Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/10/11/late-stage-sportsball.html
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College professors and librarians are more often than not wonderful and dedicated academics, but college administration manages to select from some of the scummiest sleaze-buckets in the country, no better than the self-serving turds that populate the upper echelons of large publicly traded companies. Of course they’re just symptoms of the ass-backwards “values” and priorities which prevail in our corrupt culture.
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Miserable bastiches. I’ve seen all this before, at a couple of different colleges who decided sports was everything, and the rest should be sacrificed for it.
In fact, it was very well covered by Rocky & Bullwinkle, in the “Wossamotta U” football story, a short continuity that was later easily adapted into a half-hour cartoon for TV. When someone asks where they’ll get the money for some sports-related activity, the answer from above is to simply fire another English teacher (while Bullwinkle is set upon a demanding course of study that includes basket weaving and “Dick and Jane at the Sea Shore”). In short, it was a documentary.
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So roughly 100k for the library and 1 million on the stadium. The remaining money goes to… “overhead”?
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This is why you never ever give unrestricted gifts if you care the least little bit about how the money will be spent.
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Throw the books at 'em!
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I have never met a senior university administrator who I would not be happy to spit on.
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This has been a major outrage up here.
I have two friends in the university’s IT department, a couple more in teaching and research positions, and know more alumni than I can count. Everybody was pissed about this.
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Or restricted, for that matter. I believe the standard rule is that tax-deductible donations may be used as the recipient chooses. The donor’s wishes may be considered, but don’t have to be.
I think there are ways to have more control over a donation, but they might require mutually-signed agreements.
Years ago, a university in the area received a gift of farmland with the condition that it always be used for the university farm. The university later decided that “always” meant “until someone offers us good money to build a subdivision.”
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Fuckwits are arseholes are fuckwits are arseholes.
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You can’t take it with you, but in this case he should have.
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But by honoring football, the school was honoring the flag and our troops!
You cannot put a price on that.
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Down my neck of the woods, universities often don’t have much of an official team, and certainly don’t spend money on it. It’s not that the spending isn’t wasteful or stupid (college administration is staffed exclusively by people with a troubled relationship with reality) but at least it is wastefully and stupidly spent on things tangentially related to the core mission of the university which, amazingly, doesn’t involve a bracing game of handegg.
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Can I try?
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$too.much?
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Doesn’t sound like something I’d learn in a 1930s trade manual.
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They should all publically agree not to donate a red cent to the university, now or posthumously. The administration obviously can’t be trusted to spend donor money wisely.
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I was talked into going to my mother’s Alma mater for school. During school and after, I saw how they raised prices and then took the extra cash to build new buildings, but not pay faculty more or hire better teachers. Just bigger facilities than other colleges.
My mom has tried to get me to donate to the school. To which I say: we have concluded our business relationship. If they want me to give them more money, maybe they can offer to give me more education. Because any money I give them is not going to improve anybody else’s education. And students there are on average flush with privilege already.
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