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The Chronicle is reporting on the fake Twitter accounts of two university presidents. (Both universities have asked Twitter to suspend the accounts, so check them out now if you’re interested.)
@JackDeGioia is supposedly the Twitter feed of Georgetown’s chief. It consists largely of topical jokes on campus events that also involve sloppy joes. But there are some pokes at how the university is run…
Had to give an honorary degree to my son today so he would take a bath. Really embarrassing. Had to do it in front of the whole faculty. 1:50 AM May 12th
Student asked me today to take action on the chicken madness. Nope. As soon as you take a student suggestion, the university’s about them. 8:15 PM May 13th
…as well as moments of more random humor:
So much human contact. So much. Thousands of beautiful hands touching mine. But now I have to wait a whole year again. 1:40 PM May 17th
In Rome. When in Rome, do what they tell you to do. The Romans, that is, or anybody who ever tells you to do something. about 3 hours ago
The @WilliamPowersJr account, which pretends to be that of the president of the University of Texas, relies heavily on puns on Powers’ last name. There are also, as on DeGioia’s account, occasional gentle jokes about him being a doofus:
I’m hosting Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi the AT&T Executive Center at 7 tonight. Hoping they don’t make me give a speech. 11:25 AM Apr 27th
Dreading going into work tomorrow, but those diplomas aren’t going to sign themselves… 1:45 PM May 17th
We really need a toaster in this office…or a microwave…whatever makes hot pockets, because I’m famished. 12:41 PM May 18th
The fake DeGioia is Jack Stuef, a Georgetown undergraduate who edits a campus humor magazine. The fake Powers is so far anonymous.
Friday update: Powers account has been suspended. The DeGioia is still up.
So this isn’t something I would have expected to see in the Chronicle, even as a guest opinion piece.
In this Friday’s issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Charles Schwartz, an emeritus professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, argues that students should appoint trustees to public colleges and universities in proportion to the support that their tuition and fees provide to those institutions.
As “state support has dwindled,” Schwartz argues, tuition and fees have come to underwrite an ever-growing part of universities’ operating budgets. Given that, the principle of no taxation without representation argues that students (and, in situations in which they are not paying their own way, their parents) be given a voice in choosing university trustees and regents.
This is more than just a provocation on Schwartz’s part. He offers several sensible mechanisms by which this reform could be implemented, notes a parallel structure in the management of California’s public employees’ retirement fund, and even suggests that such representation could be mandated by federal law if it is not implemented on the state level.
Is such a change coming anytime soon? No, probably not. But it’s absolutely true that students directly fund public colleges and universities to an extent that was unimaginable just a few decades ago, and Schwartz is absolutely right to point out that right now “the industry of higher education treats undergraduate students as cash cows.”
Good for him, and good for the Chronicle for publishing him.
May 26 update: The AP is reporting that Obama has picked Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. I’ve got a new post up this morning exploring her views on race and gender in the judiciary.
In August 2007 Judge Sonia Sotomayor sat on a panel that ruled on an appeal in a high school free speech case, Doninger v. Niehoff.
The ruling in that case has come under heavy criticism from some civil libertarians, but though it’s not good, I’m not convinced it’s as bad as some people have made out. Here’s the deal:
Avery Doninger was a member of the student council of Lewis Mills High School in Connecticut. In the spring of 2007, the student council and the LMHS administration butted heads over a school concert called Jamfest, which administrators were not allowing to go forward on its originally scheduled date.
At one point in the dispute Doninger put up a blogpost saying that the principal had canceled the concert because she was “pissed off” about student pressure. Doninger called the administration “douchebags” for canceling Jamfest, and urged students to complain to the principal and “piss her off more.”
According to the principal, however, the concert had never been canceled, and in fact the day after Doninger put up her post, students and administrators reached an agreement to reschedule it.
The principal learned of Doninger’s blogpost two weeks after it went up, and punished Doninger for posting it by not allowing her to run for Senior Class Secretary. She gave four reasons: Doninger had not followed proper procedures for resolving disagreements with the administration, the post’s language had been “vulgar,” claims in the post had been inaccurate, and the exhortation to other students to “piss her off more” had been inappropriate.
Doninger ran as a write-in candidate in the election, and won, but was not allowed to take office. She and her parents then challenged that decision in court, asking for an injunction that would allow her to be seated as class secretary.
A federal district court denied that request, saying that Doninger did not have a strong enough likelihood of winning her case at trial. In making that ruling, the court accepted the principal’s account of several factual matters, rejecting Doninger’s claims.
This is where Sotomayor enters the picture, sitting as a member of a three-judge appeals court panel.
Update: Here’s my review and analysis of the case., and here’s my take on Sotomayor’s perspective on race and gender in the judiciary.
Back in January I reported on the case of a high school student who was barred from running for student government after she referred to school administrators as “douchebags” on a LiveJournal blog.
Now comes word that federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, widely believed to be on Obama’s Supreme Court shortlist, issued a ruling in that case a year ago — and it wasn’t a good one.
According to media studies prof Paul Levinson, Sotomayor was part of a panel that ruled against the student on the grounds that high schools have a responsibility to instill “shared values,” including a “proper respect for authority,” in students.
Ouch.
I haven’t had a chance to read that court’s ruling in full yet, but I’ll update this post when I do.
Longtime anti-choice wackjob Randall Terry says that someone leaked him a copy of the text of the honorary degree President Obama will be receiving on Sunday, and he says this is it:
The University of Notre Dame Confers the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on the 44th president of the United States, whose historic election opened a new era of hope in a country long divided by its history of slavery and racism. A community organizer who honed his advocacy for the poor, the marginalized and the worker in the streets of Chicago, he now organizes a larger community, bringing to the world stage a renewed American dedication to diplomacy and dialogue with all nations and religions committed to human rights and the global common good. Through his willingness to engage with those who disagree with him and encourage people of faith to bring their beliefs to the public debate, he is inspiring this nation to heal its divisions of religion, culture, race and politics in the audacious hope for a brighter tomorrow.
On Barack H. Obama, Washington, District of Columbia
I’m going to go out on a limb and call this a fake.
It reads like a right-winger’s image of how a left-winger would praise Obama, dwelling on exactly the aspects of Obama’s public persona — community organizer, healer of divisions, “advocacy for … the worker in the streets of Chicago” — that drive conservatives crazy.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it just doesn’t smell right to me.
Friday morning update: Fox News claims it’s legit.
Sunday morning update: Fox is still vouching for the text’s authenticity, but as far as I can tell no other news outlet has bitten. Various conservative Catholic bloggers are skeptical, but tentatively appalled — one says that it reads like Obama campaign literature, while another says that if it’s real, it’s a “Fuck you” from the university to the Catholic church’s bishops.
Sunday afternoon update: I guessed wrong. It was real. Yeah, I’d call it a bit of a fuck you to the university’s critics.
By the way, I’m liveblogging the commencement as it occurs.
studentactivism.net 
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