The Campus Rape Culture Protects Sportsball

By Professor Doom

     Time and again I’ve covered how the kangaroo campus court system, incredibly vulnerable to corruption, has been corrupted. The vast bulk of the time when I’ve detailed what goes on in this grotesque simulacrum of a legitimate court system, I’ve shown how corrupt administration uses this system in one of two ways.

      The first way is to destroy faculty with integrity (i.e., faculty that get in the way of administrative plundering). These cases usually result in the destruction of the career of the hapless professor, though occasionally the professor takes things to a “real” court system, and wins. The scarcity of these successes should not be taken as evidence that the kangaroo system is even a little legitimate; rather, faculty are generally so impoverished that few have the resources to fight a corrupt administration, which typically spends millions of taxpayer dollars hiring lawyers for their own defense (while claiming poverty when it comes time to help the students financially).

     The second is to railroad students, particularly male students, into “rape” convictions. Because quirks in the system give administration incredible control here, these victims can’t even hire lawyers to defend themselves against “investigations” which would be hysterically funny but for the devastation they cause to the lives of young men caught in this system.

       One of the big reasons administration is so determined to throw out any sense of fairness in this second abuse of the kangaroo system is so they can spout things like “we’re tough on rape, we have a high conviction rate and everything!”

       Why is it important for admin to be able to say such things? Because of the third way the corrupt system is used: to protect the favored. While I’ve seen administrators favored by this system, this is something of an edge case; administrative power is so great that it’s rare for administrative wrongdoing to even make it into the system (since the court is only convened by the whim of the administration).

     It’s not admin that gets protection, but another part of campus that is sacrosanct: sportsball.  Please, gentle reader, understand that even if we (mercifully) accept that Penn State’s outrageous violations are an anomaly, there’s much to such acceptance that strains credulity.

      The Penn State cover up took place over the course of years, involving, officially, half a dozen people (besides the victims), and, realistically, dozens of administrators and coaches on campus. Penn State, however, isn’t some inbred village in the hills, or a family affair…pretty much every single person involved in the cover up worked at other schools, sometimes a dozen other schools before and after Penn State.

      The Code of Silence documented at Penn State is present at those other schools. Obviously. And, so, yes, it’s quite reasonable that huge scandals are present in other schools. They actually bubble up with some regularity, and so let’s look at a recent one:

New Baylor lawsuit alleges 52 rapes by football players in 4 years, 'show 'em a good time' culture

--note: NEW Baylor lawsuit…this isn’t the first big one to hit the school

      The local news article covers things well enough (they’re not CNN, after all), but I want to highlight some details:

The lawsuit describes a culture of sexual violence under former Baylor football coach Art Briles in which the school implemented a "show 'em a good time" policy that "used sex to sell" the football program to recruits. That included escorting underage recruits to strip clubs and arranging women to have sex with prospective players, the suit alleges.

--emphasis added 

     The whole point of a university is education and research, but this athletic department basically employs pimps. How far is pimping from these goals? Every athlete that came to campus got the message as they walked in the door: “we’re here to give you everything you want as long as you play ball!”

      Gosh, upon seeing the prostitutes supplied to them, could some of these student (sic) athletes get the wrong idea about what activities are expected in college?

      Now, naturally, admin did their investigation of these charges, and swept it under the rug, clearing students before they even made it to the kangaroo system. 

     There was much, much, sweeping:

Investigation by lawyers identified at least 52 "acts of rape," including five gang rapes, by 31 football players in a four-year period. At least two of the gang rapes were committed by 10 or more players at one time, the suit states. 

      So, basically the lawsuit implies nearly the entire football team was into rape, and often committed their acts in tandem with their teammates. Now, these players are pulled in from all over the country…they’re not blood relatives, or lifelong friends. They meet at the beginning of the year and, allegedly, start raping with their newfound buddies. There are some obvious implications here from the scenario of a bunch of kids getting together to rape.

      Is it really a stretch to reckon that someone is “cleaning up” after these guys? If this lawsuit is true, there had to be more going on than just randomly thrown together student (sic) athletes randomly picking up young women and raping them in random places. I should point out that the rape locations were likely provided by the university—you can’t pay sportsball players, so they don’t have the money to rent a place for their extracurricular activity…yeah, there’s more going on here.

      A couple of the gang-rape survivors settled lawsuits with the university. It’s tough for admin to say they didn’t know anything when they’re writing checks to the victims, right? Still, admin says they know nothing.

       The coach also knows nothing, despite his amazing salary:

Art Briles, the former head football coach who was fired in May in response to the scandal, had no knowledge of the 52 sexual assaults cited in the lawsuit, or of any payoff to a victim to keep quiet…

      It’s amazing how much I need to know to be able to do my job…but it seems knowing nothing pays better. I made some bad choices, obviously.

      A few posts back I detailed a professor caught in the kangaroo court system, and his singing a Beach Boys song at an event over 10,000 miles away from campus was investigated. Meanwhile, when a girl says she was gangraped by sportsball players, well, ain’t nobody got time for that, least of all admin:

Baylor did not investigate — as required by Title IX, the federal law that instructs universities to proactively protect students from sexual violence and hostility — for more than two years, according to the lawsuit and a report by ESPN.

          Two years. That’s a really, really, long time to delay a rape investigation, but a particularly long time when you’re talking about a student (sic) athlete. These guys can only play for 4 years, tops. And thus it’s no surprise that the campus denies any interest in what goes on and stalls the investigation as much as possible—it was all a few years ago, you see, and all those students have moved on, and most of the coaches have moved on to other schools as well.

     It wouldn’t surprise me if a few of the coaches are at Penn State nowadays because…that’s how higher education works today.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

    

ND Rewriting Tenure To Quickly Terminate

By Professor Doom

     It’s pretty clear something’s up in the economy. The strip mining of our economic system has been going on for years. Only the tremendous wealth pouring in from the student loan scam has allowed the devastation which has hammered most every other job field to skip higher education.

      Now, if higher education were run by stewards, instead of plunderers calling themselves “leaders,” the immense plenty flowing onto campus would have been saved as preparation for the lean times ahead. Instead, the “leaders” awarded themselves splendiferous titles, gigantic salaries, and breathtaking golden parachutes even for a handful of years of “service” in destroying higher education.

     With nothing saved up, our state institutions are the most vulnerable, as they must rely on an inflow of tax dollars. 

      Opposing these fluctuations are the steady jobs of tenured faculty. Tenure, the supposed “job for life” is under constant attack, since paying for faculty can really cut into the money available for the next round of golden parachutes.

      Like every other state, North Dakota has been cutting education funds. Of course, they can fire tenured faculty when there’s no money, but there’s a little quirk in the laws: when you fired a tenured faculty member, you have to give him 12 months advance notice.

      That’s just no good, so North Dakota wants to change the rules, with a new law, that if passed, would reduce the termination notice given to tenured faculty members from at least 12 months to at least 90 days.

     I want to point out some details about this change.

     First, tenure is mostly dead. Most college courses are now taught by sub-minimum wage adjuncts.  More and more, it seems tenure is something admins award to themselves…many institutions give admin control over who gets it, anyway.

     Next, it takes 7 years of flawless scholarship to get tenure outside of administrative fiat. You have to devote a good part of your life to a single institution to get tenure, and they can’t even have the decency to give you fair notice that you’ve wasted your life. A typical semester is longer than 90 days, so changing this rule means that students likewise are losing the protection of getting coherent classes.

      This second point bears reinforcement: most semesters start in August, and January. A year’s notice gives the professor a decent chance to warn his students about a change, so they’re not going to be cheated out of the class they paid for. Campuses only hire full time faculty (those few places that do so) in the late summer…a 90 day notice can really, really, hurt a professor as well as cheat students.

     Finally, our institutions of higher education are run by all these Ph.D.s with administrative degrees…can they really not plan ahead even a tiny bit? These guys are so inept at budgeting that they can’t predict the expenses and revenues of  old institutions that often quite literally have a hundred years or more of budgeting experience. We’re supposed to believe the problem is admin can’t get rid of faculty more quickly?

       We really need to find a way to get rid of the clueless admin running these places more quickly….too bad admins get to decide what the problem is, and what to do about it, eh?

The North Dakota system will need to trim about 20 percent from its budget this year, according to Eric Murphy, president of the Council of College Faculties, the governance body for the university system.

--in addition to every campus having a bloated bureaucracy, we also have uber-bureaucracies soaking up money, like this Council of College Faculties, with 21 members. At least there’s only 1 vice-president in addition to the president.

      Hey, I concede the state schools are seeing their budgets slashed and slashed and slashed again. But this last decade I’ve watched administrative salaries jump 10% or more every year, I’ve seen countless admin get fired for gross incompetence, and get rewarded with $250,000 or more severance packages. I’ve seen faculty positions cut, and class sizes doubled and doubled and doubled again…and I’ve seen administrative positions double and double as well.

     So, yeah, it’s tough to deal with a 20% budget cut. But if we trim 20% of the administrative positions, we’ve save much more money than if we trimmed 40% of the faculty positions, because admin outnumber the faculty, and are paid far more than twice as much. Is there truly nobody in power able to see how this works?

     Even if you only get rid of some faculty, there should be a commensurate number of administrators fired also…I mean, there’s less people to administrate, right?

     It’s so funny to hear admin bleat about how their plan makes sense:

From the administration’s perspective, the 12-month termination notice is financially unsustainable. “This timeline means that the process of eliminating the position of a tenured faculty member is generally too lengthy to produce cost savings within a biennium,” the proposal states. The proposal would allow campuses to save 75 percent of what they’re paying terminated tenured faculty members now.

      Yes, sure, you can save 75% of salary with this new plan. But you can save 100% of salary by firing administrators immediately. And, again, since they’re paid 2x to 20x as much as faculty, this would represent a far greater savings. How does anyone fall for the administrators’ argument?

      The comments section, as is so often the case, laughs at the blatant idiocy of the plan:

Wasn't the Admin charged with managing the system? If they failed, why aren't they getting 90-day notices right now?

     Exactly. Why are the faculty, the tenured faculty who devoted themselves to the schools, paying the price for the plundering failures who messed up so horribly?

      Even if this plan passes (and it likely will), it will change nothing. Admin will continue to suck up every penny and then some. A year from now, when they’ve quick-fired all the tenured faculty and replaced them with adjuncts, there still won’t be enough money in the system, although there will be another Dean and Vice President positions filled.

       I hesitate to suggest the following solution, because some administrator might take it seriously, but here goes:

      Next time the money runs tight, start having classes in the sportsball stadiums. This will allow class size to balloon from a few hundred a class, to tens of thousands.

      Cutting education costs on this level should pay for some very nice golden parachutes indeed.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Lincoln U: Redefining Words To Kill Tenure

By Professor Doom

 “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”

--I’m quoting Lewis Carroll, but insiders into higher education could be forgiven for thinking I’m quoting an administrator. I’ve met quite a few that have said the above, more or less.

  

     “Tenure” is one of those words, like “unions” and “fascism,” that we’re trained as children to instantly hate. We’re told that tenure means job-for-life, but the reality is tenure just offers a (thin) layer of protection against administrative abuse. My blog has recounted many occasions where a tenured professor has suddenly found himself out of a job, simply because he’s done something in particular to enrage a higher education administrator.

      Losing a tenured job due to administrative snit usually leads to lawsuits, of course, but there’s one way to lose a tenured job that generally doesn’t lead to a court case, because it’s written into the tenure contract: “financial exigency.” Bottom line, if there’s no money, there’s no job, and I reckon we can all agree that’s a fair reason to end a tenured faculty’s career at an institution.  

     Whenever Donald Trump says he’s for something, the mainstream media immediately launches into paroxysms of incandescent rage about how wrong he is…if he’s for it, they’re against it. My condemnation of the media for such behavior is somewhat reserved, for that is how I feel about administrative goals. If they want it, I have to be against it. The administrative track record of failure in higher education has such purity that this must be the case.

     Administration is against tenure, and constantly seeks ways to end those contracts, to thereby end the last thing keeping any level of integrity in higher education. Trouble is, those contracts are written well, it’s not an easy thing to end tenure on a wholesale level.

      Unless, of course, you change the meaning of “financial exigency.” First, let’s look at the established meaning:

“Financial exigency -- defined by the American Association of University Professors as a dire, institutionwide crisis…”

      This seems fair enough; if the whole institution is going down, then absolutely you want to toss the chattel, especially if that’s what it takes to protect those huge billowing golden parachutes for the administration.

      But, as Humpty Dumpty pointed out, the AAUP’s definition is irrelevant. What is relevant is who is master, and that’s the administration. Behold the new definition of financial exigency:

Lincoln has changed its rules to specify that financial exigency may be declared not only at the university level, but also “for specific colleges, schools, departments or programs.” Faculty members with the shortest term of service now also “will generally,” not definitively, be terminated before those with longer periods of service.

     Wait. Keep in mind, gentle reader, that the letter of the law, not any assumption of fairness, is all you can hope will be followed. So seniority will count for nothing, admin can just fire all the faculty and replace them with sub-minimum wage adjuncts, using the food banks to keep them fed because they’re paid so little.

     This isn’t just cynicism, I’ve seen the like enough times, but let me go over in detail how this will work. First, since exigency isn’t institution-wide, it can now apply to just a specific department.  Trouble is, administration sets the funding for the departments, so the university can be swimming in money, and just budget nothing for a department with tenured faculty.

     *ding* We now have a financial exigency emergency, as per the new definition. 

     The adjuncts hired for peanuts the month before will be kept, and their course loads doubled, while the tenured faculty who’ve devoted their lives to the institution are shown the door. Meanwhile, administration will award themselves 20% pay raises as a reward for how well they handled the budget crisis they themselves caused. This pay raise will eliminate the savings entirely, but admin will get a year-end bonus as well as further reward for handling the crisis. The next year, tuition will need to be raised to cover the bonuses and guaranteed administrative pay raises.

     I totally understand that most people won’t have much pity for “dead wood” professors losing their “job for life,” but I want to reinforce the extra meaning to this queer redefinition: higher education is run by an administrative caste that treats their employees as abusively as possible, forever seeking to break any contract that gives anything at all to the faculty.

      If they treat the faculty this way, why should anyone suspect that these guys will treat the kids coming onto campus fresh out of high school any better? If lifelong contracts can be switched around with no recourse, why would anyone suspect that the degree programs won’t change from “4 years” to “10 years” if admin so desires?  I've seen many students cheated due to administrative policy shenanigans already, and changing tenure will only give them  more power. Can admin be stopped from doing this, or anything else?

       Probably not, as it certainly hasn’t happened in the past, and stunts like this merely reinforce that the looting of our next generation will continue unabated.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

    

Poo Bahs Protest Trump’s “Muslim Ban”…Foolishly.

By Professor Doom

     In Game of Thrones, the academics (the Maesters), mostly stay out of politics. They have their university (The Citadel) and they send scholarly representatives to every significant castle in Westeros, to give politically neutral advice and knowledge. I know, it’s a fictional world, but it’s not too far from the real world, where the universities, at least in the recent past, stayed out of politics.

      It was a good policy, considering the university’s mission of education and research. Politicians/rulers come and go, but knowledge is eternal, and should be preserved. Picking a side in a political battle could lead to an institution’s destruction, although in the modern world that just means de-funding (at least, so I hope). 

     Now, considering how much money flowed onto campus during Obama’s reign, it’s understandable our campuses would side with the Democratic party when the Dems were in power but…the election’s over. Continuing to campaign against Trump is idiotic for our universities, because so much of our money comes, directly or indirectly, from the Federally backed student loan scam under his control.

      But why let idiocy get in the way of partisanship?

Dozens of top American colleges deliver a searing letter to Trump for 'staining the country's reputation'

     Before going further, I should mention this isn’t just at the Poo Bah level. My own campus had a special “Christmas Edition” magazine insert into the school paper. Despite all the cheery decorations of holly and such on the cover, the editorials inside the Christmas edition still had no trouble calling Trump a racist, homophobic misogynist, among other names, and calling those who voted for him much the same, and I’m not paraphrasing much here. And that’s when the paper is filled with the Christmas spirit…I’d hate to see what names they’d use the rest of the year (I don’t read the campus paper regularly).

     As per the last election, around half the country support Trump. How stupid do the editors at the school paper need to be to not see a problem with insulting half their readership? I would have written a letter to the editors, protesting insulting their readers so, but I saw little need to risk being fired for speaking out…

     Anyway, back to today’s topic where four dozen Poo Bahs, obviously not living in fear like typical academic workers, felt the need to send a “searing” letter to Trump for, well, appealing to half the people in the county and keeping his campaign promises to them (admittedly, this is over-the-top wacky behavior compared to previous presidents).

      What was their issue?

"This action unfairly targets seven predominantly Muslim countries in a manner inconsistent with America's best principles and greatest traditions. We welcome outstanding Muslim students and scholars from the United States and abroad, including the many who come from the seven affected countries...This executive order is dimming the lamp of liberty and staining the country's reputation. We respectfully urge you to rectify the damage done by this order."

     It’s so weird how the mainstream media has presented Trump’s “ban.” It’s not actually a ban, it’s a moratorium (i.e., a short term event). It’s also not targeting Muslims, as the countries involved only represent a small percent of the world’s Muslim population (even the Trump-hating Post admits only about 90,000 people are affected, out of 1.6 billion Muslims…roughly .005%). During WW2, the US was pretty wary of accepting refugees from Nazi Germany. Would it have been called a Christian ban if we didn’t accept refugees from a country we were bombing back then?

     His “ban” targets 7 countries, the same 7 countries Obama targeted in 2016 (and did so similarly in 2015, and again similarly in 2011). Why didn’t the Poo Bahs give this searing letter to Obama, when he targeted these countries multiple times? Is there something magical about this year that makes such things “unfair” as they say?

      Trump’s moratorium targets refugees, not established green card holders, or holders of other official documentation. Do the Poo Bahs not know these things?

     Now, I grant the implementation of this ban inconvenienced quite a few people, and I sure don’t support doing it this way. Truth be told, I think the US should stop bombing these countries, as it’s certain US bombs are creating quite a number of these refugees…I’m not suspecting anyone in Trump’s cabinet can see this point of view, however. So, if we’re going to bomb these counties, then, yes, it’s prudent not to openly allow people with good reason to hate us to just come to the US—the moratorium is sane, and consistent with our current policies that are not at war with us, as evil as they are. It beats the insanity of previous administrations, I concede.

     The Poo Bah’s letter, however, seems to be pretty ignorant. “America’s best principles and greatest traditions”? Wait, what? Outside of Western Europe, the United States has had a pretty strong tradition of restricting access to the country to immigrants from elsewhere (in the 19^th century, Chinese immigrants in particular were quite restricted).

      Yes, Muslim scholars, some 1/200^th of 1% of them, are now having difficulty coming into this country, and yes, that’s unfortunate. It’s funny, the Poo Bahs are forever trying to cram internet classes on our students, so, they do know about the internet. Can these scholars just get by with the internet for the 90 days the moratorium is in effect (assuming the courts don’t shut it down completely)? Skype and e-mail aren’t that expensive, after all. This letter just seems a needless, pointless risk.

      You can read the letter in full, and it’s not quite as “searing” as the media tried to present it (the story of this letter kind of died, since the mainstream media right now is going nuts being outraged over every single thing our extremely active president is doing).  I’m just so puzzled why the Poo Bahs felt the need for this protest. One commenter points out the risk they are taking:

Under US Law, these colleges have received federal funding which falls under “grants.” The Colleges, as well as the Sanctuary Cities, are under obligation to uphold all US Federal Laws to receive this federal funding. Failure to completely comply with the Federal Laws requires the US Government to rescind all Federal Funding under these “grant” laws. The President stands empowered under US Law to pull the federal funding from anyone receiving such, is not fully compliant with US Federal Law. These colleges may well desire to re-consider their stand in opposition to the President as the Government is required to pull all of that funding under US law.

     Now, the universities aren’t disobeying Trump’s rule, just protesting. I guess I could commend the Poo Bahs for their courage, but the above comment is why our universities really shouldn’t be taking sides. It’s clear this “searing letter” is just more Democratic partisanship echoing the media echo chamber on this Trump “outrage.”

      Bottom line, this moratorium will hurt scholarship regarding 1/200th of 1% of Muslims, for less than one semester. This is a bad thing, and worthy of a protest…I don’t like it at all that the President can inconvenience people who have committed no crime. That said, the question keeps coming back to me:

      Why are none of our Poo Bahs clever enough to understand that dropping over 25,000 bombs during the last year of Obama’s reign did far more to hurt humanity than this travel moratorium?

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com