Monday, March 07, 2005

Unconventional recruiting tools

While Summers kerfuffles, it appears that things are a bit messier out West:

"The president of the University of Colorado submitted her resignation today amid allegations that the school's athletic department had used sex and alcohol as recruiting tools for its football program....Ms. Hoffman has headed the state's largest public university system for five years. Her resignation comes as the university grapples with the issue of the athletic scandal and also as it awaits the results of a special chancellor's investigation to determine what action to take, if any, against a professor who referred to the victims of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 as "little Eichmanns."


That's one hell of a university, with both the pre-modern problem of brutish rapists and the postmodern one of Bush=Hitler. This is enough to infuriate feminists, neocons, and reasonable people. (These are not necessarily three mutually exclusive categories.) Now, professors may be allowed to have idiotic ideas, and college football players may be allowed to have their way with whomever they please, but that doesn't make it right.

Now, to make light of an obviously serious situation: What other departments might lure students with which other nefarious means?

- The French department could lure prospective students with wine and illegal raw-milk cheeses.

- The physics department could offer recruits a chance to blow up the country of their choice if they prove they can design the appropriate weapon.

- The economics deparment could hook students up with some fine insider-trading opportunities....

The possibilities are endless, but so is the list of Hebrew vocab words I need to have memorized by 8:30 am tomorrow.

2 comments:

David Schraub said...

Hey, that's what I was doing last night! And tommorow, oral exams. Hebrew vocab...bane of my existence. But it is nice to find a kindred spirit in the blogosphere.

Maureen said...

"if they prove they can design the appropriate weapon"

Considering those two guys who made a breeder reactor during Scav Hunt...