Penn State Allegations Could Prompt NCAA to Consider Rules Changes

For Wood, Women’s and Sexuality Studies is a “movement to dismantle social inhibitions.” I disagree with that characterization and reductionism. And that his “New Anger” is a central rationale for Women’s Studies. (Actually it doesn’t seem so “new” in that Wood is recycling from his book A Bee in the Mouth.) Do the mission statements for Women’s Studies programs really talk about having students become angry as a prime goal? Do faculty in Gender Studies really sit around in meetings trying to devise courses that will ramp up anger? Or isn’t this really a weird projective male fantasy that assumes the central concerns of feminists are (or should be) men. This is an interesting and flattering inversion that brings it all back to assuming that paying attention to guys is what’s valid and important: unable to accept the idea that maybe they just don’t care, or have other priorities, or will postpone stroking the male ego.

Again and again, it seems that Wood wants to not just “conserve” but to actually turn back the clock. My impression from reading his blog over the past few months is that he’d like things to be like they were before women were admitted to the Ivy League schools. So yes, a modest reading of Peter Wood’s writing does make it look like he really is unhappy with social progress . And BTW really uncomfortable with research on sexuality.

Chuck Kleinhans

Wood doesn’t really understand how humor works in the context of power. It is usually used as a weapon against outsiders and only succeeds in building community when those making the jokes and those who are the butt of they jokes feel some sense of power equality with one another. So yes, if you are a gay person who has suffered from discrimination against gays and is fighting for equality, the “coming out” joke is highly offensive. There is nothing new about this kind of anger or the so called “innocent” actions that evoke it. What is, perhaps, new is that people who are hurt by these comments are beginning to speak out. Then they are charged with demanding political correctness–which is actually another term for politeness, being respectful, kind and considerate of the feelings of others, especially those less fortunate (powerful) than you.

“Then, in the email that Ms. Ginty sent complaining about my language, she referred to me as Ellen, not Professor Lewin, which is the correct way for a student to address a faculty member, or indeed, for anyone to refer to an adult with whom they are not acquainted.”

I just think it’s funny that she wants to be called “Professor Lewin.” Usually when you do something like that you have enough self awareness to know that you’ve slipped out of your institutional role and responded from a personal position. Even worse, she thinks she’s still in a position where she can try to pull rank

You’re usually self aware enough to know that while the institution may overlook your personal response–we’re all human and I think it’s good to not pretend otherwise, it’s not going to put its institutional stamp of approval on it.

It may be relevant that she’s in identity studies. There is something a little too “personal” about this disciplinary configuration. You don’t have to step outside of yourself in order to do research. If no one is willing to challenge you because to do so would involve personal offense–as it frequently would– you never have to assume the same kind of professional restraint that those who have to deal with *you* do. You don’t usually, as it turns out, have a diverse student population with varied ideas in your classroom ready to doubt or challenge you, in contrast to almost everyone else.

In this case, it seems to have carried over into the field of student contact, which is usually the point at which the university administration feels it can be involved. Here, “Professor Lewin” evidently expects the university to continue to institutionally validate her every personal expression.

I’m not sure I’m buying it.

“And this in an era in which conservatives (and not only Rush Limbaugh) routinely call the President a Nazi”

You got to be kidding me. Bush was constantly compared to Hitler throughout his tenure by the Left. The Left has been using the argumentum ad Hitlerem for decades (in the same way the Right has used the anti-patriotism argument for decades) against anyone who was farther right than thou.

And I voted for Obama, and I voted against Bush both times.

I agree that the stupid far Right’s questioning of Obama’s Christianity is vile, but the Left mocked Bush’s Christianity in vile ways that they would never do to Islam.

I continue amazed at discussions among scholars that are dominated by name-calling, innuendo, condescension, deliberate misinterpretation, and blanket generalizations. I sure hope a different standard of argument is used in class, in significant academic work….

chgoodrich, I too am disappointed when I come upon exchanges that are nothing more than a list of logical fallacies, but are you helping matters when you make such a blanket generalization yourself without reference to any specific posts?

I’m white, male and 57. I’ve taught Rhetoric at Iowa for nearly three decades. Since Mr. Wood isn’t interested in all the facts, I’ll provide some:

For example, I have colleagues who teach in the Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies Department, some of whom I’m proud to call my friends. It’s an interdisciplinary department, made of people who have diverse academic backgrounds. The canard that the department is animated by one feeling–anger–doesn’t survive minimal scrutiny. This suggests that Mr. Woods didn’t bother to look at this (or any other) department’s website, and made up his characterization of academic work in gender, women’s and sexuality studies at Iowa of whole cloth, in order to fit his preconceptions. Some of the faculty are stellar teachers, some are solid researchers, some are both. Angry, they’re not, by and large, although I assume that some Republican actions outrage them. (Some Republican actions outrage Republicans, after all.)

Professor Wood’s PhD (Stanford, 1975), is in anthropology. Since I’m old enough to remember the anthropology department at Michigan in 1975, in which I took a couple of classes, I’ll guess that her academic training included rather more harassment and misogynist bluster than “turning young women who are fretful and discontented into women empowered by righteous anger at the supposed injustices that society has visited on them.” Let’s note that her tenure and promotion have taken place in anthropology. So if you’d like to slag a whole discipline based on three words, since apologized for, go after anthropology. (Oh, and “supposed injustices”? Is Mr. Wood that stupid, or is he looking to offend?)

I too received the e-mail from the College Republicans. It was clearly designed to offend and irritate, and I looked at it, thought, “This is a trap,” and deleted it. I’ve heard that several other people, students and faculty alike, had the same response. They set out to piss people off, and succeeded. Now they get to do what conservatives do very well, claim to be victims.

I look forward to the day when Mr. Woods prints and comments on the e-mails Professor Lewin has been receiving from conservatives, some of which were “swear word riddled rants,” and some “included foul and and sexually oriented slurs,” according to the Daily Iowan, which chose not to publish them in a story where they quoted Professor Lewin word for word without euphemism. We can all imagine what the sexually oriented slurs dwell on, as well as the nature of some of the swear words, because we’ve heard them out of the mouths of conservatives before.

Harry Frankfurt has a lovely little book on Mr. Wood’s performance here.

I think the back-and-forth in this thread could be elevated by a bit more attention to data and nuance, more interest in learning as well as teaching, and a tad less personal attack. But the fact that we use an old Latin phrase to describe ad hominem attacks suggests that they’re not a recent phenomenon animated by New Anger. On the plus side, it’s good to know that academics (or Chronicle readers, anyway) are still passionate about their beliefs and eager to engage in intellectual debate.

Bad proofing on my part. That should read “Professor Lewin’s PhD… is in anthropology.” Apologies.

What “young communists league”?

The thesis that all anger involves “self-righteousness” is palpably absurd. Should we feel angry about the Holocaust, for example? Is such anger engendered by self-rightousness, or would it be a natural and appropriate response to a repellent occurrence? I’m not saying that this tempest in a tea pot rises to such a level, but some things call for righteous indignation, and that’s not the same thing as “self righteousness.”

Hey, perhaps it’s a linear relationship: all anger is based on self-righteousness, so all self-righteousness must be based on anger. Based on his own contention, this writer must have been angry when he wrote this commentary. It’s certainly self-righteous.

What fun to make up a new term/soundbite that will serve as justification for one’s point of view, even if it’s ridiculous. All anger probably has a component of “self-righteousness,” huh? Nope. Most anger is a response to feeling threatened. Any self-righteousness that creeps in arises from the pathological need to appear right, and is hardly close to being universal. A lot of people are feeling pretty threatened by the incredible asshattery proposed by a bunch of gorillas that somehow got elected to Congress. (Actually, they were elected by good old fashioned anger, which explains a lot). I have to admit I wouldn’t have found the Col Reps’ invite amusing, either (why do some conservatives persist in thinking they can be funny?). But bottom line, wherever you stand on this issue: faculty shouldn’t curse at students. Out loud.

The above response summarizes some of what Dr. Wood seems to be getting at. Is the use of the phrase “coming out” in the context of Republicans really that offensive (or even homophobic for that matter), or are people simply forbidden from appropriating any phrase associated with a particular movement, for satirical or other purposes? Or is the writer merely reading in their own prejudices about Republicans into the statement. As for “racist” and “sexist” humor, I’m not sure where the writer sees that, given that the other references in the e-mail were to the Wisconsin public service union issue and animal rights.

Or maybe it was just too tempting to lob those groundless accusations into the mix for this story? In either case, It’s hard to take seriously disclaimers about free speech from someone so ready to dispose of it when and where they see fit.

And if one is predisposed to homilies about relative social power, then one might want to spend a little more time observing the balance of political power on college campuses.

You’re right. My bad. There are plenty of hilarious conservatives, like Stewart. And Colbert. Wait. Okay, well there’s . . . .Limbaugh! And Beck! I laugh so hard every time I listen to them!

Allow me to suggest James Lileks, Jonah Goldberg, Mark Steyn, P.J. O’Rourke, Florence King, Rob Long (former writer/producer for Cheers) just for starters. (I might add that there are many liberals who admit to finding Limbaugh amusing at times – just as there are some conservatives who are disappointed by him at times).

Blanket stereotypes only reveal how little we know or care to.

Re: “Gorillas” I was just trying to be polite and ignore the more obtuse elements of your post. Plus, “gorillas” is just invective, rather than a stereotype. Not on point.

As for the writers, I suspect from your response that you’ve read little to none of them. Pity for you.

“Professor Lewin’s three-word response to the College Republicans is one of those very short stories that point to a much larger one.”

Or not. Please. You’ve turned a churlish email into a social phenomenon. I’m going to take pains to insure that my next letter (civil as it is) to Parking Operations at my university doesn’t fall into your hands.

Kingsley Amis is said to have remarked that everything that had gone wrong in the modern world could be subsumed under the heading of “workshops”. Perhaps not everything, but a great deal of what has gone wrong with American higher education falls under the heading of the various pseudo-disciplines whose names end in “studies”. It is of course true that some of these, over the years have achieved a degree of respectability. Once in a short conversation with the novelist, Tom Wolfe, I was tempted—but too well-mannered— to ask him why he chose to to do a PHD in “American Studies”. Nevertheless, I have always adhered to the view that sound university departments can be described in the catalogue by a single word, except where the vastness of the field requires an adjective to precede it. Thus my children majored in Electrical Engineering, English Literature, Piano, and Fine Art. By and large, I got my money’s worth. Since few students of ordinary sense would choose to take a course in—much less major in— the “Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies”, it becomes necessary to make such courses compulsory, under the cover perhaps of distribution requirements. Otherwise they would wither on the vine.

Not likely to improve civility, since the answer is another condemnation of conservatism, which would result in knee-jerk attack, rather than sincere self-reflection. The answer, of course, is that the “clumsy attempt at satire” is aimed at mocking and maligning the weak, powerless, and marginalized in our society, while to “shout down an invited speaker whose views differ” is an attempt to prevent more abuse aimed toward those same weak, powerless, and marginalized groups. Incidentally, I have never actually seen a president burned in effigy, but if that were done, I would guess that it was in opposition to the slaughter of innocent civilians by the strongest army in the world. In other words, the college Republicans are on the side of removing freedom, while the free speech of those on the Left is on the side of increased freedom. It just depends on whether you want everyone to be free, or to be free to impinge upon the freedom of those who are weaker than you.

Rebagg, you are not alone in dismissing out of hand the distinction between an older pattern of anger in American society and what I have called “New Anger.” The social scientific question is whether emotions and emotional expressions are hard-wired into humans in every important detail or whether they are subject to social and cultural patterning. At least since Darwin’s seminal “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,” few have seriously doubted that emotions are to some extent hard-wired. But how much room does that leave for cultural variance? Quite a lot. And there is more than a century of field research in anthropology and psychology to back that up.

It is interesting but not especially surprising that we find it easier to see the culturally contingent nature of emotional patterning by looking at people in other cultures, and that we find it difficult to recognize it in ourselves. That’s because our emotions feel so very much our own: to admit that they are the way they are in large part because we have internalized a pattern taught or imposed by forces outside ourselves would seem to undermine their authenticity.

As to whether New Anger is a valid description of the change in emotional patterns prevalent in American culture, the scholarly assessment will have to depend on something other than your personal veto. My book on the topic, “A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now,” is only one entry in a body of literature that points to a significant historical divide between an era which focused on teaching people habits of controlling anger and a newer era that encourages the expression of anger as both healthy and empowering.

Your invective against Republicans is a small example.

Peter Wood

Writing “supposed injustices” was really not a wise move – kind of like shooting yourself in the foot. If the sentiment truly reflects Wood’s perception, some enlightenment / opening of the mind is in order.

If you’ve read the whole email from the College Republicans (I have. You?), you’ll be aware that they intended it to be “that offensive.” It wasn’t “clumsy satire.” It was abuse. As for “observing the balance of political power,” by all means let’s do that. I doubt very much if it helps the conservative cause, since my reading of the situation is that the administrator who let this document go out did so because he/she is afraid of them. (Or she/he thought, “This does them no credit. I’ll let it pass.”)
By the way, in the early eighties, the Iowa College Republicans insisted on buying South African champagne for their soirees. They were mystified when the African American member quit. I don’t think they’ve changed that much.

“bringsomelight,” your comments echo some others. I’ll stand with “supposed.” The world has no shortage of real injustices and Women’s Studies departments deal with some of these; but Women’s Studies also deals in theories of injustice that are contentious and not widely accepted outside the field. Teaching young American women who attend college in significantly larger numbers than men and who often have better career prospects than their male counterparts that they are victims of patriarchy (however this may be phrased) presents these students with a story of “supposed injustice,” that is surely open to doubt. Perhaps some of the students in a typical class have encountered real barriers based on their sex, but such barriers are increasingly rare and weak in our society. (And, yes, I use the word “sex, not “gender,” since to use the latter concedes the tendentious claim that the sexes are, for all practical purposes, socially constructed.)

The field of Women’s Studies also has a sorry history of putting forth doubtful statistics as facts. Not so long ago, for example, we were told on authority that domestic abuse reached a peak on Superbowl Sunday. That turned out to be a fabrication, of which there have been many. At this point to take at face value the claims of injustice that come from Women’s Studies faculty members would be, at a minimum, risky. The claim reported by cb_10 above that women in Michigan earn “65 cents on the dollar to their male counterparts,” strikes me as an example. No doubt some authoritative body has enunciated this as a finding. Is it true? Is it normalized for hours per week, overtime, length of service, age, etc.? I don’t know, but I would never cite such a number as fact without first checking.

Of course, I knew when I pointed out the possible connection between Professor Lewin’s academic specialization and her quick resort to angry expression that I would touch a nerve. The supposed injustices that Women’s Studies (and gender studies) trade in exist in an artificial zone on campus where they are exempt from critical scrutiny. The underlying narrative has a sacred quality. To imply that any part of it may be based on false assumptions or even duplicity invites strong disapproval–but nothing really in the way of refutation.

Peter Wood

In one paragraph you say that college women (no qualifier, so you must mean all college women) “often have better career prospects than their male counterparts.”

In the next paragraph you claim you would “never cite such a number without first checking,” regarding income disparities between men and women.

So here’s a peer-reviewed article by a male scholar (at Iowa no less) who writes about studying wage gaps . If you read the article, you’ll see that in an article that critiques simple-minded comparison of income averages, there’s still a brute fact: that the numbers show a substantial gap between men’s and women’s pay, and that this gap cannot be understood without allowing that individual and structural gender discrimination continue to exist in labor markets. Here’s a simpler, more partisan view of the numbers: .

So, where’s the data that suggest that college women have “often have better career prospects” than their male counterparts? Don’t you have to show your work? Do you simply mean that some women will do better than some men after they graduate? That’s always been the case, even when universities and businesses openly discriminated against women, for example when Ellen Lewin matriculated as an undergraduate.

In your original post said “the supposed injustices that society has visited upon them.” Later you say that some injustices women have experienced are “real.” I don’t think your later claim about what you meant matches your words in what you originally wrote and I’m pretty sure you’re walking the original claim back. I wish you’d do the same with your characterization of university women as “fretful and discontented.” They mostly aren’t. There are huge variations, to be sure, but I’ve met many level-headed, hardworking, smart women at this university, some of whom majored in Women’s Studies. (One of the many smart, hardworking women I’ve taught is a former head of the College Republicans. I think she majored in business administration. You condescended to her too.) The condescension does you no credit, except maybe with the Darbyshires and Coulters on the right who think giving women the vote was a big mistake.

Is is not rather likely that, in a relatively new discipline, the focus may have changed considerably in 20 years, and your experience may no longer be representative?

Another powerful argument for the importance of the arts to learning, and the role in which universities can and should play in its promotion!

Regarding the proclamations of GEESCOTT at 12:22pm, May 18, 2011:  “New Anger,” or any similar recognition of the coarsening of society, is a very noticeable and therefore valid concept to anyone who has inhabited the planet for a few decades and witnessed the selfsame coarsening of society.  If you don’t like the “new anger” appellation, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet or stink as badly.  As is often the case the concept is vastly more consequential than is specious debate concerning the particular choice of words.  One of the chief reasons we have been successful as a species is that we have evolved a frontal cortex for our brains.  It confers judgement, wisdom, justice, conscience, and similar higher level functions to our thinking such as those yielding complex strategizing and planning for theoretical contingencies– but only for those who possess a human frontal cortex of sufficient size and a willingness to apply it.  The frontal cortex of chimpanzees and other of our close cousins is largely lacking, hence their backward sloping foreheads and deficiencies for judgement, wisdom, justice, conscience, and all the rest.  In sum, why can a human child likely be taught to act in a civilized way, yet a nearly identical chimpanzee baby goes ape and stays ape and can’t be calmed down enough to stay out of the zoo past the age of 4 or 5?  It’s that frontal cortex.  If you don’t have one, or won’t apply it, civilized people will invariably want to restrain your selfish uncontrolled behavior in a zoo, jail, mental institution, or else (increasingly) allow you free run of a university with an ample supply of blank checks drawing on the taxpayers’ account.  Such pongids, upon perceiving any threat whatsoever to their precious territorial holdings, are wont to issue forth instinctive howls of protest such as were seen recently from “Professor” Lewin.  Just think of a two-year old having her toys threatened by someone else wanting to share them, and you will be on your way to grasping the concept.  For another everyday example, look at a ‘modern’ human with too much liquor in him.  Ethanol selectively poisons or intoxicates the frontal lobes ahead of the rest of the brain, hence the chemical ablation of the frontal cortex readily converts civilized persons into bar-room brawlers, on the level of wild chimpanzees.  Our frontal lobes are precious indeed, and one of the larger elements of education involves nurturing them with concepts of selflessness ahead of selfishness.  The selfishness is the hard-wired default setting dictated by the primitive evolutionary demands for personal acquisition, and the steering of the frontal cortex toward altruism within the context of an evolving culture is a more subtle challenge that can be met only by more highly evolved societies wishing to educate maturing members how to function harmoniously for mutual benefit.  It can take a lot to teach anyone, especially a pre-teen, that personal sacrifice right now for someone else’s benefit can pay off in the future with benefits for everyone eventually.  Apes, and those who think like apes, tend to be too impatient to even consider the concept.  Again, it depends on what frontal anatomy has been conferred from evolution and genetics, and it then depends on whether that anatomical hardware has been programmed with sufficient cultural software from the surrounding environment during the individual’s growth years.  Programming students to aspire to be like apes sets a poor example, and is rather counterproductive. Once the neural circuits are largely set in their ways past the teen years, improving them for positive societal adjustment becomes increasingly difficult.   The restraints and taboos Geescott decries were learned the hard way thousands of years ago, once we developed agriculture and village living.  In our preceding caveman years, the evolutionary premium had previously been on murder, rape, pillage, and other selfish behaviors as I noted yesterday.  The troglodytic premium on selfish violence happened because those who killed and raped and pillaged the most prospered the most, spread their genes around the territory the most, and transmitted such behaviors to their descendants including you and me the most.  In the Stone Age, nice guys definitely finished last.  Once we evolved the neat trick of growing our plants in fields and keeping our animals confined in pens, we no longer had to beat ourselves ragged as tribesmen meandering about the landscape in a state of perpetual borderline starvation.  Once we developed that agriculture, technology, science, and the chance to sit in one place and grow old rather than dying off in our 30′s, humans could sit still to philosophize as to why some prospered and some died young.  Early villagers with a chance to grow old could easily perceive murder, rape, pillage, and other ape-like behaviors were deleterious to the harmonious functioning of the village.  Early villages collectively understanding this functioned better in the Darwinian competition for survival.  Villages wherein inhabitants were in a constant state of paranoid defensiveness guarding against being bludgeoned, kidnapped, robbed, or further lacking intelligent disease-prevention behaviors, were less competitive.  There was in consequence an evolutionary selective advantage for early villages desiring to grow into larger and more stable ones to develop a system of laws– for mutual consideration and ultimate personal security and advancement.  In the environment of a selective advantage for laws against antisocial behavior, such laws naturally appeared more rapidly than ordinary Darwinian selection could provide them because the frontal lobes provided the ability to speculate and carry out thought experiments and real-world experiments, including those involving social engineering.  Thus wise and observant humans who could grow old thanks to agriculture could have a pretty good idea in advance,  based on individuals and families they had already seen, what would work and what wouldn’t.  So, wise old villagers could provide dictates to the younger generation, particularly for the benefit of their own favored children, as encouragement to avoid murder, adultery, thievery, drunkenness, etc. etc. as they knew from the estimations out of their frontal lobes that any such advice followed by any of their children would likely help them and the rest of the village prosper no matter how idiotic, simian, and restless the others might wish to incapacitate themselves into being.  You know as well as I do that children told what to do are by nature carping rebellious hellions when they receive directives derived from parental wisdom.  In prehistoric times it had been a good strategy to propel the teenagers away from mom and dad so the next generation would establish itself at a distance from the home hunting grounds, and not have all the related DNA in one locale to be wiped out by whatever mortal environmental challenge might arise.  But, in an emerging civilization prospering from direct inheritance of farms and technology and goods, generational strife became a negative.  So, there was a selective advantage in forcing the next generation to listen to parental advice and developing the discipline to apply it.  When it won’t do to obey mom and dad, who can’t be watching 24/7/365 anyway, it’s convenient indeed to have somebody like Santa Claus watching from the North Pole to make sure it’s known who is being naughty and who is being nice.  Sometimes the only way to begin to teach altruism is by conditioning the trainee toward it with a system of rewards and punishments. In ancient times, what better way to motivate the next generation toward developing a conscience than the concept of “Big Daddy in the Sky who is watching you, and after you’re dead you will either spend an eternity in the Nice Place or the Hot Place?  It’s all up to what you do today, see?”  Where there was a need for such a system of motivation, someone’s frontal cortex was adept enough to manufacture it and motivate people toward it.  Over time, people following that model under the supposition of divine direction prospered at the comparative disadvantage of those tending toward the obsolete Stone Age selfish model.  Modern insights, such as being able to fly above the clouds only to find no deities or angels or souls of the departed there, tend to make the impatient think the old lessons learned thousands of years ago can’t possibly have any value if there is no real enforcement mechanism.  But the value never was in the Rule Book itself.  The value always was and still is in the social enhancement results that came from following the Rule Book for whatever reason even though the Rule Book was based on inventive inducements. The restraints and taboos have always been, and still are, beneficial to society as a whole (and ultimately to the individual) rather than being dangerous– even though they require the individual to not be as selfish and evolutionarily backward as the monkey part of his brain inclines him to be.  This includes not only mangement of new anger, but any kind of anger, selfishness, murder, rape, stealing, and the rest of it.  If you need to believe in a system of religious faith in order to learn to be considerate, you are at the evolutionary level of humans as they had progressed to be a few thousand years ago.  If you are a self starter and realize all on your own frontal lobes that what you don’t want done to you, you shouldn’t be doing to other people, then that will work fine without involving all the overhead and risk of hypocrisy to which organized (sort of) religions are susceptible.  Either way, the truth is the truth regardless of which path you follow to find it.   

I just wrapped up a hiring committee for an English position at my cc.  Over 100 applicants, eight interviews. Every single candidate we interviewed was experienced with an online platform such as Blackboard and used technology extensively, whether their courses were face-to-face, hybrid, or online.  This matters a lot to community colleges today for a variety of reasons.  For example, comunity colleges are moving heavily into online courses (I’m not saying that’s a great idea but it is a fact.)  We also expect faculty to create experiences that facilitate student engagement, and technology, well-chosen, can certainly do that.
So I would suggest that instead of “polishing up your paper,” those interested in a cc position polish up your educational technology.

You’re right, Delia. I did mention that, briefly, but I’m glad you emphasized the point.

Best,
Rob

I agree completely. I came to teaching late in life and now I can’t imagine doing anything else. I’m currently doing some admin work on special events as I prep for my fall classes (one in the College proper, two in continuing studies). It’s a rough life financially, but there’s nothing like having a class where it’s more than a lecture and the students are right there with you.

A matter of knowing your own disposition, and more or less for the same reason that a person with a slow reaction time like mine should not be a pilot or fireman. 

I used to explain to advisees that the biggest difference between high school and college was that in high school the teacher was supposed to really want to help the students, and the subject was a way to do it; in college the teacher was supposed to really like the subject, and be looking for students who were (or could become) worthy of sharing it.  Student affairs offices do great work in handling the routine and chronic accidents and miseries but fundamentally they’re about the student, not about the study.  Somebody has to be, I suppose, but it’s better that it’s not me; I’m better at sharing the fascination of theatre history or set design or fictional structure than I am at growing whole people.  Student Affairs is welcome to enable all the whole people they can get their hands on; I just like to help the whole people pick up drawing, building, and writing.

Probably there’s room enough for both, even in a busy schedule.

Times are going to change

1. The NCAA’s jurisdiction here is doubtful.  They’re putting their oar in because they are becoming increasingly ineffectual and irrelevant, even as some of their rules get stupider and stupider.

2. The Penn State youth and child seduction scandal is only incidentally connected with football, or with sports in general.  It could as easily have happened in a College of Music with a preparatory department and thus children around a lot with college personnel and other faculty having easy access to them. (Note: I know of no such instances.).  Would the NCAA presume to chime in then? I doubt the AGO, AAUP, or Musician’s Federation would.

If, as seems at least plausible if not probable, that there was a cover up, then I think you’re correct that the motivation for it was certainly related to the peculiar circumstances of football at Penn State.  NCAA’s jurisdiction is still doubtful, and of course they’re considering trying to change the rules to allow them to assert jurisdiction.

It’s difficult to argue that the coverup was limited to just football when the president of the university also heard about Sandusky and did nothing. Sure, what Joe Paterno heard was far more damning, but it’s also a problem that Graham Spanier heard some version of events and did not act – likely due to the university attitude towards big-time sports.

Other than having a football coach with a long, long tenure, how “peculiar [are the] circumstances of football at Penn State” compared to those at Auburn, Alabama, Ohio State, USC, Oregon, Tennessee, etc., etc.?

I agree Paterno’s position at Penn State was unusually powerful and influential but to say he was powerful because he brought in money and fans and therefore no one would touch him. Well, I don’t know about that. No university gets rich off athletics not even Penn State. Their athletic department may be self-sustaining or turn some profit but FB merely funds all the olympic sports and athletic dept. staff salaries. By the time you get done with the AD debit-credit ledger, I seriously doubt the money remaining, if any, put Paterno in a position to dictate much. It wasn’t money that gave him power. Plus, to say that you have to believe that administrators at all levels at Penn State (Admissions, Registrar, Student Affairs, etc.) hav zero professional ethics or backbone and would simply do anythng he said. I don’t believe that for a second.

That is one of the few things I can agree with here. You are right with each passing second. Right about what, I have no idea.

As does Socratease2 his thinly disguised advocacy for bigtime college spectator sports.

Hi 12080243. I can’t reply to pianiste but you were close by. I really am not an advocate of big time spectator sports. Personally, I like college and NHL ice hockey and that is what I watch. I detest March Madness, was thrilled the NBA season was almost cancelled and am not a big FB fan. But I do love sports and competition in general and I was a student-athlete who ran cross-country and track in college. So I was not lavished with big time sports love believe me. I think athletics, if conducted with the right principles, has a place in a university and  that is a far different statement then I am a closet advocate for spectator sports. If I profited off sports in any way, my position might be more cynical, but I don’t. What is my payoff to support big tiime college sports? None, so, for those who think otherwise…whatever. So, once again, all I am saying is things are bit more complex than “college sports are all corrupt and demean the university.” That is just not true and I will continue to argue against sloppy analysis. The media coverage (and associated $$) of college sports is what has changed so quickly and is the ultimate cause of much that is wrong with the current system. The money is what allows the “arms race” in building new trainining facilities, stadiums and in financing the balooning salaries for coaches. Sports themselves are not the issue so I think people should target curing the disease not kill the patient.

All true, I know it is easy to say, “if done correctly and with integrity….” when that is the very issue at hand and I have no idea how to bring all the ducks into a row so that boosters, alumni, athletes, coaches, faculty make the enterprise defendable.  I know I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly of what college sports can produce and I guess I still have some optimism but the NCAA needs to create reform with a big R instead of the middling proposals I read today. I still say the kids are generally ok, it is the adults around them that need to do better.

This just in from Johns Hopkins: http://web.jhu.edu/thankyou

And from Lehigh U.: http://www.lehigh.edu/holiday2011/

Merry Christmas from Newman University!
http://www.youtube.com/user/newmanuniv?feature=mhee

Panama City Beach Condo Rentals Your edition is awesome.well done for that.I have watched your videos too.You guys arr really cool.Carry on the good job.All the best for your future.