Dear Leader's Latest Vanity Endeavor

How telling is it that they’re either too stupid or too lazy
to use the right damned font?

It’s still the Gulf of Mexico.  It’s still the Department of Defense.  It’s still the Kennedy Center.  When we are finally rid of the Sociopath-in-Chief, these titles, at least, can return to normalcy will some dispatch.  It will take longer to recover from the crippling blows to the country’s international reputation, the exploitation of the poor to benefit a handful of corrupt billionaires, or, perhaps most problematically, the willingness of far too many Americans from SCOTUS to Congresscritters to everyday citizens to let him get away with this shit.

The latest exploit of Curie’s least favorite narcissist, as you probably know, Gentle Reader, was to arbitrarily and illegally re-name the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after himself.  Oh, sure, he didn’t actually do so alone; his hand-picked gaggle of sycophants the Kennedy Center board did so, presumably although not provably at his behest.  And, to be fair, he didn’t totally co-opt the name; he just gave himself top billing.  As one does.

Whatever you may think of their respective presidencies, Gentle Reader, Mr. Kennedy was a patron of the arts; Mr. Trump is a patron of Mr. Trump.  Kennedy was assassinated before the founding of the National Endowment for the Arts, but he certainly set things in motion for that agency to exist.  The White House Historical Society (an independent agency, or Trump’s Ministry of Truth would have scrubbed their website by now) writes that:

President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s advocacy for the arts endures as a vital part of their White House legacy. From 1961 to 1963, the White House became a focal point for the arts and cultural engagement. The Kennedys hosted numerous concerts and performances and infused the Executive Mansion and the country with the same vitality, youth, and idealism that followed them on their journey to the White House.

That’s a little purple, but essentially accurate.

By contrast, Mr. Trump shows no indication of ever having read a book (let alone of the poetry which JFK adored), and apparently believes that mediocrities like Sylvester Stallone and KISS are worthy recipients of Kennedy Center honors.  The most outstanding artist of this year’s recipients, Michael Crawford, is a native Briton living in New Zealand, and reportedly received the recognition because Phantom of the Opera was Dear Leader’s favorite musical: i.e., not for a lifetime of outstanding work, just because DJT liked a show he was in.  (Sigh.)  For what it’s worth, although Curmie isn’t a particular fan of the genres represented by George Strait or Gloria Gaynor, he does not object to their being honored.  

When GOP lapdogs Congress voted to name the Center’s opera house after Melania, Curmie responded thus: “Naming literally anything after a vulgar trophy wife known primarily for posing for some soft-core porn is beyond laughable.  Remember, this is the couple who broke tradition by not attending the Kennedy Center Awards during 45’s term.  ‘Appreciation of the arts,’  my ass.” This is worse, because although it’s unlikely that many Republicans would actually defy one of Dear Leader on one of his vain and petulant whims, this time they haven’t yet bothered to go through that process.  But the signage on the building has already been changed.  

Of course, Designated Liar Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt proclaimed the decision to have been “unanimous.”  That assertion has been called into question by JFK’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg.  He tweeted that “Microphones were muted and the board meeting and vote NOT unanimous.”  This was confirmed by Rep. Joyce Beatty, who posted that “The White House claims the vote to rename the Kennedy Center was ‘unanimous.’ That is false. I was muted on the call and denied the opportunity to speak or register my opposition. That is not consensus. That is censorship.”  Actually, it’s worse than that.  It’s about yet another lie emanating from this utterly corrupt administration.

Well, of course, that’s only true if a Democratic Rep and a Democratic candidate are telling the truth.  That’s more likely than that Leavitt is doing so, but it’s well short of a certainty. Pols are pols, after all.  And Schlossberg’s contention that “Trump explicitly motivated to act by JACK FOR NEW YORK.  Our campaign represents everything Trump can’t stand or defeat,” shall we say, at the very least borders on the vainglorious. 

But no rational person believes that the Kennedy Center ought to be re-named in honor of an anti-intellectual, narcissistic, vulgarian like Donald Trump.  A unanimous decision or not, approved by Congress or not, this is beyond embarrassing… and it’s the new reality, because we sure as hell can’t count on SCOTUS to do their jobs.  Jolly.

Donald Trump Is Unfit to Be POTUS. But We Already Knew That.

Early in the 2016 primary season, one of Curmie’s Facebook friends asked for a two-word description of Donald Trump.  Curmie went with “xenophobic buffoon.”  That’s still a rather apt description, but so many other possibilities present themselves: narcissist, liar, grifter, authoritarian, megalomaniac, asshole, psychotic.

This last is the most troubling of the lot because at one level it is not an indictment of Trump’s character.  There is, after all, the possibility that he is sufficiently lacking in mental acuity that he really believes that prices are going down by 1500%, that the US is now more respected internationally, that he’s stopped all those wars.  If so, we should pity him rather than scorn him.  And it’s likely that the sycophants in his inner circle would never attempt to bring him around to the reality of his diminished capacity, as Joe Biden’s top advisors eventually (albeit very belatedly) did.

The tweet (or whatever they’re called on the ironically named Truth Social) about the murders of Rob and Michele Reiner is particularly problematic, even more so than the usual braggadocio, as there is literally nothing to be gained by being a colossal dickhead.  Of course, nothing makes Trump happier than being cruel for its own sake towards anyone unlike him: not rich and powerful, not venal, not conservative, not white, not male, not pseudo-Christian… Rob Reiner was, of course, several but apparently not enough of those things.

Remember when that guy who thought a few deaths were a reasonable price to pay for the Second Amendment was shot and killed?  Even pointing out that irony was enough to get someone fired.  Other people whose keening was deemed insufficient were fired or even arrested.  By the way, Curmie’s challenge remains: show me a single prominent Democratic politician or pundit who actually “celebrated” Charlie Kirk’s death (as opposed to not mourning loudly or publicly enough) in the immediate aftermath.  (Curmie has seen a couple of bloggers who could be said to have done so after Trump obnoxious and yes, celebratory, comments this week.)

OK, Gentle Reader, you can see 47’s missive at the top of the page.  We’re left with questions, and whatever the answers to those questions are, they’re troubling.

Does Trump honestly believe that the Reiners’ deaths were caused by “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” (sorry about the all-caps… just trying to be accurate in the quotation) that they precipitated their own deaths by making people angry because of their politics (the way Charlie Kirk did, perhaps)?  If the answer is “no,” then Trump is just lying again.  This is, of course, fully expected, as the man seems incapable of stringing together three sentences without an obvious prevarication slipping in somewhere.  And making the story about himself is standard Trump.

But if the answer is “yes,” that for once he’s telling the truth as he sees it, then we open up a different set of questions.  There are only two possibilities: either he believes that disagreeing with him politically invites retribution from God or the Fates or whoever, or there’s a human element.  Trump is certainly hubristic enough to believe the former, but even the most sympathetic observer (or at least one with an IQ above room temperature) would have to consider that belief to be evidence of full-fledged wackadoodledom.

If, however, Trump is suggesting that one of his MAGA minions took it upon himself to avenge Dear Leader’s honor by killing his detractors, then he is confessing both that his hateful words lead to actual violence and that, as has been noted many times by people who have actually studied this stuff, political violence comes more often from the right than the left.  Or is he hinting that he ordered the hit?  (No, Curmie isn’t suggesting that as a serious possibility, but it makes at least as much sense as anything spewed forth by the First Felon.)

Of course, it is becoming increasingly clear that the attack on the Reiners had nothing whatsoever to do with Donald Trump, and that narcissism surpassed even vulgarity and cruelty as his defining characteristic for at least a moment.  His screed bears literally no relationship to reality, and even prominent Republicans are appalled.  Plus, of course, hewing to his standard practice of never admitting a mistake, he doubled down on his inane ramblings.

It is, of course, troubling that Curmie finds it worthy of mention that “even” Republicans criticized that vicious post.  The GOP has been deafening in their silence about similar transgressions in the past.  Perhaps the fact that people of all political perspectives like “This Is Spinal Tap” or “The Princess Bride” (to name but two of Reiner’s several beloved films) is enough to awaken (not to say “made Woke”) these pols’ ethics? 

What is certain is that not merely is the person who wrote that missive unfit for the Presidency, he’s batshit crazy.  Curmie isn’t sure whether to suggest the correct response is yet another impeachment or invoking the 25^th Amendment.  

¿Por qué no los dos?

The Latest DEI Threat to American Sovereignty: the Calibri Font

Curmie had started a piece about how the NCAA can’t do literally anything right, as evidenced by this year’s colossally stupid FBS football rankings.  (Yes, Notre Dame got screwed, and no, Alabama doesn’t belong there.)  And there are plenty of more significant topics to write about with respect to the various goings-on in the realm of Trumpistan.  But this story just demands Curmie attention.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has now declared that State’s use of the Calibri font must be discontinued post-haste.  Situations in Gaza, Ukraine, and Venezuela clearly aren’t enough to occupy an eager little boy like Marco.  So, changing fonts on official correspondence surges to the top of the priority list.

Ah, but you see, Gentle Reader, there are REASONS.  Seriously, this guy is going to put The Onion out of business, because his real memoranda are sillier than their fictional ones.  Calibri, you see, is “wasteful.”  Exactly how that works is unclear, as is so often the case with proclamations from this administration.   A sans serif font like Calibri uses less ink to print the first copy, and might well decrease photocopy costs by requiring fewer pages for the same text.  It’s difficult to see how Calibri is “wasteful.”

The even stranger argument is that we need to return to Times New Roman as an anti-DEI initiative.  Really, that’s the core argument.  Calibri became the standard when, two years ago, Secretary Antony Blinken followed the advice of the State Department’s office of diversity and inclusion (an office which, of course, no longer exists).  The rationale, to quote the New York Times article linked above, was “to improve accessibility for readers with disabilities, such as low vision and dyslexia, and people who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers.”

Secretary Rubio seems to be reacting more to the source than to the policy, as there is a significant difference between this is and the majority of DEI-related decisions, namely that no one gets hurt.  It’s true, of course, that the various forms of discrimination that DEI programs were intended to combat are still around.  But there is at least some legitimacy to the standard argument put forward by opponents of DEI: an underqualified person gets the job (it’s usually about a job) simply on the basis of gender, race, or whatever.  This does happen; Curmie has seen it.  

But the argument gets its suasion from the fact that someone loses out: for every DEI hire, there’s a straight white male who didn’t get the gig.  Curmie is unconcerned in this context about whether he deserved it: human nature being what it is, he’s likely to consider himself a victim, either way.  That is perfectly understandable.  But shifting to Calibri doesn’t hurt anyone.  Curmie has no expertise as to whether documents in one font are easier for certain people to read than the same text in a different font would be.  He’s willing to bet that Marco Rubio isn’t an expert, either.  But the people who specialize in such things say that the choice of font matters; that’s good enough for Curmie.  And let me emphasize this point again: no one loses anything if that dyslexic person at the next desk can access that document a little more easily. 

OK, it’s a legitimate argument that Times New Roman looks more formal, perhaps more “elegant,” than Calibri.  And if Rubio says it matches better with the department’s official letterhead, Curmie isn’t going to argue.  But that’s not the thrust of his argument, which seems to confirm the worst suspicions of Curmie’s leftie friends who assert that the cruelty is not a bug but a feature.  It may also be worth noting that, as Curmie heard dozens of times back in his days as a high school and collegiate debater, the presumption rests with the status quo.  In other words, there may or may not have been sufficient reason to adopt Calibri to begin with, but once it was in place, the threshold to replace it became higher.

Early on, Curmie thought that Rubio might have a legitimate shot at being the Least Awful of Trump’s appointees.  With the rest of the field consisting of folks like Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Linda McMahon, and King of the Wackadoodles Baby Bobby, he looked like a good bet to stand out by being at least somewhat competent.  Alas, his tenure has been a disaster.  Most of that is probably attributable to being a good soldier, advocating for policies we can only hope he knew were stupid, but this one takes not only the cake, but two pies, a dozen donuts and a loaf of artisanal focaccia.

La la, how the life goes on.

The University of Oklahoma Fails by Excusing Failure

Grades on college essays have been a source of controversy since professors started giving grades on college essays.  The latest case to be elevated to international attention concerns University of Oklahoma junior Samantha Fulnecky, who received a 0/25 grade on a response essay in a Developmental Psychology course.  

There’s a lot of misinformation out there, coming from Fulnecky’s supporters who believe her contention that she was being treated unfairly because of her Christian beliefs, and from those who believe that the suspension of graduate teaching assistant Mel Curth for giving Fulnecky a failing grade on that essay was an act of craven capitulation to a religio-political ideology by university president Joseph Harroz, Jr.  Oh, and the failing grade on that essay will have no effect on Fulnecky’s final grade in the course.  Jolly.

So… the assignment was to write a 650-word response to an article titled “Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health During Early Adolescence.” (Curmie was able to access the article because of his university affiliation; it’s likely behind a paywall for you, Gentle Reader).  Here’s the first sentence of the abstract, which is probably all you need to know: “The current study examines whether being high in gender typicality is associated with popularity, whether being low in gender typicality is associated with rejection/teasing, and whether teasing due to low gender typicality mediates the association with negative mental health.”  Needless to say, the article believes these “associations” to be accurate: “Overall, children in early adolescence thought of popular peers as very gender typical, indicated by both the descriptions of hypothetical popular peers and the ratings of the participants themselves.”

This is where Curmie thinks back to his grad school days, when he was proposing to write a dissertation on contemporary Irish adaptations of Greek tragedy.  He asked a very well-known theatre historian (but not a specialist in either Irish or Ancient Greek theatre) to chair his committee.  The response: “I know nothing about Irish theatre, but I know good academic writing when I see it.  So yes, I’ll do it.”  Curmie knows considerably less about psychology than his dissertation chair did about Irish theatre, but in general terms he, too, knows good academic writing when he sees it.  The article by Jennifer A. Jewell and Christia Spears Brown qualifies; Ms. Fulnecky’s response, to be charitable, does not, especially since the authors of the article recognize the limits of their work and encourage further study, whereas Ms. Fulnecky is certain that her own shallow prejudices are all that matter.

What Ms. Fulnecky wrote, even if you agree with her perspective, was, frankly, dreadful.  It is little more than a spewing forth of personal opinion with little reference to the article, which does not have anything to do with multiple genders.  Her screed is self-contradictory and sloppily written.  There are frequent assertions along the lines of “God says…” but no specific references even to the Bible (a rather weak source for an essay for a psychology course, but at least it’s a source). 

This is where Curmie abandons his usual practice of trying to link to everything he references.  There’s simply too much out there, and it would take many hours to re-trace his steps to find who exactly said what on what social media platform or in what publication.  This is a blog piece, not an academic essay; you’re just going to have to trust that Curmie did indeed read this stuff somewhere. 

OK, here we go, with various assertions put forward by supporters of either Fulnecky or Curth.

Both sides think the fact that Curth is a trans woman is relevant.  Every right-wing pseudo-Christian source (and, alas, a good many others) has a headline about “Trans Professor [fill in the blank]…”  (Sigh.)  Fulnecky’s supporters think that Curth is “mentally ill” and gave the paper a lower grade than it deserved simply because the paper was indeed offensive (“demonic”?  really?) to her presumably evil impulses.  Fulnecky claims she didn’t even know “he” was trans (it’s on online course).  Could she be telling the truth about that part?  Curmie doubts it, but it’s possible. 

Curth’s supporters believe she was set up: that Fulnecky was actually trying to get Curth to fail the essay so she could be a martyr for the cause.  If that was indeed the strategy, it worked.  She’s the most talked-about undergraduate in the country who isn’t on an athletic scholarship, and she’s winning awards from local Christo-fascist pols who, if nothing else, know how to play to their base.  It is not certain that she’s nothing more than an attention-seeking brat, but it’s pretty damned likely.  And, of course, TPUSA was all over the case in no time flat, suggesting that they have somehow managed to have even less integrity than when Charlie Kirk was still alive. 

Fulnecky also claims she didn’t write the essay to be controversial.  That is (only) remotely possible, but she certainly didn’t hesitate to capitalize on the controversy.  She’s definitely the kind of person to get offended if you wish her Happy Holidays.  Oh, and by the way, the grade on this paper counts less than 2.4% of the overall grade for the class.  Tempest, meet teapot. 

Curth details the reasons for the grade, writing that “I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting point [sic] for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.”  There’s more, Gentle Reader, but that’s the crux.  Curmie also notes that the above link to Curth’s comments takes you to the TPUSA X page.  Credit to 1Liza’s response: “why would you show this part? you fail propaganda class.”  Fulnecky’s subsequent argument that of course someone engaging in religious discrimination would say that is probably true.  But it’s also what someone who wants students to actually do the freaking assignment would say. 

It is also true, as a couple of conservatives have said, that the essay prompt does not specifically require citing empirical evidence, and suggests an “application of the study or results to your own experiences” as a possible strategy for completing the assignment.  It’s a bit of a stretch to say that’s what Fulnecky did, but at least it’s a third cousin twice removed from what was actually expected.  Curmie would have thought that the need to provide supporting evidence for one’s assertions would go without saying in a university level psychology course, but perhaps not…

Things Curmie has read:

--Fulnecky’s paper was too short and should have been failed on that basis alone.  Or, it was too long and should have been penalized for that.  Both wrong.  The 650 word count was a minimum, which Fulnecky achieved; there was no maximum length.  There is certainly a case for saying that Curth takes herself a little too seriously: a 10-point deduction (out of 25!) for coming up 1 word short of an arbitrary word count limit?  Seriously?  Curmie sometimes dropped a score by a letter grade or so if a paper was significantly short of the assigned length, but making the best possible score a 60% for being a word or two short?  Give me a break.

-- Curth looks like, well, a trans woman.  Fulnecky is conventionally attractive in a vapid sorority girl kind of way.  That means, supposedly, that Curth gave her a bad grade out of jealousy.  It’s unclear whether Curth even knew what Fulnecky looked like (see above, “didn’t know he was trans”), even apart from the general inanity of the argument.  You can be assured, Gentle Reader, that there are plenty of photos of Fulnecky in various outfits and comely poses all over the right-wing press.

--Lots of headlines claim that the reason there’s a controversy is that Fulnecky “cited the Bible.”  She didn’t.  There’s neither a specific reference to a single chapter and verse nor a direct quotation even without a citation.  What Fulnecky did was to reference the Bible, giving us not the text but her interpretation of it.  As noted above, even saying “Book X of the Bible says Y in Z chapter and verse” would make the essay a little less execrable.  Were Curmie of a cynical disposition, he might suggest that she hasn’t read the Bible with any more care than she read the assigned article. 

--Arguments from one side that if the grader were a cishet white male, there’d be no complaint… arguments from the other side that if it were a Muslim who wrote a similar essay about that student’s faith, the grade would have been better.  Chances that either of these assertions is true: possible, but extremely unlikely.

--Curmie has seen an article that claims Fulnecky had done well on previous essays in which she’d made her religious beliefs clear… and article in which she is quoted as saying she got 5/10 on a similar assignment.  Somebody is making shit up, whether it’s her or someone with an agenda one way or the other.

OK, so how bad was that paper?  Again, Curmie isn’t a psychologist, but here’s what he’d say.  “Clear tie-in to the assigned article”: barely at all, but a little; 3/10.  “Thoughtful reaction… rather than a summary”: I guess that depends on what you mean by “thoughtful.”   In context, Curmie would expect logical reasoning based on observable evidence.  5/10.  “Clearly written”: a lot of people are saying that the writing per se is dreadful.  It is.  But Curmie has read literally thousands of undergrad papers over the years.  This is bad, but not even in the bottom quintile.  3/5.  That means 11/25: still failing, but not a zero.  So, was that grade “punitive”?  Yeah, well, maybe sorta.  Curmie’s longtime FB cover photo of Mercutio’s invocation of “a plague o’ both your houses” seems apt.

Of course, there are other concerns: the fact that the university president is yet another gutless idiot who thinks that due process doesn’t matter if there’s political capital to be made by boot-licking, for example.  The Freedom from Religion Foundation letter is worth reading in its entirety, but this excerpt sums it up pretty well: “This response from the university sends a chilling message: that academic standards may be suspended when a student invokes personal religious belief, and that instructors may face punishment for applying those standards even-handedly when it results in a bad grade for a religious person.”  Their objection is to the suspension per se.  The editorial on Inside Higher Ed centers instead on the obvious violation of due process involved. 

The most significant response, though, comes from Conner Tranquill, the Chairman of the Oklahoma Federation of College Republicans.  You can see his statement above.  Suggesting that even privileged white Christians need do good work and fulfill assignments if they want good grades, of course, does not sit well in Trumpistan.  That tweet has now been taken down.  Imagine Curmie’s surprise. 

Cornell College Turns Its Back on the Liberal Arts. This One Is Personal.

Armstrong Hall, where Curmie used to work.
(Theatre has now been moved to a new, adjoining, building.)

Over the years, Curmie has written a handful of posts about colleges that have abandoned their liberal arts orientations while claiming not to have done so.  There was Goucher College back in 2018, St. Mary’s University in 2022, and Marymount University in 2023, plus a couple of passing comments elsewhere.  He even wrote that the St. Mary’s case was “personal” because of a friend who used to work there and a link to the same British conservatory as Curmie’s university has.

But this one is really personal.  This time, it’s Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, where Curmie himself taught for seven years, that has sought the easy but no doubt ineffectual fix even if it means betraying what Curmie had always believed was a genuine passion for the liberal arts model of higher education.  They’re slashing the entire Religion department (this in a school still nominally associated with the United Methodist Church), Classics, foreign languages (only a Spanish minor will remain), and music.  A total of eight positions in the Humanities are being cut.  Curmie learned about this act of hubristic incompetence from a Facebook post from Dr. David Weddle, Professor emeritus of Religion, who was one of the most universally respected professors Curmie has ever known. 

It’s clear, as is virtually always the case, that there was little if any input from faculty, just the whimsicality of an administration and the Trustees.  Dr. Truman Jordan, Professor emeritus of Chemistry, was a major player in faculty governance back in the days that actually meant something, and still lives in Mount Vernon.  He wrote on his FB page, “The Cornell press release has a phrase in it: ‘ . . . after consultation with the Faculty Council . . .’ This is rather disingenuous because as near as I have been able to determine, the administration paid no attention to anything the Faculty Council suggested.”  The chances that Dr. Jordan is accurately describing the situation: approaching ontological certitude.  Curmie can say this because he knows how college administrations operate… and he knows (OK, knew) Truman Jordan.

None of this surprises Curmie, who has seen the notion of shared governance dwindle from a reality to a slogan to a myth at colleges and universities across the country (certainly including the one from which he retired) over the past couple of decades.  What does catch Curmie’s attention is this: that having “60 years of [his] life invested in Cornell College as a liberal arts institution,” Jordan could write, “If the college continues on its current path, I would never, ever, consider coming to Cornell to teach. It saddens me greatly to have to say that.”  It saddens Curmie, too.

The comments from former students on both Weddle’s and Jordan’s pages (and on Curmie’s personal page) suggest that alumni, whether or not they majored in one of the disciplines about to be slashed, are pretty upset with both the decision and the process. 

The first show Curmie worked on at Cornell was as the director/coordinator of the New Student Variety Show (it’s been a while; that may not have been the official title).  The choral version of Mr. Mister’s “Kyrie” just blew me away.  Wow, I thought, I’m going to enjoy working with the faculty member who arranged and directed that… except it was an upper-class student, not a faculty member.  That same Music major played a featured role in The Rivals, the first theatre production I directed there, too.  Here’s (part of) his comment on Curmie’s FB page: “The smoking, hulking, disfigured remains after this botched academic Eugenics experiment bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Liberal Arts which first drew me to the Hilltop 42 years ago.” 

Yeah, what he said.

Curmie should note that Cornell is precisely the kind of college that is most likely to struggle financially in this politico-economic environment: rather expensive (a sticker price of about $50K per year, before financial aid), selective but not elite, rural, small enough that you might (ever so hypothetically) be taking courses in stage carpentry and lighting from a theatre historian/director.  So the desire to streamline, to cut programs that don’t attract a lot of students, is understandable.  But you simply cannot call yourself a liberal arts college without those disciplines.  Sure, you might be able to merge some Religion courses into the Philosophy Department or make similar arrangements with some other programs, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.

What is listed above as a potential disadvantage—Cornell’s small size (about 1100 students) was also, of course, an advantage: everybody did everything, saw everything.  Students and faculty alike came to plays, concerts, athletic events and whatever else was happening.  You actually knew people on the football team and the newspaper staff, in the choir, and so on.  And that contributed to a lot of new horizons opening up for students, regardless of their field of study.

Curmie, of course, changed majors in college, and is convinced that one of the things that makes undergraduate education in the US superior (in general) to that elsewhere is precisely that capability.  In Curmie’s time there, Cornell got a half dozen or so new Theatre majors every year, and we’d graduate about the same number four years later; sometimes one or two were even the same people.  That’s what happens when students are encouraged to engage with the liberal arts: political scientists become “theatre kids,” and vice versa.  That’s a good thing.

Of course, there were far too few Theatre majors to do anything approaching full-scale productions without a lot of other folks contributing to the process.  So our “theatre kids” weren’t necessarily majors, and although some went on to careers in theatre, most ended up elsewhere: one is an oncologist, another a radio producer, another an HR manager, and so on.  That’s OK, too.  What better training for that HR position than casting a show or handling all the minor glitches in the process?

Curmie confesses that not all his memories of Cornell are happy, but he did get to teach some good courses, direct and/or design (or technical direct, or advise, or…) some good shows, and work with great colleagues and students, both inside and outside the department.  He has about 70 FB friends from his time there; considering that he left Cornell over a decade before FB even existed, that’s a fair number of folks sharing a connection with someone they haven’t seen in person in many years.

Cornell was, back in the day, a very good place to get an education.  There wasn’t a weak department on campus; Music, foreign languages, and Religion were, of course, among the strongest programs in a pretty distinguished field.  Cornell’s novel “Block Plan” (students take one course at a time in an academic year comprised of nine three-and-a-half week “blocks”) doesn’t work terribly well for all courses (Curmie could never figure out how to teach Directing on the Block Plan, for example), but you know what works particularly well on that schedule?  Foreign language instruction.  Ironic, huh?

The Cornell administration will no doubt claim that, despite appearances, they’re upholding liberal arts values.  They aren’t.  Whether they’re consciously lying or just too stupid to know any better is open to interpretation.

The Players Era Tournament: An Ominous View of the Future

 

On top of everything else, the championship trophy
is so tacky it looks like it was designed
by Donald Trump

Curmie is of a mixed mind about the Geico Players Era “Festival” (i.e., basketball tournament).  On the one hand, there were some really good games between some of the best college teams in the country, with the added bonus for Curmie that, even without their star player, his beloved Kansas Jayhawks went 3-0, including a big comeback win against a ranked team in the third-place game.  On the other hand, the event epitomizes everything (well, perhaps not everything) that is wrong with college sports.

First off, it’s all about NIL money.  If you’re not into sportsball, Gentle Reader, that’s money paid to players as a bribe an incentive to attend a particular university.  That’s in addition to the euphemistically termed “scholarships” they receive.  And we’re not talking about enough to buy a pizza on Saturday night.  Some of these guys actually make more to “go to school” than the NBA minimum salary, which exceeds one and a quarter million dollars for rookies (and higher than that for more veteran players).  It’s no longer uncommon for players to play for four different universities.  The NCAA can talk about “student athletes” all they want; the fact is that elite players aren’t students at all.  They’re mercenaries, largely if not completely uninterested in education, ready to sell their services for the best (short-term) offer.

It could be argued, one supposes, that star players really do generate income for the school: ticket prices, television deals, apparel licensing, and so on.  But even pedestrian players, guys who have no more chance of a professional career in sports than Curmie does, are making more to sit on the bench of a college basketball team than they’ll likely see in the real world for years to come.  Wouldn’t it be nice if universities were as interested in attracting the top chemists or sociologists or journalists or violinists (or…) as they are in making sure that guy who plays a few garbage-time minutes a year for the basketball team is handsomely rewarded?

Yes, Curmie is old and perhaps old-fashioned, but he remembers fondly when athletes actually went to classes and interacted with other students.  They even graduated after attending the same school for four years.  Now, at the top level, it’s rare for a player to return to the roster.  At Kansas, for example, no starters returned from last year, and only one player who got more than mop-up minutes is back… and he entered the transfer portal before re-negotiating an NIL deal already worth over a half a million dollars.

Remember, too, that the very best players are likely to leave for the NBA after even a single season, and foreign players can have played in a professional league in their home country and still be eligible to play collegiate ball here. It’s an absolute mess.

But the structure makes this event even more problematic than others of the type.  Most of these early-season tournaments consist of eight teams, with no two from the same conference.  There’s a standard bracket: if you win your first-round game, you next play someone else who did, too.  Ultimately, the champion wins three games in a row; the second-place team won two, then lost one; third place won, then lost, then won, etc. 

But there were 18 (count ‘em!) teams in the Players Era event, and there were three teams that won all three of their games: eventual champion Michigan; third-place Kansas; and Iowa State, who didn’t even get a chance to play for the extra cash despite winning their first two games, one of them against ranked St. John’s.  We’re talking real money here: $1 million, $500K, $300K, and $200K for first through fourth, respectively: all to go to a school’s NIL budget.  That’s in addition to the $1 million all 18 teams collected.

The first problem is that the first two games for each team were pre-determined, meaning that there was no power-matching until the third round, and you could get to a potential additional payoff without having to beat any of the eight ranked teams in the tournament.  (Kansas did; there were two first-round games between ranked teams.)

But it’s how you get to the third game that matters.  The process of selecting the “4 Kings,” i.e., the four teams who were guaranteed at least an extra $200K in NIL funds, relied ultimately on point differential.  There were, as noted above, five teams that had 2-0 records after the second round.  Michigan destroyed their first two opponents, so they went to the championship game with Gonzaga; Tennessee and Kansas rounded out the top four, with Iowa State fifth.

This system presents several problems, one of which is obvious: there’s an incentive to engage in unsportsmanlike conduct.  Normally, if you’re up by a comfortable margin as time is expiring, you get the ball over midcourt and make no attempt to score.  Now, however, winning the game may not be enough, and you never know whether that one extra score could be worth $200K, the difference between losing the third-place game and not getting to play in it, and between winning that game and losing in the championship round.

A few years ago, a Kansas player dunked the ball when the outcome was no longer in doubt, and he could have just dribbled out the clock.  KU coach Bill Self ripped him a new one and apologized to the opposing team.  In last Tuesday’s game against Syracuse, a Kansas player dunked the ball when the outcome was no longer in doubt, and he could have just dribbled out the clock.  Self was thrilled.  As it happened, those two points were what got Kansas instead of Iowa State into the third-place game, as it gave KU a +21 differential to Iowa State’s +19 (Iowa State would have won the next tie-breaker had both teams finished at +19.  You can’t blame Kansas for doing what they could within the rules to advance, but if Curmie had gone to grad school in Ames instead of Lawrence, he’d be plenty pissed, especially since ISU’s Milan Momcilovic (a very good shooter, by the way) apparently passed up a shot in the final seconds of their second game.

The silly rule also provided an advantage to teams that played later in the day on Tuesday.  In college football, teams want to play defense first if a game goes to overtime because they know what they need to do.  Similarly, teams that played later Tuesday had a better idea whether it would be to their advantage to leave their starters in, slow the game down, etc. 

Perhaps most problematic, although it doesn’t come quite as easily to mind, is what has been suggested about the Houston/Tennessee game.  Quoting Sports Illustrated’s Kevin Sweeney: “as the game came down to the wire, it became increasingly obvious that only Tennessee was playing for a spot in the event’s championship game Wednesday. And even the Vols’ spot was very much up in the air.” 

That’s because although Houston won their first game, it was by a narrow margin, and unless they completely destroyed the Vols, they weren’t going to make it to even the third-place game.  When it became clear that the best they could do was a narrow victory, their mental energy inevitably declined.  Sure, there should still be plenty of incentive to win, and in one sense there’s no excuse, but it’s human nature to let down a little if there isn’t a lot of difference between winning and losing.

And… since the tournament went out of its way not to schedule games between teams from the same conference, it’s not difficult to imagine a scenario in which either that rule had to be abandoned, or a team that earned a higher seeding would be dropped.  For example, Kansas and Iowa State were ranked fourth and fifth after the second round.  If Tennessee had won their first-round game more narrowly, the Jayhawks and Cyclones could have been third and fourth… would they play each other, contrary to what happened in the first two rounds, or would one of them be closed out of the third-place game?  Indeed, it’s hypothetically possible that the top four teams could all have been from either the Big 10 or Big 12.  Luckily (I guess), we didn’t need to find out how such a scenario would play out.

But there’s yet one more complication: because of the bizarre scheduling, teams didn’t find out who or when they were playing on Wednesday until 10:00 Tuesday night.  In a traditional bracket, you’d at least know it was one of two teams; here, it could be any of a dozen or more teams, and you’d have maybe a couple of hours to prepare for that particular opponent, thereby devaluing coaching.  That’s not the way to get the best possible game; it’s how to highlight individual skills over teamwork.  That might work for the casual fan, but not for those who actually know something about the game.

Tournament co-founder Seth Berger claims the goal of this idiocy was to create a format in which “every shot matters, every basket matters, every minute matters.”  That didn’t happen.  And it’s rather predictable that when people pointed out the manifold inanities of the Players Era format, the response was that it was the messaging, not the structure, that’s the problem: “one of the things we have to do is continue educating about why our format is unique and it’s exciting.”  There are mumbles about “work[ing] very quickly to get to a better format,” but it’s clear that the centerpiece of the stupidity, privileging point differential, will remain in an expanded 32-team extravaganza.

What’s sad is that teams will continue to chase the almighty dollar, abandoning the less lucrative but competently managed tournaments in actual destination venues like Hawai’i or the Bahamas.  (Sorry, Las Vegas is not such a destination.  Curmie has been there once, and would have to be held at gunpoint to return.)  College athletic programs have long since abandoned even the pretense of being about students.  This is just one more nail in the coffin.