I thought about this guy the other day when I attended a college fair in Rochester and saw that UC Davis had a booth. They were the most distant school by at least a thousand miles, and there’s no need to wonder why: parents don’t want to send their precious snowflakes someplace where this could happen.
The independent report on the pepper spray incident came out last week, (via) and it’s a scathing tale of incompetence pointing directly at Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. Even so, I’ll bet that she isn’t going anywhere. Freddie’s a lot closer to the issues with universities than I am, so perhaps there’s something more subtle than my simple view that Katehi is a typical administrator and therefore a survivor. In other words, she’s an ambitious, smart academic who got bored with her chosen discipline and instead decided that she wanted to make a big salary and taste a little bit of power. So, she learned to mouth the appropriate platitudes about “the sense of community” and “consensus” while at the same time sending the right signals to the cash cows on campus that she wouldn’t get in the way of the ethically dubious tactics they use to entice government and industry to funnel money into their programs.
Until those patrons tire of her, Katehi will hold on to power, and this report will have accomplished her aim, which was to delay the day of judgment until a time long after everyone had forgotten her role in one of nastier incidents in the whole Occupy saga.
samara morgan
oh yeah, freddie.
in case you didn’t notice several commenters (besides yours truly) debunked de Bores post.
plus, freddie is a libertarian on context.
“I got mine”.
why do you and Cole keep pushing this asswipe fire bagger on the juicitariat?
is he fucking PAYING YOU?
arguingwithsignposts
@samara morgan: Wow, so you’ve gone from stalking FPers on their own threads to spit-speckled rage anytime their names are even brought up. Nice.
samara morgan
In a way this is the mirror inverse of conservatives and Derbyshire.
NRO firing the Derb was a measure of how overtly racist one can be and still be a sanctioned conservative.
so my question, mixie…..is how libertarian/firebagger can someone be and still be embraced by Balloon Juice?
ornery_curmudgeon
I do believe samara is a ‘leftist’ … and that they are not the same as Liberals.
Walker
As a provost or dean, maybe. As a chancellor, not sure. And the only reason she gets that much is because this is a public system.
The equivalent of a chancellor at a private university is the president (not provost). The sole job of the president is to make the university look good and raise money. Something like this would demonstrate extreme incompetency, would have you dismissed by the board of trustees.
dmsilev
@samara morgan: Your Captain Ahab act is more boring than anything else.
samara morgan
@arguingwithsignposts: mixie linked him.
one question for you AWS…..is de Bore now “Our Freddie” like Kain was “Our EDK”?
Schlemizel
@arguingwithsignposts:
Yes, and incapable of ever letting anything go even if disproved, nursing tiny grudges into huge (in SM’s mind anyway) grievances and openly hostile, unnecessarily insulting and provocative (and not in a good way).
I think thats all been well established. I tried some time ago to engage SM to see if there was some way to understand them or get them to rejoin rational conversations. It ended badly. I think the only thing now is to just ignore them.
samara morgan
@dmsilev: question for you.
can libertarian-firebaggers like freddie and glenn greenwald be true liberals?
samara morgan
@Schlemizel: you doan like me because i torpedoed your post.
tant pis
Schlemizel
On thread:
I’m sure the officer in the picture was punished so that means everything is OK now, right?
Certainly no need for finger pointing or playing the blame game. No sir, that won’t serve any useful purpose.
*SIGH*
samara morgan
@Schlemizel: ON THREAD:
samara morgan
why don’t you ax yourselves juicers…..why did Cole and mixie push Ron Paul fanboi EDK so hard?
Why are they pushing Firebagger Freddie de Bore on you?
in the interest of “civil discourse”? Like Cole defending metaphorical nun-rape and Glenn Greenwald?
/snort
samara morgan
@ornery_curmudgeon: im a liberal. and a prelim eventer.
you know what dressage test i ride, don’t you?
Yevgraf
At the risk of bringing this thread back to the subject of college and away from Sammy’s tiresome and insane dribblings, I just want to point out that every time some meritorious inheritor decides to bestow some largesse out of a sense of guilt, a hobby interest or a need for a deduction, he creates a new set of obligations to be funded. New buildings need furnishing, equipment, teaching staff, maintenance staff, utilities, etc. Newly endowed chairs are seldom fully funded, and there will always be attendant expense to the college.
So add that cause to the analysis of why higher ed is unaffordable.
middlewest
If only there where some way to get Matoko obsessed with that guy who does those soccer threads instead. 10 posts in a row of crazed rantings about Real Madrid would actually be pretty funny.
greennotGreen
I want to defend administrative academics from mistermix’s broadside. My former boss has held dean/vice chancellor or the equivalent positions at more than one school. The reason she moved up the ladder was to effect research policy globally. She didn’t need the money or the prestige. Now, it is true that at one place she was replaced by a political self-promoter whose effectiveness has yet to be determined. The latter is the kind of person who’s a survivor.
debit
And yet another thread jacked by m_c. Awesome.
Joe Bohemouth
@samara morgan: I have to say that IMHO as a semi-pro pretentious Marxist that firebaggers in general inc. Samara and Greenwald are definitely liberals and not leftists.
A class-conscious leftist would understand – not be patient with or understanding of, but understand – that there are real material constraints on individual political actors working within the US system of class rule.
You have to be thoroughly hoodwinked by the liberal ideology of politics as a free marketplace of ideas to think that Obama could just up and say “o hai d00dz, lets do single payer” or “oh yah lets dismantle the surveillance state” and it would happen.
mistermix
@greennotGreen: So do you think your former boss was typical or an exception to the general rule?
lacp
So this is a post about UC-deBoer? Very confusing.
Raven
@samara morgan: Hey goofball, who you callin a moron? Don’t make me come down there.
samara morgan
@greennotGreen: heres another thread i have jacked.
are you having a bromance with freddie like mixie and Cole are?
Mark S.
I just can’t believe how expensive college has gotten: About $48,000 a year for out-of-state for UC-Davis. In-state will still run you $25,000 a year. That is seriously 4 or 5 times what my in-state tuition was in the 90’s. And except for a few fields, a bachelor’s doesn’t guarantee shit in terms of a job.
I’ve bitched ad nauseaum here about how we spend twice as much on health care and get the 33rd best results, and now I wonder if the same thing is happening in education. Is there anything this country doesn’t do in the stupidest, most expensive way? We spend almost as much as the rest of the world combined on the military and constantly lose because nobody fights like that anymore and we’re too stupid to adapt. Our Congress is so dysfunctional it makes the Roman Senate of the late Republic seem like the Founding Fathers.
Sorry, I just needed to vent.
ETA: And I didn’t even get started on Samara!
Ash Can
Samara isn’t a liberal, or a leftist, or anything else. Samara is a samara-ist.
samara morgan
@debit: ditto you.
but I’m picking on Cole here, not de Bore.
BethanyAnne
@samara morgan: Gosh, it’s almost like your behavior has convinced them that giving in to a bully is the wrong thing to do.
samara morgan
@Mark S.: now why do you THINK that is happening?
not because of what freddie said and mixie agrees with…….
all those fancy buildings and cafeteria menus……
could it be the “freed” market has begun to cannibalize the middle class in the domains of housing, healthcare, and education under the onset of resource (cheap energy) starvation?
lol, of course not.
debit
@samara morgan: Honey, being proud of your thread jacking is like being proud of spraying your explosive diarrhea all over the bathroom. Neither takes any particular skill.
Ash Can
And on topic, @Mark S.: I’ve long suspected that the US has been falling further and further behind numerous other developed countries due to our refusal to invest in our nation’s future, viz. education. I don’t see how the US can maintain a position of leadership at this rate, even in our lifetimes.
samara morgan
@BethanyAnne: i hate libertarians. even libertatians in liberalsheeps clothing like Freddie.
if you morons would just actually read what Firebagger Freddie is saying, you would run him off BJ on a rail with tar and metaphorical feathers,
barath
@Mark S.:
Mark – I hear you on that. Here’s a chart of “senior administrators” vs. faculty in the UC system:
http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/83/facultymgt2.png
The administrators are squeezing out the important functions of the university, like teaching and research.
Anyway, when I think about the state of education, health care, energy, climate, the judicial system, … it’s hard to think we’re headed in the right direction.
HRA
Not too long ago, our U. President sent out an email after a killing at another U., in which he said any signs of erratic behavior must and should be reported to the campus police. There was an online exam provided by HR which had to be taken as well on this subject. It repeated the President’s advice.
An occurrence of this nature did happen a week later with an employee. The manager of the person who acted it out went to the campus police to report it. Now this manager has found out he has become unpopular with his own higher uppers. Lesson learned the hard way.
This is how it is in the academic environment.
samara morgan
@debit: i just punk’d John Cole with his own words. of course I’m proud.
the internet is forevah.
;)
SW
In other news, I enjoyed the quote from Republican Strategist and Romney Campaign advisor Ted Nugent from the NRA event.
DecidedFenceSitter
@Mark S.: Yeah, my little girl just turned 1, and we got her 529 started the other day. The amount that we need, per month, to pack away is insane. Between 500-600 dollars. So we’re going to do our best and hope something breaks between now and then.
samara morgan
@barath: consider US global ranking since NCLB.
from third in science and 4th in math, to 25th in science and 30th in math.
NCLB is a ‘freed’ market solution– schools are awarded funding for performance.
Libertarians and conservatives would like you to believe (like freddie) that luxury “resort” colleges are driving up the cost. They also want you to believe that the owwies have no basis for “whining” about 600% increases in tuition.
Ash Can
@SW: You mean his prediction that he’d end up either dead or in prison if Obama’s re-elected? I hope that was a promise.
Pavonis
@Mark S.:
I attended U.C. Davis starting around 2000. I’m not one who keeps careful financial records but my total burn rate of tuition + room&board + everything else while a student there was under $15,000 per year. If tuition alone is now $25,000 … even assuming an inflation rate of ~3%, it’s clear the costs are increasing much more quickly. Yes, U.C. Davis is a really nice school but it’s becoming crazy expensive.
Linda Featheringill
“precious snowflakes”
You don’t have children, do you?
redshirt
My paranoid side tells me this (the cost of college) is all part of the master plan by the Powers that Be. To wit: Make a college degree necessary to do most if not all non-blue collar jobs (they already shipped most of those overseas); make the cost of a college degree exorbitant as such that all but the richest must go into massive debt in order to pay for it.
An indebted person is a slave, working for the banks one way or another.
Add in the same dynamic with the costs of home ownership, and you can sell the illusion of “freedom” while most of the serfs are indebted and only able to spend money at the company store.
Rock
Off-topic thought experiment, what if Michelle Obama had said: “…it’s our turn” like Ann Romney.
samara morgan
@debit: im a child of the web.
i love it so.
its like Omar Khayyam
Yutsano
I see the child is in a snit…
As far as the UC Davis incident goes, the fact that Katehi still has her job tell you more about that institution than anything. In other words, they will make minor cosmetic changes. That’s it.
samara morgan
@redshirt: its not planned.
its evolutionary economics.
WaterGirl
I’m not so sure they won’t ditch Katehi. She was chancellor at the University of Illinois, and there were issues with her here, too, an admissions scandal that caused quite a ruckus. She didn’t last long after that, as I recall.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@samara morgan:
You have made one-third of the posts in this thread so far. Do you even have a life or are you just as annoying IRL and thus have no friends to hang with?
Really, is this stalking that important to you?
Mark S.
@samara morgan:
I don’t actually know. As for college as a resort, for $50,000 a year, I would expect saunas and full-time masseuses on every fucking floor of the 12X12 room I’m paying 2K a month for.
Joking aside, @barath: and others have suggested it has to do with an overload of administrative bullshit jobs. That, and less taxpayer subsidization, might be the case. But do those things account for a 500% increase? I don’t know.
I do know that it’s an extreme problem.
Satanicpanic
@Pavonis: It’s not that high- the link Mark S put up says it’s about $12,000 for tuition. That’s not that much more than it was when I went in the 90’s.
Keith G
Jobs like her’s are largely about the money: Are current funds wisely administered and are new veins of revenue successfully mined. As long as Katehi is good at these things, she will have legs.
S-Curve
Interesting (to me, at least) that the report quotes both the Davis and Berkeley administrators as saying that their primary concern was that an outsider in the Occupy movement would have sex with a female undergraduate and that it’s thinking of the “daughters” that motivated the crackdown.
Noticed that they didn’t talk about crime (or, more specifically, rape) in this context — it’s not at all clear that the “unthinkable act” mentioned is anything other than unsanctioned sex for undergrad women.
brantl
@samara morgan: You haven’t torpedoed any of my posts, and I don’t like you. Spit and spite -flecked rage just isn’t that fun, in the long term. Get some therapy.
Raven
@Odie Hugh Manatee: She is sick, remember that.
Mark S.
@Pavonis:
For me, it hit home when I was reading an article and as an aside, it said that out of state tuition at University of Florida was $30,000. WTF?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Raven:
Do I have to? ;)
Satchel
@Linda Featheringill:
I noticed that too, and wondered what function “special snowflakes” was meant to serve in the context of the argument.
some guy
@Mark S.:
$28,000, actually, but the same ballpark. roughly 15% of my students pay that rate, and the U is pushing to add as many out-of-state, foreign nationals as it can round up. the tuition/fees for in-state is $5,700 (most of it paid directly by the state under the Bright Futures program) so you can see why non-Floridians are such a valuable commodity.
PS: out of state grad students pay $45,000 in tuition and fees. jackpot!
Raven
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Nah, just reminding myself how useless it is to engage with her.
Litlebritdifrnt
Someone upthread asked about the state of US education compared to the rest of the world. I know when I was looking into moving back to the UK at some point I contacted quite a few colleges to inquire as to whether or not my husband’s teaching credentials would be accepted to teach over there. I was told by more than one college that a US Bachelor degree is considered the equivalent of an Associates degree and he would have to go back to college for two years to get a “proper bachelor’s degree” (their words) in order to be able to teach, unless he somehow managed to get a job at an American school over there. It is one of the reasons that we ended up changing our minds about moving back.
MariedeGournay
@samara morgan: Isn’t there a WOW thread you need bitching about your pallie on?
samara morgan
@brantl: no, i just don’t believe in mixiecole kumbayah “civil discourse”. firebagger freddie is just here to farm page clicks, zactly like “Our EDK”, and its obvi to me at least that Cole and Mix are aiding and abetting him just like they did Kain.
we are NOT THE SAME.
its a problem of isomorphics and the biological basis of behavior.
samara morgan
@MariedeGournay: i dont have a pallie. they are too goody-goody, like Cole.
;)
samara morgan
@Raven: you have never “engaged” with me.
quit chur whining.
samara morgan
@Litlebritdifrnt: do you think that NCLB is largely responsible for that?
Because the rest of the world isn’t taking America’s standardized tests.
NCLB baldly states all american children shall be above average.
the only way to execute on that is to redefine average in the test or teach to the test.
mistermix
@Linda Featheringill: I do have a precious snowflake, actually.
Villago Delenda Est
@samara morgan:
To do that, we’d have to descend to your level of paranoia and mental midgetry and most of us are simply not willing to go lower than pre-school, dearest.
samara morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: how do you parse this then?
sounds to me like Firebagger Freddie gotz his.
samara morgan
@mistermix: and you’re a buckeye.
/recoils in horror
priscianusjr
“smart academic who got bored with her chosen discipline”
Not necessarily. I wonder if you realize that universities pay their administrators a lot better than most of their teaching staff (unless they’re so-called superstars), and more and more of the budget goes towards administration. Hmmm, you don’t suppose that might be because it’s the administrators that determine the budget allocations? Anyway, it’s another great example of the priorities of American universities today!
Chyron HR
@samara morgan:
I don’t often agree with Republicans, but I’m starting to think they have a point about requiring people to speak English.
Keith G
@Litlebritdifrnt: The key to our eventual demise is that now it seems that every activity in our society “must” be monetized. There was a time when most colleges existed to provide a quality academic education to our folks.
Now it seems that the only quality pursued with vigor is a quality return on investment. Even the state run academy seems to have morphed into a shell game where elites work feverishly to pool large sums of money to be used for their own benefit. Our collective epitaph may well read, “They knew the price of everything, but the value of nothing.”
samara morgan
@Chyron HR: i speak l33t, old person. ima txter.
srsly, this is a combox on the interwebz……not a doctoral dissertation.
samara morgan
@Keith G:
the “freed” market is an ecophagy.
whatchu gunna do about it?
WaterGirl
@Chyron HR: Most of this thread is useless, filled with useless posts from one person, but this was very funny!
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Mark S.:
And IMO the root cause is the same for each: Short-sighted middlemen, in it solely for the profit.
samara morgan
@WaterGirl: i thought this was funnie.
srsly, this is a combox on the interwebz……not a doctoral dissertation.
samara morgan
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: nah. its the Republican Brain.
tactics only.
in Game Theory 101 we learned strategy beats tactics in the iterated game.
gaz
There’s a really informative banned book series by a right-winger militant, of which I used to own the hard copies. Sadly, I now only have them in PDF.
The series is called Poor Man’s James Bond, and there are 4 volumes.
Now, the paranoid winger that wrote them may have been crazier than a shithouse rat, but he knew his chemistry.
Anyway, one of the very useful concoctions in this book is pepper spray, which you can easily produce in bulk with an old coffee pot.
Water balloons, people. And your local GOP HQ. I’ll leave you to put those pieces together. If anyone wants a copy of these tomes – ping me and I’ll give you a torrent link.
;)
samara morgan
@gaz: so you think we should fight back, instead of holding hands with the firebaggers and libertarians?
Villago Delenda Est
@samara morgan:
Tactics are used to fight battles.
Strategy is used to fight a war.
gene108
Samara’s living up to her namesake. Mention Freddie’s name and instantly she appears on your blog. No pesky waiting a week :-)
gaz
@samara morgan: I don’t care what you do.
gaz
ahh – good old TPB. Turns out I don’t have to source a torrent after all: http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/4074733/Kurt_Saxon_-_The_Poor_Mans_James_Bond_(All_Vols)
have fun
JustMe
In other words, she’s an ambitious, smart academic who got bored with her chosen discipline and instead decided that she wanted to make a big salary and taste a little bit of power.
In fairness, Katehi was one of the top scholars in her field when she was an active researcher. I wouldn’t say she was “bored” so much as “got to the top of the mountain” and decided it was time to find something else to do. The other route she could have done was found/head some kind of large university-affiliated research center, but going the dean-provost-chancellor-president route was also fair enough.
Origuy
I’m sure UC Davis is having problems attracting students, but I think there is another reason why they are at a fair in Rochester. Upstate New York is a wine-growing region and Davis has one of the top viticulture programs in the country.
goblue72
@samara morgan: awww… Did Freddie pick you up in a bar one night, bring you back to your place, talk you into some ATM, and then not call the next day? Feeling a little jilted? So sad, so sad…
gaz
@samara morgan: Also, never use “we” where it concerns you and I. I regard you with contempt, and would never throw my chips in with you, child.
Bob
@Walker:
Private universities don’t have protests.
kwallio
Actually I doubt UC Davis is havingg problems attracting students. Admission rates are down drastically all over the UC system, so I’m sure UC Davis will have no problem filling spots this year.
samara morgan
@gaz: nah. freddie picked Cole up in the kumbayah bromance bar.
Just like Kain did.
;)
samara morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: that is exactly true.
but in an iterated game, like control of the executive, strategy beats tactics.
burnspbesq
@middlewest:
“10 posts in a row of crazed rantings about Real Madrid would actually be pretty funny.”
Not. I do not need to hear about how Cristiano Rinaldo is the object of her masturbatory fantasies.
burnspbesq
UCD is a better school than U of R, RIT, or SJF, it’s relatively affordable, and it’s in a place where there is no snow. I can imagine it being attractive to Brighton and Pittsford-Mendon kids.
Jay in Oregon
I don’t know what the big deal is with m_c, other than her unhealthy obsession with pie…
gaz
@samara morgan: Strangely, despite how many times you bring this up, nobody seems to give shit. * shrug *. It must be your delivery.
lacp
I initially misread as “she’s an amphibious, smart academic.” Does that make me a bad person?
Corner Stone
@Mark S.:
It’s all just different flavors of wealth extraction. And if the rentiers can’t take the money directly from the plebe, they provide the necessary service and then extract the wealth from the taxpayer pool. AKA health care and higher education.
Slightly OT but in the same vein, look at what’s going on with housing now. Venture capital raiders and Big Banksters are pooling money to buy up foreclosed properties and then rent them back at a significant cash flow profit.
So, the same people who drove families out of their homes, then took a taxpayer bailout, are now renting those same properties out and collecting all the risk-free reward. There is absolutely no downside to their actions.
samara morgan
@gaz: idc.
look what cornerstone says here.
Freddie moaning about luxury resort colleges is the same thing.
Farming the middle class for profit.
Ab_Normal
@lacp: She’s a salarian? o.O
trollhattan
UCD is essentially in my backyard and I can assure y’all most of the press coverage, after the first month or so of the incident, has revolved around protecting the identy of the snowflake cops who were part of the lacquering team.
Because campus cops have the toughest job, evah.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@samara morgan: Prelim A,B,C would be my guess, off the top of my head. But then I’m an AHSA (oops, USEF now) member as opposed to a USEA member, so I’m not current.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
I understand John’s position on banning, and for the most part I agree with it. However, when a thread of 100 replies has well over half of them either being from one obsessive person or in response to her, it’s time to reconsider how it’s applied. If the purpose of banning is to act as a time out, it’s the responsibility of the person being banned to understand that they went over some line. In samara’s case, she seems incapable of absorbing that lesson.
samara morgan
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): nice.
and quite wise.
eventers are crazy people.
samara morgan
@Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water: well, i could group up my replies in one comment, but I’m doing you the courtesy of a personal response.
here is an easy solution that will cut my comments by more than half.
don’t respond to me.
I’m just telling the truth about firebagger freddie.
and you are only defending him because you hate me.
actually no one defends him. unless slinging ad hom is a defense now.
;)
Darkrose
@S-Curve:
What’s even better are the repeated references to outsiders coming in, and then comments about “not wanting this to be like Oakland”.
Where de white wimmen at?
Darkrose
@Origuy:
Uh, no. We had well over 50,000 undergraduate applicants this year, up from last year at 45,000, for 5000 spots in the freshman class. When parents get snippy with me over the phone and tell me that they won’t send their kids here if I don’t violate FERPA for them, I can still shrug and think (though not say) that one of the other 49,999 applicants will be happy to take that slot.
gaz
@samara morgan: we all fucking know this by now, do you get it? And it’s not even because of you. It’s because we can and do read.
Here’s the thing. I’d so rather see someone who can be eloquently, thoughtfully wrong about a subject write here than someone who can be predictably repetitive and mind-blisteringly dull even when right.
That’s why I’d still rather have Freddie here any day than you.
I think I can speak for a plurality if not a majority of the folks on this board when I say that.
Darkrose
I thought the report was hilarious, because it encapsulates everything lower-level staff deal with on a daily basis: no one in management has a plan, so they have six different people dictating policy while not talking to each other. Then they’re surprised when the result is a complete clusterfuck. Oh, and the one person who is making sense and not engaging in hysterical catastrophizing is ignored.
SOP at every university I’ve worked at, but UCD seems to have a particularly bad case of it. Sadly, Yudof is going to back up Katehi’s wide-eyed “I had no idea!” routine, so nothing will actually change.
Darkrose
As other folks have noted, UCD has a couple of specialty programs that always attract students outside of CA. There’s the viniculture program, and also the vet school. And since out-of-state and international students pay the full ride, they’ve been actively courting them for years now.
gaz
@Darkrose: I’m grinning at the awesome meta-clusterfark that’s unraveling now.
If this report hadn’t been commissioned and released in the first place, we wouldn’t be talking about this again.
heh.
a little schadenfreude in the morning tends to lift my spirits throughout the day. =)
muddy
@Schlemizel:
I read that he has been on PAID suspension since November. Nice way to get a vacay.
samara morgan
@gaz: you know…i just think President Obama is going to have a rough enough time in November without Cole giving a platform to a firebagging libertarian who is supporting Willard and mix giving links to someone who is “eloquently, thoughtfully wrong ” and chewing up bandwidth at 10000 words (that say essentially nothing) a post.
I’m right, and and it doesn’t take 10k words of verbal chaff to convey it.