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 school 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.

Please Tell Curmie This Is the Worst Case of Police and Prosecutorial Overreach This Year. Please.

 

Seriously, posting this is what generated a felony charge.

You will recall, Gentle Reader, that in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, there was a flood of backlash against anyone who dared to suggest on social media that the late Mr. Kirk might not have been the Second Coming.  Curmie wrote specifically about Darren V. Michael, who was fired by Austin Peay State University for having the temerity to point out the irony that someone who proclaimed that “It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment” should himself be the victim of gun violence.  There were plenty of other cases, as well, of course, but punishing a tenured theatre prof who sometimes says things that administrators don’t like sorta resonated at Chez Curmie.

Curmie, a retired tenured theatre prof did, after all, write that he “is not ‘celebrating’ the death of Kirk, although he does believe the world to be a better place without his racism, misogyny, trans- and homophobia, Christian nationalism, mendacity, and general assholitude.”  That comment might have gotten him in big trouble had he been employed at a state university in a red state at the time. 

Anyway, revenons à nos moutons… APSU officials backed down, a little, when it became clear that their action was not within hailing distance of due process.  Michael’s termination was changed to a suspension; Curmie has been unable to find any more details.  He did learn that a substantial majority of Faculty Senators voted “no confidence” in the university president, Mike Licari.  The motion “failed” because the vote was 23-12; a two-thirds majority is required for such resolutions.  Curmie is well aware that such votes have only symbolic significance, anyway: the Faculty Senate, Chairs Council, Deans Council, and Staff Council at Curmie’s former employer all voted “no confidence” in a president unanimously, and the Regents kept him around… until they let him go a few months later with a fat buyout and a promise to totally lie say good things about him to prospective employers. 

As it happens, however, Mike Licari isn’t the biggest freaking idiot in Tennessee, and Darren Michael’s suspension isn’t even close to the harshest and most illegitimate punishment for obviously protected speech.  Curmie only found out a couple days ago about the case of Larry Bushart, a retired police officer (!) who was incarcerated for 37 days with a $2,000,000 bond for posting a meme.  Yes, really.

The specifics: Bushart, who posts a lot of memes, some of them in rather poor taste, posted one to a message thread about a vigil for Charlie Kirk of then-candidate Trump saying, a day after a school shooting in Iowa, that “We have to get over it.”  Bushart, who was as unimpressed as Curmie was of the orgiastic keening over Charlie Kirk, appended a note: “This seems relevant today…” (That’s the post at the top of this page.) Bushart’s son notes the obvious: that his father was pointing out “the hypocrisy in honoring Charlie Kirk while ignoring other tragic incidents of mass violence.”  That can get you arrested in Tennessee, of course.  Sixth-graders are expendable, after all.  Sleazy millionaire podcasters are important!  The official charge was Felony Insufficient Sycophancy “Threatening Mass Violence at a School.” 

That’s a result of an overbroad law that only grandstanding Republicans could support.  Children’s advocates opposed the legislation.  The ACLU argued that “This legislation is worded so broadly that it could potentially criminalize a wide range of adults and children who do not have any intent of actually causing harm or making a threat -- people who are actually just exercising their constitutionally-protected right to free speech.”  But this is Tennessee; of course, this inanity became law.

So… this case…  You see, Gentle Reader, in what passes for a brain in Sheriff Nick Weems (what a delightfully Dickensian name for this buffoon!) and Sheriff’s Investigator Jason Morrow, “This was a means of communication, via picture, posted to a Perry County, TN Facebook page in which a reasonable person would conclude could lead to serious bodily injury, or death of multiple people.”  Uh, no.  No reasonable person would conclude that.  

The good news is that there are, apparently, precisely zero people in the community who interpreted the meme the way these bozos did.  Indeed, as Liliana Segura writes for The Intercept article linked above, “there were no public signs of this hysteria. Nor was there much evidence of an investigation — or any efforts to warn county schools.”  FIRE requested the school district for any communications pertaining to the case, including the terms “shooting,” “threat,” and “meme.”  The response: no records.  Nada.  Zip.  Zilch. 

The most succinct encapsulation was this, from a local resident commenting on the story on radio station WOPC’s page: “A man is in jail because the sheriff didn’t use google.”  Weems was still trying to spin it that Bushart created “mass hysteria to parents and teachers,” and did so intentionally.  That makes the sheriff both an incompetent idiot and a liar.  Curmie awaits Donald Trump’s appointment of Weems to a high-level position in the FBI, ICE, or ATF.  He has all the credentials that seem relevant to Dear Leader, after all.

OK, two things in the category of “the best Curmie can do to excuse this idiocy”: 1). Mr. Bushart is, at least at times, a self-described “asshole.”  2). The meme references “Perry High School”; one of the local schools is Perry County High School.  You will note, however, Gentle Reader, that as even the arresting officer declares, assholitude “is not illegal,” absent legitimate threats of violence or similar intentions of criminality.  And the high school referred to in the meme is, as noted above, not in Tennessee, but in Iowa.  Bushart’s comment makes it clear that he was referencing that event from over a year earlier.

OK, Curmie’s distaste for Charlie Kirk is evident.  That doesn’t mean that his murder was anything but abhorrent, or that those who idolized him and mourned his loss publicly shouldn’t be allowed to do so.  But posting a meme shouldn’t get you fired, and it sure as hell shouldn’t get you arrested.  What’s worse, of course, is the active collusion of multiple figures in the (in)justice system.  True, Nick Weems would come in third in a battle of wits with a broken stapler and a corn dog.  Hell, he’d even lose to Mike Licari.  

But there’s also an unnamed prosecutor who not only didn’t laugh in Weems’s face but actually requested a delayed hearing in response to Bushart’s lawyer’s reasonable claim that bail of $2 million for a nothingburger case like this might be un peu de trop.  And there’s General Sessions Judge Katerina Moore, who granted that request.  Someone should have stopped this absurdity before it embarrassed everyone involved.  They didn’t, at least until the coverage went viral.

This case is so ridiculous, it’s almost inevitable that FIRE got involved.  Charges against Bushart have now been dropped, but that’s clearly not enough.  He lost his post-retirement job, was confined for over five weeks on an absurd charge because bail was set at a level no normal person could afford,  and missed the birth of his granddaughter.  He’s going to sue, with FIRE’s assistance, and he’s going to collect.  Bigly.  

Chris Eargle, who created the “Justice for Larry Bushart” Facebook page, posted on the “Re-Elect Weems for Sheriff” page, “Unwise persecution of people for their political views will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars.  He should never be allowed near public office again.”  He’s right, of course, on both counts.  If only the problem were limited to one boneheaded sheriff in a jerkwater county in Tennessee…

Updates, Revisions, and Reconsiderations

Today, we’re re-visiting and updating a few stories Curmie has posted this calendar year.  The First Felon’s antics are too predictably heinous to bother to mention, but his minions are still fair game.

Pete Hegseth.  Back in January, Curmie wrote that “The reason not to confirm Hegseth is that he is spectacularly unqualified for the job.  It’s not all the negatives; it’s the utter absence of any positives.”  Curmie stands by that statement; certainly any competent President, even one stupid enough to have appointed him to begin with, would have fired his ass after the Enola Gay kerfuffle and especially that Signal chat business.  Still, the fact that he remains the perfect storm of arrogance and stupidity seems pretty relevant, too.

The Cortland Standard.  Back in March, Curmie mourned the demise of the daily newspaper in the small city where he went to high school.  A couple months later, on Curmie’s anniversary, as it happens, came the story that the paper had been bought out of bankruptcy and would be back in business on a Tuesday through Saturday schedule, effective May 17.  This matters little to the overwhelming majority of readers of this blog, but it may portend a trend… we can hope.

Sarah Inama.  March was also when Curmie wrote about Ms. Inama, an Idaho middle school teacher who ran afoul of racist morons school administrators for a poster that proclaimed “Everyone is welcome here.”  Yes, really.  She is now in a new district, where administrators rejected the “guidance” of the state Censor in Chief Attorney General, who asserted the poster was political and therefore prohibited; instead, they declared in a memo sent to all staff that “‘Everyone is Welcome Here’ is the law.  It is not a political statement.”  We’ll see how this all plays out.

Melissa Calhoun.  Ms. Calhoun is believed to be the first Florida teacher fired for referring to a student by their preferred name without explicit parental permission.  Curmie described her case, up to that point, in April.  She was, indeed, de facto fired for the offense of having some respect for a student.  She claims she knew the student before the stupid law went into effect and used the offending appellation out of habit, “an unfortunate oversight.”  This may or may not be true, of course.  Over the summer, there seemed to have been a settlement by which Calhoun could keep her teaching credentials for a year of probation, but the district won’t rehire her or even allow her to volunteer for this academic year.  Calhoun is apparently looking for work outside education, and there is speculation that a lawsuit may be forthcoming.

Kilmar Abrego-Garcia.  It’s unlikely we’ll ever get to the truth about what crimes KA-G may or may not have committed years ago.  As Curmie wrote in April, the first round of this ever-evolving brouhaha was about due process, period, the end.  The feds didn’t have a case, but they sent him off to a Salvadorean gulag, anyway.  The Trump administration then dawdled when SCOTUS unanimously demanded his return.  He did eventually arrive back in the US, but was almost immediately under investigation related to that traffic stop in Tennessee in 2022. 

We’re now hearing the feds claim that he was smuggling illegal aliens because he was in MS-13.  Previous attempts to show such gang membership have been laughably inept, but now there are “co-conspirators” ready to testify against him… in exchange for something, no doubt.  Anyway, now the government wants to send him off to Liberia, of all places.  And right now.  Don’t ask why, Gentle Reader, you probably don’t want to try to track the tortured logic.  The chances are pretty good that literally everyone involved in this case on either side has told at least one egregious lie.  But once again, due process is the issue. 

Boy My Greatness.  Back in September, Curmie wrote about the suppression of a student-directed production of Zoe Senese-Grossberg’s play at the University of Central Oklahoma.  The university decided to blame the utterly unwarranted censorship on the theatre department.  Curmie commented, “Gentle Reader, if you believe the decision was de facto made by the theatre department, Curmie has some ocean-front property in Kansas he’s willing to sell to you for cheap.”  No, this level of stupidity could only be perpetrated by administrators. 

UCO juniors Maggie Lawson and Liberty Welch might have been a little staggered by the abrupt (and stupid) cancellation of their play on campus, but it didn’t take them long to recover.  They told their cast that they had the option to leave because trying to produce it on their own was going to be more complicated than a production at school.  Curmie, with decades of experience in such matters, knew exactly what the response would be: “rock on, we want to do it.”

The company started a GoFundMe, hoping for $2000 but expecting “like, $200 and, like, a high five. Like, ‘you go girls!’”  They brought in just short of $10,000.  And they found a venue.  And they opened their show on October 23, two weeks after they were originally scheduled to go up at OCU.  Word is, it went well.  Of course it did.  Those extra barriers just added another layer of incentive.  Curmie is proud of those students, even if he does hope they’ll get the hell out of Oklahoma so they won’t need to go through this crap every time they want to do something more controversial than Harvey or You Can’t Take It with You.

Scams and Things That Smell Like Scams.  Curmie wrote in particular about the barrage of letters pretending to be from an insurance company with which Curmie was already affiliated (they weren’t, of course), and an ad for the UpSide app with an absurdly exaggerated claim.  Well, Curmie heard that same UpSide ad just a couple of days ago, and yes, they’re still making shit up.  He also got another scammy letter about his car insurance… and last week one about his homeowner’s insurance.  At least they’re branching out?

But the commercials for various gambling apps and “you must act now” crap aimed at folks on Medicare are getting annoyingly ubiquitous.  Back in the days when there was a functioning Consumer Protection Bureau, there’d be a chance to get the objectively false claims off the air.  The Trump administration is taking notes for their own next scam.

The Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.  The good news is that none of the nine universities contacted by the DOE signed on to that absurd document.  Seven, including Curmie’s undergraduate alma mater, rejected it outright; the other two supplied comments but didn’t agree to the terms.  Another trio of universities, including Curmie’s doctoral alma mater, were contacted after the first nine schools had made their decisions.  Exactly how specific things got is unclear—university officials say they were not asked to sign the document, but made it clear they wouldn’t do so, anyway.  It remains to be seen if the Trump administration is willing to listen to what university leaders are saying or if they’ll keep up the blustering and bullying tactics.

The Short-Lived Truce in Palestine.  Last month, Curmie credited Donald Trump for his efforts in bringing about a ceasefire and prisoner exchange in the Mideast.  He did warn that “There is too much animosity, too much destruction, too much history, to be overly optimistic.”  Sometimes Curmie hates being right.  The peace lasted less than a week, , and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of optimism for the future, although we can but hope that Trump and others will keep trying.  At least the hostages on both sides were released…

New topic next time!

Cynthia Erivo Does What “Security” Doesn’t

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo arrive at the
“Yellow Carpet” in Singapore

Curmie is behind, to say the least, in pretty much all things Pop Culture, and frankly isn’t much concerned about that failing.  Maybe it’s the “re-retiring,” this time almost certainly permanently; maybe it’s achieving septuagenarian status.  Whatever the reason, a fair number of big deal movies, for example, have gone unwatched.  Many, perhaps most, will stay that way: things Curmie should see are becoming increasingly replaced by things he wants to see.  Some few, however, are in the “someday” pile, films Curmie fully intends to see… eventually.

“Wicked” is in that category, and one suspects that its soon-to-be-released sequel will be, as well.  Curmie knows the basic story-line and that the two leads, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, are excellent singers; apparently, they’re both at least competent actors, too.  The films will be worth a look, even if musicals aren’t Curmie’s usual fare.

The pair of “Wicked” movies have also generated a fair amount of press for something that ought not to be particularly newsworthy: Erivo and Grande are actually close friends in real life.  Go figure, huh?  But that friendship really came to the forefront today in Singapore.  More on that in a moment.

Ariana Grande was already an established star in 2017 when Curmie became aware of her in a more substantial way than simply noting her fame.  On May 22 of that year, a suicide bomber killed 23 people (including himself) and injured over 200 (not counting about another 800 or more who were subsequently treated for psychological trauma) as people were leaving Grande’s concert in Manchester, England.  Victims included concert-goers and parents who were waiting to pick up their children from the event.  We heard about it here in the States, of course, but as it happens, Curmie arrived in London on university business a couple days later, and the coverage was unsurprisingly more extensive there.  Grande’s tweet after the bombing, “From the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don't have words,” became, at the time, the most-liked tweet in the platform’s history.  Yeah, that’s fine, but it’s really only what would be expected.

Understandably shaken, and indeed suffering from PTSD, Grande cancelled part of her tour and flew home to Florida.  No one could criticize her for that.  It’s what comes next that matters.  Only a couple of days after the bombing, she announced a benefit concert.  Such events take time to organize.  Or, at least, that’s the Conventional Wisdom.  Not this time.  The One Love Manchester concert was held in Manchester at the Old Trafford Cricket Grounds less than a fortnight after the bombing, and included appearances by a host of well-known performers, including Grande herself, Justin Bieber, Coldplay, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Pharrell Williams, Usher, Take That, the Black-Eyed Peas, and Liam Gallagher, among others.  A host of others appeared on video: U2, Paul McCartney, Demi Lovato, Jennifer Hudson, Twenty One Pilots, Dua Lipa, David Beckham, members of both the Manchester City and Manchester United football teams, and more.

The capacity 50,000 tickets were sold out in less than 20 minutes; fans who had attended the May 22 concert could apply to attend free of charge.   Manchester’s public transportation system offered free service to and from Old Trafford, and Uber said fares for fans travelling to or from the event would be donated to charity.  The event was streamed live to 50 countries, and the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund raised more than $23 million; not all of this was a direct result of the concert, but the lion’s share was.  And this doesn’t count the estimated £19 million raised by the British Red Cross during and in the immediate aftermath of One Love Manchester.  Oh, and Grande also donated proceeds from her singles “One Last Time” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” not so coincidentally the two songs that closed the benefit concert.

Here’s Dee Lockett, writing in New York’s Vulture section:

Less than two weeks after the attack, and with only a few days to privately process and mourn, Ariana returned to Manchester with an entire benefit concert she coordinated. ... She called in every favor, pulling in famous friends like Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber to show up for the grieving city. After meeting with a parent of one of the victims, Grande said she shifted the tone of the show from somber to celebratory because she understood that it was what her fans needed. ...

All night, Ariana performed without breaking, but that was when she had others by her side. ... When it was just her alone with her fans for her finale cover of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” the floodgates opened. In what will likely go down as one of the defining moments of her career, she paused the song, looked out to her audience, which was already sobbing along with her, then resumed the music to nail yet another impossible note.

Yeah, Ariana Grande is Good People.

You know who else is?  Cynthia Erivo.  As the stars were arriving on the yellow (as in Yellow Brick Road) carpet for the Singapore premiere of “Wicked: For Good,” a young man leaped over the barrier, charged towards Grande, grabbed her and pulled her towards him.  We know who it was and what he looks like (he’s done this kind of shit before, most recently at a Katy Perry concert), but he’s seeking publicity for himself and Curmie will be damned if he’s responsible for even one person knowing his name.  This guy will be referred to here, now and forevermore, as Assclown Boy.

Remember, Grande still suffers from PTSD, so this assault had to be especially disturbing.  Plus, of course, she might weigh as much as 100 pounds after a big meal; she’s going to be pretty easily overwhelmed physically.  She was quite apparently shaken by the incident.  The so-called security team failed utterly.  Cynthia Erivo did not.  Responding both sooner and with considerably more urgency than the folks whose job it was to protect the stars, Erivo went Full Mama Bear, no doubt at some risk to herself, immediately interposing herself between Assclown Boy and Grande, pushing him away and screaming at him.  He’s lucky the security team did belatedly arrive on the scene, or ritual disembowelment might have been on the day’s agenda.  Fucking with Ariana when Cynthia is around is extremely contra-indicated.  (Michelle Yeoh gets credit, too, but it was Erivo who really took charge.)

No one can solve every problem or prevent every bad thing from happening.  And it’s easy to be empathetic if it doesn’t cost us anything more than a few hollow words.  What’s harder and far more admirable is to recognize what can be done and to do it.  Female singers don’t have a monopoly on this stuff, but a lot of them sure do seem to be good at it: Dolly Parton.  Taylor Swift.  Ariana Grande.  And now Cynthia Erivo.  Whether we’re fans of their music or not, we need to recognize that the world is a better place for their presence in it.

Not to Be a Wet Blanket, But...

As you might suspect, Gentle Reader, Curmie sees a lot of material from leftie sources—The Other 98%, Occupy Democrats, Robert Reich, and so on.  There’s a general sense of gloating there about the results of Tuesday’s elections.  And there’s a lot of scurrying around on the right, looking for someone to blame.

True, the headlines suggest a pretty clean sweep for Democrats: the mayoral race in New York, the governorship in New Jersey, all of the most significant races in Virginia, the ballot initiative in California to counter Texas’s gerrymandering.  Comments on various posts suggest success in other places, as well: flipping the county council here, turning a GOP supermajority into a simple majority there, etc.  And there don’t seem to be a lot of stories about Republican gains.  The Trump administration is apparently being recognized for the cruel, incompetent, and otherwise embarrassing regime it is, and down ballot Republicans are paying the price.  Good.

So there is indeed some cause for celebration, but Curmie thinks a lot of the pundits on both sides are over-reacting.  Those two gubernatorial races resulted in Democrats succeeding other Democrats into office.  And is it really a surprise that that Californians tend to be liberals, or that Zohran Mamdani won against the likes of Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa?  The only question was whether he’d get a clear majority in a three-way race.  (He did, at least apparently.)  Yes, those were legitimately the biggest stories, but it’s rather like being amazed that the Dodgers made it to the post-season again.

Trump may be indulging in yet another narcissistic fantasy in believing that the fact that his name wasn’t on the ballot was a contributing factor in Republican losses, but he does have a point that the shutdown hurt the GOP at the polls, because voters rightly blamed it on Trump, Johnson, et al., despite their obviously desperate spinning that it was all the Democrats’ fault.  Had Johnson kept his members in D.C. and even pretended to negotiate in good faith, it wouldn’t have been quite as obvious that it was all a ploy to delay seating Adelita Grijalva, thereby protecting a certain someone from confirming our suspicions about those Epstein documents.  Luckily (?) Johnson is nearly as stupid as he is mendacious.

But.

A couple of those Dems elected in Virginia, for example, appear to be pretty horrible folks; if and when they screw up (again), the “throw the bastards out” cries will be coming from the other direction.  Donald Trump is indeed petulant and immoral enough to impose punishments on New York for electing Mamdani, thereby making it more likely that he won’t fulfill some of his promises.  Of course, hoping an elected leader fails is a trait Republicans often accuse Democrats of exhibiting; it is, of course, projection of their own outspoken desires.  (Does the name Mitch McConnell mean anything to you, Gentle Reader?) 

California’s fighting-fire-with-fire gerrymandering initiative, albeit designed specifically to go into force only if Texas and other states go forward with their corrupt and self-serving practices, is also ethically suspect.  The phrasing may be a bit cliché, but Curmie really does believe that citizens should choose their legislators, not the other way around.

But what really got Curmie musing on election results was the list of constitutional amendments on the ballot here in his adopted state of Texas.  There were 17 of them (!), all of which passed, most of them comfortably.  Curmie voted against about half of them.  You can probably guess which ones: those that were obviously designed as handouts to wealthy folks, those that sure did seem like not so thinly veiled racism or transphobia, those that were variations on the theme of outlawing Sharia Law (forbidding things that had literally no chance of happening, anyway). 

Sure, Curmie’s property taxes are likely to go down (or at least not go up as much), and the funding for dementia research might well help Curmie directly.  Both his father and paternal grandfather had Parkinson’s.  (Curmie is OK and several years older than his dad was when he first started showing symptoms.  This could all change, of course.)  That’s good news from a selfish perspective.  But few if any of even the good proposals require a constitutional amendment; legislation ought to handle it. 

Those who voted against the ERA a couple of decades ago because they believed it superfluous—those guarantees of equality were already part of federal law, just not the Constitution, they claimed—are suddenly eager to make every protection for the ultra-wealthy constitutionally protected.  There was never, to the best of Curmie’s knowledge, any real attempt to impose state taxes on inheritance, capital gains, or securities transactions.  Curmie might think a couple of them would be a good idea, but they would have zero chance of ever being enacted in this state. 

Moreover, one of the cardinal attributes of the US Constitution is its brevity.  Texas’s version is a little over 12 times as long.  And it does seem that the state legislature could spend their time on important issues facing the state instead of worrying about, for example, whether non-citizens could vote.

Important to note here is the fact that non-citizens already can’t vote.  It’s illegal in national elections, and you can’t register to vote in Texas unless you’re a citizen.  Enshrining this amendment in the state constitution is an exercise in masturbation.  But it’s not simply the hollow sloganeering-as-policy that’s disturbing.  Several states allow legally resident non-citizens to vote in local elections.  This, frankly, makes sense.  Their kids are going to those public schools; they ought to have a voice in who’s on the school board.  But any chance to be xenophobic is one to be relished by too many Texans.  Or, rather, to give them the benefit of the doubt, they are swayed by simplistic slogans rather than by thoughtful consideration.

And that is the problem.  It’s not that a Republican-controlled legislature wants to flaunt its prejudices and its subservience to the ultra-wealthy—remember that literally every Republican Congresscritter voted against a proposal to raise the marginal tax rate by 2.5% on people making more than a billion dollars a year.  You read that right, Gentle Reader, “billion,” with a “b.”  The median family income in the US for 2024 was $83,730.  Such a family would take a little over 11,943 years (!) to get to a billion.  Curmie kinda thinks most folks could handle paying 39.5% on taxable income over $1,000,000,000.  Remember, that’s just on the taxable (post-deductions) part and just on the part that exceeds a billion, not on the whole amount.

No, GOP pols’ ritual fellation of the billionaire class is a problem, but not the problem.  We can expect no better from them individually, and certainly not collectively.  The problem is that citizens here in Texas, and one suspects elsewhere as well, not merely let them get away with such behavior, but actually endorse it.  They probably would be as outraged as the rest of us if they actually thought about things.  But they don’t, and the Fox Newses of the world will make sure they don’t.  Until that changes, the slide toward xenophobia and plutocracy will continue unabated.

Sometimes Curmie considers Eeyore an optimist.

Harvard, Grade Inflation, and the Very Special Snowflakes

A recent article in the Harvard Crimson has generated substantially more buzz on the national scale than is common for college newspaper fare.  That’s because of its subject, a 25-page report authored by Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh regarding rampant grade inflation at the university.  “Our grading,” she writes, “no longer performs its primary functions and is undermining our academic mission.”

Certainly the rapid and apparently inexorable rise in average GPA scores threatens to make grades obsolete, if we haven’t reached that stage already.  There has been a lot written about the situation over, well, about as long as Curmie has been paying attention, which is to say when he started his own collegiate career over a half-century ago.  There are manifold causes of the phenomenon: from a political attempt to help men retain their student deferments in the Vietnam era to an over-reliance on student course evaluations for decisions about merit pay, retention, and tenure to concerns about student well-being during COVID. 

Increased emphasis in secondary schools on standardized testing and the accompanying teach-to-the-test mentality also contributes, as students arrive at college having memorized a few names, dates, and formulas, but without having developed the thinking skills required for advanced study in any academic discipline, especially those in which personal interpretation is foregrounded.  Curmie has often said he doesn’t care whether you think Sam or Hally is the protagonist in “Master Harold”… and the boys; he cares about the thought process that gets you there.  (And it had better be more than simply parroting what some teacher told you.)

There’s a good article on the gradeinflation.com website that looks into both the statistics and the causes.  Curmie encourages you to at least glance through it, Gentle Reader.  But keep in mind that the information included there is over a decade old, and things have gotten far worse, especially but not exclusively during COVID.

How bad is it?  Well, there are literally dozens of articles out there, examining a lot of universities, but let’s stick with Harvard, where the problem seems to be worse than anywhere else.  (Curmie devoutly hopes this is true, because if any university’s grading integrity is more compromised than this, Curmie will run screaming into the night, never to be seen again.)  Over half of the grades at Harvard are now an “A,” and from what Curmie can decipher, that means an “A” as opposed to “A-range,” which would include A-minuses.  And get this: the cutoff for summa cum laude status is now 3.989, meaning that a single B-plus or a pair of A-minuses bars a Harvard student from getting summa.  Ah, but there a few fewer 4.0s in the most recent class than in the previous year’s; this is being touted as a sign of progress.  Sigh.

Ultimately, of course, whereas there are a lot of excuses reasons for grade inflation, they all ultimately boil down to the same thing: the faculty.  According to Claybaugh, “Nearly all faculty expressed serious concern… They perceive there to be a misalignment between the grades awarded and the quality of student work.”  Well, they could always… you know… give grades that corrected that “misalignment.”  True, there are pressures to keep passing out “A” grades like candy on Hallowe’en, especially in an era in which students are perceived as consumers rather than clients.  But grades are a professor’s responsibility, and a university that truly cares about the integrity of the process would encourage faculty to be a little more conscientious, not merely in words but in actions.

All of this (except a couple of specifics) has been a standard topic of conversation for a long time.  Curmie has written about it several times, most recently in a discussion of course evaluations, and he’s had dozens of conversations with colleagues from around the campus and around the country.  There’s one proposal from the Harvard administration he wants to talk about in a moment, but first, let’s look at Harvard students’ reaction to the suggestion that perhaps not all of them are the best in the class.

When Curmie started college many years ago, part of the orientation process was telling us (repeatedly!) that over 90% of us were in the top 10% of our high school classes, and that it was mathematically impossible for us all to do so in college, but being in the middle of a class at an Ivy League school was nothing to be ashamed of.  Our parents all got a letter with the same information.  One suspects that Harvard does roughly the same thing with their freshmen.

Ah, but the weeping and wailing from Cambridge drowned out the sounds of the jets at Logan Airport.  A follow-up piece in the Harvard Crimson described the horrors associated with requiring better than average work if you want to get an A.  One student described the report as “soul-crushing”: “The whole entire day, I was crying.  I skipped classes on Monday, and I was just sobbing in bed because I felt like I try so hard in my classes, and my grades aren’t even the best.”  Another worried about her ongoing ability to “enjoy [her] classes.”  A lacrosse player whined that “it’s not really accounting for what we have to do on a day to day basis, and how many hours we’re putting into our team, our bodies, and then also school.”

Way to play to the stereotype, guys!  Nothing says “snowflake” louder than this drivel.  You might end up with a 3.8 instead of a 4.0?  And that crushes your soul?  Get a damned life.  The chances are, of course, that these students never really had to work very hard in high school to get the grades that would get them admitted to an Ivy League school.  (Curmie didn’t.)  And the competition is tougher now. 

You don’t, or at least shouldn’t, go to Harvard for the extracurriculars; you go to get a Harvard-level education.  And prioritizing academics, at least somewhat, is, well, mandatory.  When Curmie started at Dartmouth, the cutoff for induction into the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society was 3.4.  Curmie figured he could write and edit for the college newspaper, help out at the Forensic Union (i.e., the debate team), work on shows essentially non-stop, play intramural sports, etc., as long as he kept that GPA.  (They changed the standard for ΦΒΚ in his junior (?) year, so Curmie didn’t end up getting in, but he shifted his attention to being magna cum laude, and achieved that goal.)  You can do things other than study and still get decent grades.

The whole “I killed myself all throughout high school to try and get into this school” argument (yeah, that’s a quote, too), suggesting that the work should be easier now, is beyond stupid.  It’s the equivalent of an all-conference high school basketball player complaining about not being all-conference in college although he averages 2 points a game, can’t guard anyone his own size, and has more turnovers than assists. 

One argument seems, superficially, to have some validity: if Harvard gets tougher on grades and equivalent universities don’t, it places Harvard students at a competitive disadvantage.  Ultimately, however, this line of reasoning really isn’t very persuasive at all.  A Harvard degree means something—perhaps less than it once did, but still something—but good grades there are now meaningless from an institution where an A- GPA is below average.

Curmie is reminded of a piece he wrote 15 years ago about the efforts by Loyola Law School to help its students be competitive, namely by simply raising GPAs by a third of a letter grade across the board, including instituting a new de facto A++ grade.  Yes, really.  But the thing is, the little ploy got a lot of attention, thereby diminishing the prestige of a Loyola degree and doing little to actually help students.  Here’s what Curmie wrote:

When I was applying to PhD programs, I was looking at one school that said something like “generally, we require a 3.5 GPA in your undergraduate work.” My undergrad GPA was 3.46 or something like that; it was considerably better in my major, but I didn’t meet the stated criteria. Still, there was that word “generally” in their statement. So I called them up. Their response, paraphrased, was “You have a 3.46 from Dartmouth? Of course we’re interested in you!” That’s what Loyola students used to have going for them: the reputation that a Loyola grad, relative to alums from a different school, was better than his/her GPA. Now the entire place is—or at least ought to be—a laughing stock. Oh, what a brave new world.

Harvard didn’t learn that lesson, apparently.  And, especially in light of the New York Times article a few weeks ago, the world knows just how little a good grade from Harvard now means.

There’s one more item to discuss before we get to the putain de stupide.  One of the arguments in favor of, shall we say, excessive grade generosity is that “For the past decade or so, the College has been exhorting faculty to remember that some students arrive less prepared for college than others.”  If a particular student needs remedial work in a single subject area, that’s understandable.  For example, Curmie had plenty of advisees who could handle all of the university’s general education requirements… except math.

The same phenomenon works in the opposite direction, as well, of course.  Years ago, Curmie taught a variation on the theme of English Composition at Cornell University when he was a grad student there.  One of his students was, from all accounts, a brilliant physicist.  But, curiously enough, he didn’t write as well in his third language (he was Korean; his second language was Chinese) as did the native English speakers in the College of Arts and Sciences at an Ivy League university.

Accommodating that student to the extent of dragging him kicking and screaming to a passing grade is one thing; giving him an A for barely passable work would have been something else.  More recently, Curmie has had a handful of students whose native language is Spanish.  All of them were learning English even as they were also learning Play Analysis.  All of them passed; all of them deserved to pass, without needing any accommodations, because they did the work, and their ideas were good even if they sometimes struggled with writing in their second language.  One, in particular, went on to become a star pupil in subsequent courses and got a Master’s degree from a quite reputable university. 

But if a student is “less prepared” across the board, that person shouldn’t be at Harvard.  One suspects, and you can be certain that the right-wing press will be asserting this, that we’re talking about what could be called DEI admissions.  There are certainly advantages to a diverse student body, but it does no one—not the student, not the other students, not the university, not the nation—any good to admit someone who just can’t cut it.  To this extent, the Trump administration has a point.

Ah, but it’s time for the grand finale.  You may recall, Gentle Reader, that Curmie described the part of the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education that demands that universities return tuition money to students who drop out in their first semester as “a contender for the stupidest fucking idea in the history of stupid fucking ideas.”  Curmie spoke too soon, as there is now a new leader in the clubhouse, a proposal so blazingly inane it could only come from a university administrator, and probably one at Harvard.

Get this: one of the proposals, apparently initiated by Claybaugh and sent to a faculty committee for discussion, is to allow a limited number of A+ grades (Harvard’s best grade at present is an A), thereby “distinguishing the very best students.”  You can’t make this shit up, Gentle Reader.  The way to fight grade inflation is to further inflate grades.  Curmie might have thought that a better course of action to curb grade inflation might be to give students whose work is very good but not exemplary an A- or (God forbid!) perhaps even a B.  Curmie clearly was never cut out for administration, at least at Harvard.

Harvard has brought this on itself.  There are other universities that are, no doubt, almost as bad, but this stuff surpasses credulity.  The pampered little snowflakes who make up at least a good share of the student body should be scorned, but they’re still post-adolescents and might be salvageable.  The administration and faculty, however, are beyond hope of redemption.