What's your costume for Halloween?

3 Dartmouth profs accused of serious misconduct are on leave [bostonglobe.com]

The flava:

HANOVER, N.H. — Dartmouth College says it has placed three psychology professors on paid leave and restricted their access to campus pending the conclusion of investigations into allegations of ‘‘serious misconduct.’’

College spokeswoman Diana Lawrence said in a statement Wednesday that Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences professors Todd Heatherton, Bill Kelley and Paul Whalen are on paid leave.

The article:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/10/26/dartmouth-profs-accused-serious-misconduct-are-leave/GBh64Q5HhPaHYxTOnA3bLO/story.html

Big Hungry

What's on your mind, proffie?

Scenic spot replaces dumpster at site of Brock Turner assault [stanforddaily.com]

The flava:

Following re-landscaping outside the Kappa Alpha house, a stone-lined area with two benches and a fountain has replaced the dumpster by which former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner sexually assaulted a woman. The space was created in remembrance of the widely publicized 2015 crime.

Stanford plans to install a plaque on the landmark engraved with a passage from the viral 2016 letter that Turner’s victim — who has remained anonymous as “Emily Doe” — read to Turner at his sentencing.

“The quote, like the rest of the letter, is very powerful,” said Frederick I. Richman Professor of Law Michele Dauber, who proposed the project to the University and advocated for it with the consent of Doe, a family friend of hers.

“This is a letter that really affected, deeply, everyone who read it,” Dauber said. “I’m sure that it will be appropriate and powerful.”

The article:
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2017/10/04/scenic-spot-replaces-dumpster-at-site-of-brock-turner-assault/

College Advice I Wish I’d Taken [nytimes.com]

By Susan Shapiro

I taught my first class at Columbia University’s M.F.A. program this month, and even though I’ve been teaching college writing since 1993, I initially felt a little intimidated by the school’s regal campus. That, and regretful.

I enjoyed going to college at the University of Michigan, an hour from home, but my secret humiliation is: I was the type of mediocre student I now disdain. As a freshman, I cared about my friends, my boyfriend and my poetry. Or, I cared about what my boyfriend thought of my friends, what my friends thought of him, and what they thought of my poetry about him. Here’s what I wish I’d known and done differently. . . .

The whole gosh-darned article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/opinion/college-advice-professor.html

A Day of Jay.

I lied. I won't tell you about the whole day. I about had a stroke I got so mad at a group of freshmen who are the most maddening group I've had in the past 15 years.

But as I was FINALLY leaving campus after a nearly 10 hour day (I only teach 3 courses, but you know how you can get caught up in things), I watched a student commit 3 different jaywalking infractions in about 25 seconds total.

First of all she did the classic jaywalk, right across a busy street that borders campus, halfway between 2 perfectly marked crosswalks. Cars honked. She had to stand on the double yellow line for a few seconds while cars had to decide to simply stop and let her complete her crime or keep going and risk killing her. (I was too far away to kill her. Just sayin'.)

Then she got to a real corner with crosswalks, and she crossed against the red, holding up one hand when she saw a car hustling along at about the normal 35 mph speed. She had started against the red without looking too closely, and lucky she was young and nimble and lucky the driver actually had his/her eyes on the road.

2 down. 1 to go.

Now, on another legal corner, she paused, and then walked across the street ON A GREEN ARROW designed to let cars going in her direction take a left turn in front of her. The actual walk signal she faced was red. RED HAND! Wait. But she moved through the crosswalk and 3 cars had to stop in waiting traffic for the princess to go across - now, suddenly languidly. And as I crossed the crosswalk myself I could see her shaking her head, and I heard her say to nobody, "What the fuck?"

Three different times she put herself and others in harm's way. At the very least she inconvenienced or impeded 10 cars in traffic.

And I know if you were to ask her, that she'd say everything was someone else's fault.

This is my complaint today. She, just her, not every one of my students, thinks it's all about her. I know from the display what kind of student she'd be. How she'd act in a restaurant. What kind of grownup she's going to make.

NCAA defines "Academic Fraud"

somewhat differently than I would:

But after a three-and-half-year investigation, and despite the institution even agreeing that it had engaged in academic fraud, the NCAA said it couldn’t definitively conclude that the “paper courses” in the department of African and Afro-American studies had been designed and offered as an effort to benefit athletes alone. Thus, according to the
NCAA's Committee on Infractions, which adjudicates allegations of wrongdoing, they did not violate the group's rules.

Maybe the people making the decision all played football in their youths, and are feeling the effects?

There is, however, some slightly-better news:

Instead, the NCAA will forward its decision to the university's accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, which can address academic inconsistencies. Previously, the body had placed the university on a yearlong probation in 2015, ending in 2016, for violating seven accreditation standards, one of them being academic integrity. It was the strongest punishment the accreditor could deliver besides revoking accreditation entirely.

There are times when I think accreditors (who also frown on things like all-adjunct faculties and unqualified instructors of record) are the last hope of civilization, or at least the higher ed subset thereof. 

Full story here.  

The Search Is On!

Big Thirsty

If Adolf Hitler gave a lecture on your campus, would you

A)  shout him down and not allow him to speak?
B)  stand and turn your back to him while he spoke?
C)  shoot him?
D)  other:_______________________

thirsty

The most dangerous person at my school is . . . 



_______________________________

entrepreneurship

The flava:
A Medgar Evers College professor has been accused by the feds of running his own fake school in his real employer's name.


The article:
http://gothamist.com/2017/09/30/medgar_evers_college_professor_char.php

How thinking works?

Big Thirsty at the end of the day

One student gave me a big bag of Hershey's Kisses this week.

Four other students earned excellent grades on a hard test.

Q. What's the best thing one (or more) of your students did this week?

A. 

Update on the Chicago proffie murderer (from somebody you've absolutely never heard of before)

I've been following this sporadically because I was once a friend of one of the suspects and I had been hoping for some kind of alternative ending, so make up a faker name than the fake name I already use.

But every time there was a statement on his behalf, it sounded worse and worse. The point where my heart broke was when it sunk in that this was never really his boyfriend, he was a target all along.

No one has officially said that, but the tone-deaf attempt to show righteousness by "teaching in prison" really drove it home.

And it's not just him; obviously his lawyer makes lots of money despite being 100% detached from reality. What precisely illustrates the narcissism isn't that he's teaching in prison. It's that he's teaching biology in prison. His friends sent him books so he could do so.

I spent over a decade in community college. I worked with countless young men who JUST managed to make enough good choices to be there instead of prison.

Your black plague expertise was your self indulgence you could afford before you became a murderer. You squandered it. It's obtuse and it no longer makes you special.

My at-risk students couldn't fucking read, asshole, they couldn't read. Start there. It's not about what you WANT to do or what YOU specialized in. It's about them, you fucking deranged narcissist.

Until I read this story, I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was especially sad about this psychoasshole professor murder case - but then it suddenly crystallized. He's above it all and felt like trying murder, like it was trying some new trendy varietal or something. So from his million dollar coop, he found a schlub no one would notice to help, and then he dipped into the blue collar world where he found a hair dresser to "date".  Because he's a professor and certainly a hairdresser's rank makes him disposable, if that pleases million dollar coop proffy, right?

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/sneed-prof-accused-of-murder-embraces-teaching-spirituality-in-jail/

More Ugliness.

A renowned University of Rochester professor who has worked here for a decade has been accused in a federal complaint of having sexual relationships and using illegal drugs with students; making inappropriate, humiliating or condescending comments to and about female students and faculty; and pressuring them to meet with him alone.

More:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/10/01/university-rochester-sex-scandal/720144001/

Monday Magic in October

If you could go back and change something you did in graduate school, what would it be?