terrapinsanity.com

Improving the community environment surrounding campus is correctly seen by our leaders as critical to our future. It’s hard to recruit top faculty who would need only one visit to learn there is no safe or affordable housing to be had, for example. Their choice is between a grid-locked, race-obsessed county whose crime rates start with the officials running it and go up from there, or commuting either from a place where $1 million gets you a little fixer-upper or an affordable locale that’s a good two hours away.

Even in the last week leadership has canvassed faculty and staff for input on housing (though questions in that survey look jiggered so answers can only justify some pet projects no matter what – likely the topic of another post later.)

They don’t need to conduct a faculty survey to see the obvious, however, and that’s the seedy environment you see driving in on Route 1. No, we’re not talking about Madame Flora (the palm reader), the tattoo parlors, all-night diners or boarded-up car dealerships. We refer to the newly-erected Varsity.

Today’s Diamondback reports on the quality of life in this campus-launched venture (one that needs a lot more study to see who is really making money on this one.) It quotes property manager Barbara Steinke’s memo to residents thus:

“My previous communications have been polite and informative, but now I’m forced to take a stronger approach,” she wrote before explaining that it was “completely unacceptable” for residents and their guests to be “tearing directional and safety signs off of walls, stealing pictures, punching holes in walls, destroying exit signs, breaking glass in stairwells and hallways, vomiting in the hallway, gum on the carpet, dumping trash in the hallways.”

We can’t remember even the first time we encountered this kind of activity in Madame Flora’s parking lot up Route 1.

If UM doesn’t want a seedy College Park environment, then maybe the campus should stop building it.

Yup – for three weeks in a row the men’s football team looked simply fabulous.

Too bad they didn’t play the same way. Those new uniforms are just to die for. And they do.

The report of a committee’s examination of staff complaints about abuse was released, and we commend the full read to you. It is a masterpiece. But not quite in the way one might think, or hope.

The committee focused narrowly on issues raised about working conditions and climate for a small portion of the whole College Park family, concluded there really aren’t systemic issues and issued recommendations for the future. In many respects, the campus declares that it didn’t do anything wrong and promises to take steps so it doesn’t do anything wrong again. Everything is fine. Now go back to recruiting and fund raising.

Let’s be very clear: the Facilities issues very much needed close scrutiny. Fixes – perhaps more than flagged in the report – are needed. But the overall process followed by the campus in this study this misses broader issues altogether – ones that the campus successfully buried by having gotten rid of people who tried to raise them in the first place.

To see how narrow this report is on its face, please check the full report for yourself (downloadable from the Diamondback site linked above) and consider how the entire document fails to mention the word “ombudsman” once.

The masterpiece? Political, of course. By limiting their consideration to narrow (even if important) issues, the committee avoids any danger of accidentally exposing systemic problems (or ones that might blow back personally on members of leadership), then they get to declare this a closed matter. Any new rumblings? “Old news,” can be the line. “It’s fixed.” They’re free to oversell this report and deflect further scrutiny. Masterpiece indeed.

The new list that makes campus administrators giddy with terror and delight is out – the US News and World Report campus guide. Congrats and a tip of the hat to our colleagues at UMBC, which for the third year running topped the list of up and coming schools.

More impressive, UMBC’s ranking among top northeast schools committed to undergraduate education – number four after Dartmouth, Princeton and Yale. That’s good company, which notably omitted the Maryland flagship campus in College Park. Or as one of our colleagues remarked upon hearing this news: “We still have undergraduates?”

The Chronicle reports of an Illinois official who has been suspended for posting “erroneous” data about grades and test scores of new students admitted to a law school.

And a chill wind suddenly blows through the Mitchell Building’s inner sanctums …

Fox News reports on the latest research enabled by internet Cloud technology, which confirms the old lore about monkeys and typewriters. Will enough monkeys with typewriters eventually type the complete works of Shakespeare? A technologist in Nevada is harnessing an army of virtual monkeys to show just that.

A previous effort to do this with real monkeys failed to sound like the Bard, and we quote thus:

In 2003, scientists at the Paignton Zoo and the University of Plymouth, in Devon, England, reportedly left six Sulawesi Crested Macaque monkeys with a computer keyboard for a month. Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages consisting largely of the letter S, they began by attacking the keyboard with a stone, then proceeded to urinate and defecate on it.

Having just successfully recreated a typical faculty meeting, however, the six Sulawesi Crested Macaque monkeys were deemed leadership material and promoted.

The twitterverse was busy debating Maryland Terp’s new football uniform. Some like it, some think it is a crime. No seriously, it might be a crime. The jersey is based on the Maryland state flag, and it is against the law to place advertising on the flag (hmm, too bad Under Armor) or use it for crass commercial purposes. You be the judge …

CRIMINAL LAW
TITLE 10. CRIMES AGAINST PUBLIC HEALTH, CONDUCT, AND SENSIBILITIES
SUBTITLE 7. MARYLAND UNIFORM FLAG LAW

Md. CRIMINAL LAW Code Ann. § 10-703 (2011)

§ 10-703. Marked flag and merchandise

(a) Scope of section. — This section applies to a flag of the United States or of this State, or a flag that is authorized by law of the United States or of this State.

(b) Prohibited — Advertising marking. — For exhibition or display, a person may not place or cause to be placed a word, figure, mark, picture, design, or advertisement of any nature on a flag.

(c) Same — Public display of marked flag. — A person may not publicly exhibit a flag with a word, figure, mark, picture, design, or advertisement printed, painted, or produced on or attached to the flag.

(d) Same — Merchandise marked with flag. — A person may not publicly display for sale, manufacture, or otherwise, or sell, give, or possess for sale or for use as a gift or for any other purpose, an article of merchandise or receptacle on which a flag is produced or attached to advertise, decorate, or mark the merchandise.

(e) Penalty. — A person who violates this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction is subject to a fine not exceeding $ 500.

HISTORY: An. Code 1957, art. 27, §§ 82, 85; 2002, ch. 26, § 2.

Be sure to consider the review on today’s Wall Street Journal of The Fall of the Faculty (subtitle: “The rise of the all-administrative university and why it matters”.)

A teaser: “Mr. Ginsberg argues that universities have degenerated into poorly managed pseudo-corporations controlled by bureaucrats so far removed from research and teaching that they have barely any idea what these activities involve.”

Good Lord – he pegged it! Maybe this could be the next First Year Book?