student at the University of Virginia. His due process will be meted out by the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Oh, and one more thing: He confessed.

Save your mewling about due process for an appeal to the tenure committee.

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When You’re Around This College President, Better Carry Your Mace

Published May 6, 2010 College Presidents , Higher Education 3 Comments
Tags: , , , , ,

Imagine, if you will, the following workplace scenario unfold. You’re on your way to your boss’s office with great news. The fundraising event you planned and executed was a complete success. You not only exceeded last year’s totals, but proceeds smashed right through the ambitious goal you set for this year, despite the chilly recessionary climate. Not one to pat yourself on the back, you are hoping nonetheless that the boss—a college president—will give you a well-deserved thumbs up.

Well, he gives you a finger all right, but it’s not his thumb. No, it’s his index finger viciously pounding the wall of the corner he’s backed you into as he screams invectives at you mere inches from your face. All the money you just raised for your college doesn’t matter to this enraged madman, nor does your exercise of professional judgment as a director of development, judgment affirmed by verifiable facts. All that matters is that you…you…had the audacity to spend more time cultivating Mr. and Mrs. Gotrocks at the fundraising event instead of Mr. and Mrs. Currifavor. Never mind that the Gotrocks have donated hundreds of thousands to your campus and promise to continue giving into the future, and that the Currifavors have given not much at all. How DARE you defy the president’s clear albeit unstated preference for the Currifavors?

If we were in The Twilight Zone, this would be the moment that Rod Serling steps from the shadows to intone, “consider if you will the small town of Billings, Montana, home of the small but scrappy Rocky Mountain College. A college run with an iron fist by a man possessed by demons of desire. Desire to beat up on women.” Rest his soul, Rod Serling’s been gone for years, so cue the do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do music and click here. Read the story. No hurry. I’ll wait.

Don't get me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

Appalling, isn’t it? Of course Ms. VanDelinder’s civil suit contending that the aptly named President Michael Mace subjected her to all manner of abuse and intimidation has yet to be proven, but it is fair to point out that President Mace is no stranger to such tactics. In the summer of 2007,

Mace, 55, spent one night in the Hamilton County, Ind., jail after being arrested in Carmel, a suburb north of Indianapolis.

Home builder David Klain told The Gazette that he was sitting in his office in a townhouse development when Mace came in, told him he was angry with Klain and then hit the builder on the left side of his face, knocking him to the floor and breaking his glasses.

After Mace left, Klain called police, who then arrested Mace.

The story has a happy ending, though; in 2008 President Mike “Tyson” Mace beat the rap by

…complet[ing] requirements of a pretrial agreement….[by entering] a pretrial diversion program.

The program for first-time offenders charged with a misdemeanor crime helps resolve cases without going to trial. Defendants are on probation for a year and have to fulfill certain requirements. If they are not charged with another crime and they complete those conditions during that year, charges are dismissed.

Mace was to pay a $305 fee to the prosecutor’s office to pay for the program, continue seeing a counselor to discuss anger management and complete 40 hours of community service by Aug. 1, 2008.

Deputy Hamilton County prosecutor Jamie Campbell said Thursday that Mace met those conditions and that the case against him has been dismissed, but not erased, from his record.

What was erased, apparently, was any reason for the Rocky Mountain trustees to back away from their unwavering support for President Left Hook:

James Almond, chairman of the Rocky board of trustees, said that several trustees met with Mace on Friday morning [after the president’s night in the cooler] to discuss the matter.
….
As more information comes out about the case, trustees will comment further, Almond said.

Almond praised Mace for the work he has done since becoming the college’s leader in October 2005.

“Mike has been the best president we could have had and has done an outstanding job,” Almond said.

What every smart college president negotiates as a rider on his contract.

Careful readers will observe the consistency of the Rocky Mountain trustees by comparing former Chair Almond’s comments with those of the current chair, to whom it fell to explain away Sluggo’s latest contretemps:

Board of Trustees chairman Barbara Skelton said Monday afternoon that she had not seen the court document yet.

“I can’t make a comment until I do,” she said.

But, another happy ending is clearly in sight, for Chair Skelton adds: “the Board of Trustees hopes to move forward with the mission of the College under the leadership of President Mike Mace.”

The executive committee of the board meets to discuss the president's behavior.

In other words, bye-bye Shari VanDerlinder.

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How to Rig a Disaster

Published May 3, 2010 Politics 3 Comments
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President Obama’s oily response to the disaster taking place off the coast of Louisiana perfectly illustrates just how at sea our president is.

Nearly two weeks into the aftermath of the BP platform explosion, President Obama traveled to the beleaguered southern state to point the finger of blame, up close and personal, to the on-scene BP executives who had already acknowledged full responsibility for the spill and announced their intention to pay for containment and clean-up costs. The President lost no time (except for the 11 days in which he was otherwise engaged 1) yucking it up with Jay Leno, 2) shaking hands with the New York Yankees, 3) tooling around Iowa looking for adulation, 4) having dinner with Barbara Boxer and the DNC, and 5) shedding a few crocodile tears at the memorial service for civil rights legend Dorothy Height) in boldly assigning guilt, “BP is responsible for this leak — BP will be paying the bill,” and doing his part to fuel emotions with predictions of doom, “The oil that is still leaking from the well could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our gulf states and it could extend for a long time.”

My fellow Americans, I give you my word that I won't rest until all of you are depressed.

Mr. Obama continued to intone. “It could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home.” I don’t know about you, but when I am down in the dumps there’s nothing I like better than to have the leader of the free world tell me that things will only get worse.

Heckova job, President O.

You might be thinking that it would be terribly unfair of me to omit any reference to other parts of the president’s remarks, statements in which he enumerates all of the actions taken by the Coast Guard and other agencies in the immediate hours and days following the explosion. You can find those comments here. So there. In overlooking this portion of the presidential narrative, I am simply following the lead of today’s New York Times, the front page of which carries the story “BP Moves to Fix a Leak as Obama Warns of Damage.” While I cannot speak for the Times, I can tell you that the president’s reiteration of two-week-old news is, well, not newsworthy.

No, oddly enough, the Times got it right for once. The money quotes are indeed President Obama’s pontifical pronouncement of seven years’ bad luck for Louisianans followed by his chilling prediction about their jobless futures. While the faint stench of sulphur doesn’t emanate from these words, they do call to mind the quite reasonable question of what the president will propose to do about the doomsday scenario he’s concocted.

Unexploded oil rig: A crisis waiting to be exploited.

Could it possibly be that he is describing one of those crises so beloved of his enforcer Rahm Emmanuel? That right here in the currently despoiled Gulf of Mexico is an opportunity too good to pass up? It’s a twofer or maybe even a threefer. The president is using salvage from the exploded rigging platform as planks to further his agenda: beat-up on big business, wiggle out of the “promise” to reduce our national dependency on foreign oil, and, eventually, expand government sprawl by creating the inevitable buffet of new regulatory agencies “to ensure such a tragedy never happens again.” Of course, this won’t happen until a series of studies and blue-ribbon panels make the necessary recommendations, but just think of the good jobs at good wages will be created by all that paperwork.

New oil in old bottles: Take three times a day and call me on January 22, 2012.

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Latest entry in “Where Are They Now?”

Justice has been served to both partners in the mom-pop crime wave that embezzled a cool $2.5 million from bastion of transparency and accountability Vassar College.

Amy Bishop: Countdown to Court

A judge in Huntsville, Alabama set a trial date of March 19, 2012 for former biology professor Amy Bishop, whose colleagues in the biology department watched in terror as she gunned down three faculty members and severely wounded others in 2009. The motive, apparently, was Bishop's denial of tenure at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
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