Three Cheers for Student Journalists

Cereese Qusba and Sophia Dasser
of the Cornell Daily Sun

There was a period of only a few days, from September 18-21, during which reporting by three different student newspapers led to coverage by, among other national outlets, the New York Times, NPR, Inside Higher Ed, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Curmie already wrote about one of the stories, the bizarre decision by someone at Stanford University to use AI to alter a photograph of a trio of students, not merely altering the images of two of them, but changing the third from a Hispanic man in a GAP shirt to a black woman in Stanford garb.

Interestingly, Curmie heard about that story before one that came out three days earlier and has garnered far more publicity.  Curmie refers, of course, to the Cornell Daily Sun’s reporting of the lawsuits filed on behalf of a now former Cornell University student, alleging that she had been drugged and gang raped at the Chi Phi fraternity house in October of 2024.  By now, Gentle Reader, you would have had to be living under the proverbial rock not to know at least the basics of the saga of Jane Doe and the Cornell 7.

It is not Curmie’s intention here to urge you to believe or disbelieve anyone associated with the case—Jane Doe (subsequently identified as Lucy Craig) herself, any of the alleged perps, Cornell, the Tompkins County DA’s office, the various lawyers…  The only thing we can say with certainty is that somebody is saying things that aren’t true; Curmie isn’t even going to say with confidence that anyone is lying, although there is of course a reasonable likelihood that someone is.  If nothing else, Cornell’s UPD said, at least initially, that they provided the DA with their complete file; the DA says they did not.  Someone is at least wrong, if not mendacious. 

It’s also important to note that what is unethical and what is reasonably prosecutable are different things.  There is no possible reading of what we know that doesn’t show at the vast majority of Chi Phi members are assholes, but whether there would be a legitimate chance of convicting any of them is another matter.  There’s also apparently a state law (Curmie regrets that he can’t find the source where he read this) that says that if an alleged victim voluntarily took alcohol or other drugs, she (“she” in this case) cannot subsequently claim to have been unable to consent.  Curmie understands the impulse, but the downside ought to be pretty obvious.  Brock Turner, anyone?

As new information, or at least material not previously known by the general public, emerges, we begin to see predictable responses that tell us more about the predilections of the commenter than about the facts of the case.  Curmie has his suspicions, as do you, no doubt, Gentle Reader, but he doesn’t know, beyond the proverbial reasonable doubt, what actually happened.  Not yet, at least.  This may be the ultimate postmodern paradigm, in which meaning is literally constructed, rather than merely interpreted, by the reader.  Certainly, a renewed investigation is called for.  It’s likely to be political in nature, however, so there will inevitably be some folks who, not without justification, will reject its findings.

What matters for the purposes of this essay, however, isn’t the legitimacy or lack thereof of Jane Doe’s allegations.  It is, instead, the coverage of the Cornell Daily Sun.  They may not have been first on the scene—it’s unlikely that Doe’s attorney wouldn’t have publicized their suit—but their reporting certainly pre-dated any national sources Curmie can find. 

Significantly, their reportage, thanks primarily to the  work of reporter Cereese Qusba and editor-in-chief Sophia Dasser, but also to the rest of the editorial staff, is the most complete Curmie can find.  They were on the case early, and ready with far more background than any of the national outlets.  Equally importantly, they didn’t stop after that first story; they followed up with new information as the story developed. 

One other point: it’s clear where the editorial board stands, but their news stories are fundamentally unbiased.  They had the opportunity to speak with Jane Doe, who has apparently been unwilling to talk to other reporters.  Their  reporting acknowledges this, but they are careful to articulate the arguments of the Cornell administration, the Tompkins County DA’s office, and the defendants’ lawyers.  Their editorial on the case is clearly identified as such; whether you agree with the Sun’s position or not, their argument is well-researched and well-articulated.

The other element at play here is the fact that this case has repercussions far outside Cornell.  That is why there are protests and rallies across the country.  A piece by Stephen Lambert of The Collegian (at the University of Tulsa) is another example of student journalists doing their job.  It’s worth reading in its entirety, but Curmie wants to call particular attention to these two sections:

By bringing the allegations and questions surrounding the university’s response into public view, The Cornell Daily Sun gave students at other universities an opportunity to examine how their own institutions and organizations respond to allegations of sexual violence. What began as an investigation into one campus has consequently become part of a broader conversation about accountability, transparency and the culture surrounding Greek life….

When reporting publicizes an issue, students and organizations are given an opportunity to examine their own practices rather than waiting for administrators to act. In this way, the work of independent student journalists can extend beyond the original story, prompting conversations and actions that reach far beyond the campus where the reporting began.

Irrespective of the details of this case, in other words, students—especially but not exclusively women—see parallels with their own experience of college campuses in general and fraternities in particular.  Curmie, who was GDI (God-Damned Independent) as an undergrad at a frat-dominant college that was only slowly transitioning to co-education, understands.  Moreover, the problem of sexual violence on college campuses does not go away even if Jane Doe’s allegations are proven to be spurious.

And so we turn to the third story regarding student journalists, this one at Dartmouth College.  On September 21, The Dartmouth (a.k.a. the “Daily D”) ran a story by Alex Klee and Isabela Pierry claiming that Provost Santiago Schnell  had been using AI to “write” both academic articles and opinion pieces.

The paper employed the AI-detector program Pangram to compare Schnell’s work prior to the November 2022 release of ChatGPT with more recent publications.  What they found was that pre-ChatGPT, Pangram determined that Schnell’s articles were “100% human-written.”  After that date… well, a different story: a median AI-written text percentage of 96%.  Um… wow.

True, Pangram and similar programs are not perfect.  Allow Curmie to quote himself from a couple months ago: 

You may recall, Gentle Reader, that last year Curmie asked ChatGPT to write an essay about Elon Musk in Curmie’s own style.  It did so rather frighteningly well.  Some time later, Curmie fed that composition to one of those programs that purports to determine whether an actual person wrote something.  He was assured that it was 100% certain that it was written by a human.  Oops.  Maybe we ought not to be too trusting of computers’ conclusions?

There is, furthermore, some evidence that it is more likely to deliver a false positive on non-native authors like the Venezuelan-born Schnell.  But how, then, were his earlier publications, i.e., the ones written when he had spent less time in the English-speaking world, deemed original?  And the presence of a false negative does not necessarily imply the likelihood of a false positive, certainly not over multiple texts. 

Indeed, a piece that appeared under Schnell’s name in the Washington Post was determined to be “100% AI-written.”  The irony: Schnell (or whatever AI software actually wrote the article) argues that “a degree should distinguish what students can do independently from what they can accomplish with AI.”  Yes, indeed it should.

Schnell does confirm that he uses AI for “language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient,” but “review[s] the final text and take[s] responsibility for its content.”  He says that, according to the article in The Dartmouth, in an email which was itself “’100 AI-written,’ according to a Pangram test.”

The hole he’s digging just keeps getting deeper.  Look, virtually everyone uses a variation on AI, but not GenAI.  Curmie almost always (which is to say, when he remembers to do so) uses Word’s “Editor” function to catch typos and similar errors.  Sometimes he gets a offer to re-write a section of text.  He literally always declines.  Generally, he looks at the passage in question to make sure it’s clear and that it says what he wants it to say.  Occasionally, he clarifies a sentence or two; far more often, he leaves the wording completely unchanged, in the perhaps arrogant belief that he’s a better wordsmith than some bot is.  Importantly, no one really believes that minor changes in grammar or spelling lead to a false positive in Pangram or similar analyses.

It’s clear to Curmie that Schnell, the highest-ranking academic at an Ivy League school has crossed the line into behavior that would get an undergrad suspended if not expelled.  Dartmouth’s official policy states that “Dartmouth assumes the general rule that GenAI tools are disallowed by default.”  The policy for undergrads says explicitly that “Even in matters of unintentional violation, students are responsible for their work and for upholding the standards of our community.”  In other words, ignorance of the law is no excuse… not to mention that no one ought to know that law more than the Provost.

Having been busted, Schnell now tells the Chronicle of Higher Education that “Moving forward, my standard practice will be to disclose use of AI in my public writing and academic publications upon submission, and I will proactively follow all policies set forth by each publication.”  This level of after-the-fact ethical epiphany might fly in a freshman, but it is woefully insufficient in someone leading a reputable college, especially since at least one of the instances violated the explicit terms of the publisher.

Schnell’s job is probably safe, despite his outrageous and unethical misrepresentation of AI-generated work as his own.  That’s because Dartmouth President Sian Beilock is an apologist not only for anyone in her inner circle, but for all things AI.  The New York Times quotes her article in The Atlantic (the original is behind a paywall) as follows: “There will be missteps and that’s part of how an institution learns.”  Give me a damned break.  After four decades in higher education, Curmie also knows very well that the surest way to maintain the status quo at a college or university is to appoint a committee to study the question, which is what she did.

There is literally no doubt in Curmie’s mind that Schnell should absolutely be fired, as was true for Claudine Gray at Harvard, Jason Arday at Cambridge, et al.  Here, he aligns himself The Dartmouth’s editorialist Eli Moyse and with 300 or so other faculty, student, and alumni signers of a letter to the Trustees demanding Schnell’s removal. 

The rationale here is not what John Warner writes at the end of an otherwise useful opinion piece in Inside Higher Ed.  This is not “a short-term attempt to quell student displeasure.”  It is, rather, a necessary purging of a once-respected academic who has revealed himself as a hypocrite and a fraud.  It is imperative that any institution of higher learning maintain the highest level of integrity in all things related to its educational mission.  In its own way, that’s as important as protecting the safety of the student body.  And that cannot be accomplished with the likes of Santiago Schnell on the faculty, much less as Provost.  He not only violated the standards of academic integrity; he did so as a representative of Dartmouth.

So... three stories, three of the nation’s premier academic institutions, three tips of the cap to the student journalists involved.  We just might be okay in the years ahead.

Full disclosure: these stories are listed here in the order Curmie found out about them, but they also appear in increasing order of his attachment to the college/university involved.

Curmie almost mentioned in the Stanford piece that he’d come very close to at least applying there for his PhD.  There was, back in the days before email, an exchange of letters expressing mutual interest, before Curmie ended up at… wait for it… Cornell.  Curmie spent four year in Ithaca before leaving as an ABD (All But Dissertation).  He suspects he had a few fraternity members in his classes, but never really spent any time with the undergrads outside the classroom, and couldn’t tell you if Chi Phi even existed, let alone what their reputation might have been.

Of course, Curmie got his undergrad degree at Dartmouth, and indeed did some writing and editing for The Dartmouth.  Most of his work there was for the arts page, but he did write a couple of articles for the news section, although he never did what might be called investigative reporting.  Curmie cares more about this story than the average person would, because people like Provost Schnell devalue the degree he worked pretty hard to get.  The Cornell story rightly gets the most publicity, but it’s the Dartmouth one that hits closest to home for Curmie.

Updates: Trigger Warnings, Wally World, Sheeran et al., Smith and the Hawkeyes

 

Curmie didn’t expect to be doing another “follow-up” post quite this soon, but there are a couple of new developments of late.  He’ll return to new topics soon, but not yet…

Trigger Warnings.  We’re going to take these updates in the order of Curmie’s original post on the subject.  We start, then, with this piece, written in May of 2024.  Curmie described the reactions of three of the world’s foremost actors—Sir Ian McKellen, Ralph Fiennes, and Dame Judi Dench—all of whom disparaged “trigger warnings” in live theatre events.  McKellen called many of them “ludicrous.”

Curmie managed to miss the news that the University of the West of England issued 220 warnings about Shakespearean plays, including, according to the New York Post, things like “storms, extreme weather and ‘popping of balloons.’”  But now there’s another furor surrounding a Royal Shakespeare Company “content advisory” for First Encounters: Julius Caesar, an adaptation set in a women’s prison, starring Dame Harriet Walter as Brutus.  If nothing else, the Daily Mail’s headline, “Forget the Ides of March, just beware the 14 trigger warnings of Julius Caesar!” is pretty apt. 

Walter hasn’t commented, at least that Curmie has seen, but two other acclaimed Shakespearean actresses have.  Felicity Kendal calls the warnings “patronising” and “absurd”; Janet Suzman’s word is “mollycoddling.”  Quoth Dame Janet, “They should be shouting out to audiences to come and be shocked and surprised and intrigued and not creep in nervously.”

Curmie once again notes that there are legitimate reasons for certain warnings: prospective spectators with certain medical conditions, for example.  Thus, the production’s flashing lights, which could trigger an epileptic episode, and which are not inherent in the script, do mean that the company should err on the side of caution.  But “characters experiencing grief” in a version of a Shakespearean tragedy?  Say it ain’t so!  Yeah, “patronising” seems pretty accurate.

It’s unclear exactly how these warnings appear.  It’s fine with Curmie if you have to look up specific concerns on the website.  If, however, those warnings are in any way unavoidable, then the RSC is in fact doing more harm than good with their nannying.

Walmart Follies.  At the end of the post about the trip Curmie and Beloved Spouse took to Ireland in July, he wrote about the fact that his old laptop died somewhere in transit.  He mentioned the fact that although the Walmart website said they’d deliver the replacement the day we ordered it, we subsequently got an email that said it wouldn’t be delivered until the following week.  So, we cancelled the order… and they sent it anyway.

We got information about how to return it to the local store.  But when Beloved Spouse (whose Walmart account we used for the order) tried to do that, she encountered no fewer than three rude and unhelpful people supposedly in the “customer service” business who informed her that they couldn’t take the laptop back because it was bought through “Walmart Marketplace.”  Needless to say, there was nothing on the website to indicate that, or we wouldn’t have bothered with them, given that the Marketplace is, shall we say, not famous for either competence or integrity.  Supervisor Dude made a big deal out of being “generous” and offering a gift card.  Beloved Spouse demanded a refund of the money we’d spent on the credit card, since it was Walmart’s fault.  Nope, he couldn’t do that.  We’d have to contact Walmart.com.

With no other choice, she came home and spent an hour and a half “chatting” online with Walmart customer service.  They gave the same line about a third-party vendor, and said the earlier message to take the laptop to the store was in error (well, whose fault is that?), but they also said they’d do what needed to be done to get us our refund; we’d hear back in 24-48 hours.  Needless to say, we didn’t. 

So, Curmie called Discover.  “Jessica in Illinois” was very helpful, took down a lot of information, and told me that they’d put a temporary hold on those charges until they could investigate further.  We had 15 calendar days to provide any documentation we could.  We sent stuff in online within that timeframe, and the status changed to having been ruled in our favor, but, reasonably enough, allowing the merchant to respond with their side of the story.

We just put a rather substantial charge on that account and were about to add another, so it was worth checking to see if there was any resolution to the affair.  Under “disputes” is this (unedited) message: “This case was previously closed in your favor and an adjustment(s) were applied to your account. The time allowed for the merchant to request additional review of this decision has expired. As such, We consider this investigation to be complete.”  In other words, after trying to take the laptop back for a refund, we now get the refund without having to return the computer.  Not a bad deal, even taking into account all the bullshit we (especially Beloved Spouse) had to endure.

Three take-aways, in whatever order you choose: 1). Avoid anything that even might be Walmart Marketplace.  Hell, avoid Walmart altogether if you can.  2). Discover customer service is actually very good.  3). Fight the bastards if you have to.

The Kraft/Macklemore/Sheeran Debacle.  Curmie wrote about Robert Kraft’s de facto firing of Macklemore from the Ed Sheeran concerts scheduled for September 24 and 25 at Gillette Stadium, which Kraft owns.  All the other artists—warm-up bands and Sheeran’s backing group—quit in solidarity.  Sheeran subsequently did a show in Philadelphia alone, and was apparently going to do the same in Foxboro… and then the nor’easter hit, and both shows were cancelled.  There’s some ironic finality there.

The other follow-up is that country star Zach Bryan set the all-time attendance record for Gillette Stadium on October 3, attracting 73,538 fans for the second of his two performances at the venue.  More significantly for the purposes of this essay, however, is that he wore a “Free Palestine” t-shirt at both shows.  Other members of the band also wore pro-Palestinian garb.  Bryan’s shirt didn’t have the Palestinian flag; instead, there was a pine tree logo and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven.” 

This links to John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government.  [Side note: Curmie went over 15 years without mentioning Locke’s name in a blog post; now it’s appeared twice (the other one is here) in three weeks.]  The motto refers to the right of people to overthrow an oppressive regime, and, complete with the pine tree logo, was used on flags by colonial sailors in the Revolutionary War.  More recently, there’s some linkage to Christian Nationalism.  It’s unclear, in other words, what message Bryan was attempting to impart.

Bryan’s politics are, he says, libertarian and non-partisan; he has little use for either major party.  We do know that he’s pro-LGBTQ+ rights and anti-ICE, making him a bit of an outlier as a country singer, but not as an everyday citizen.  Is he advocating for the Palestinian cause because he believes in it, or because he doesn’t want to be told he can’t?  Certainly, whatever else Bryan may be saying, it’s a direct poke in the eye to Robert Kraft.  A good article in The Jerusalem Post argues that this is a variation on the Streisand Effect, and concludes: “Most major musicians are not wearing ‘Free Palestine’ shirts. If pressed and feeling that they are being told not [to], however, it’s possible that more of them will be.”

Of course, Kraft let the second night happen, despite folks like Sean Spicer tweeting, “Here’s hoping there is no night 2,” and that second night audience was even bigger than the night before’s.  Exactly why Kraft didn’t intervene is unclear—did he think it was too late, or he feared an even more significant Streisand Effect, or he wasn’t going to shut down the headliner, or Bryan didn’t have any track record of anti-Semitism, or refunding eight figures worth of tickets would be no fun at all, or…?

It’s Not about the Hawkeyes.  Or, rather, it’s only coincidentally about the Hawkeyes.  There’s no question that Senator Eric Schmitt made an absolute fool of himself in a botched “gotcha” moment in which he tried to prove perjury against former Special Counsel Jack Smith.  Schmitt had a very flimsy case to begin with, and then proceeded to have the whole thing collapse on national television when he called Smith a “dirtbag” for denying that he was in Atlanta the day after Fani Wallis admitted to her affair with Nathan Wade, as if that somehow proved something nefarious.

But it turned out that the basketball game Smith attended that night wasn’t the Golden State Warriors at the Atlanta Hawks, but the Iowa Hawkeyes (featuring star Caitlin Clark) at the Maryland Terrapins in women’s hoops. 

Three follow-ups: First, Curmie would love to believe that Smith suspected what Schmitt was attempting, and his obvious befuddlement at the line of questioning was in fact feigned, thereby giving Schmitt a little more rope with which to hang himself.  He did attend an Iowa/Maryland game about that time, he thinks…  If that’s what happened, Curmie likes him more than ever.  Smith would never admit it, of course.

Second, the intervention of Senator Klobuchar was timely and effective.  Her suggestion that Schmitt was confusing the Hawks and the Hawkeyes was plausible, and confirming that game on that date did blow up the whole interrogation.  Thing is, though, it was the assumption that the only basketball game in a large arena that night was in Atlanta that caused Schmitt’s self-destruction.  Klobuchar’s analysis was reasonable; it was also wrong. 

As Curmie wrote on October 1, “The problem wasn’t the coincidence of “Hawks” and “Hawkeyes” playing at the same time.  It was, rather, the casual sexism of being unable to understand that a grown man might want to watch a women’s game, even one that a). featured a player about to break the record for points in a collegiate career, and b). was within easy driving distance.”

The problem is that not only are the comedians and memesters making that mistake, but Klobuchar herself is taking something of a victory lap (“when you're from the Midwest, the Hawks also mean the Hawkeyes”) for something that turned out to be an irrelevant coincidence.  This was after we knew the real story.  That’s not cool, Senator.

Finally, Smith’s attendance at the Power to the People Festival last weekend has resulted in two sets of headlines.  Those of one political persuasion love the fact that Dave Grohl (in Maryland, in an Iowa Hawkeyes t-shirt) dedicated one of the Foo Fighters’ biggest hits, “My Hero,” to “my new friend Jack,” and got a few thousand fans to sing along.  Those of the other perspective are predictably exercised by the fact that Smith wore a “No Kings” t-shirt to the event, which also featured a set by Bruce Springsteen.  How dare someone who, after a thorough investigation, got multiple indictments against 45 only to have them dismissed by a Trump appointee exercise his 1st Amendment rights as a private citizen, after all?  <Sigh.>

There you go, Gentle Reader: four updates.  We’ll return to normal programming next time out.

Bobby Burns Was Right about Those “Best-Laid Plans.”

By now, Gentle Reader, you will no doubt be aware of the utter implosion of Senator Eric Schmitt’s ill-considered attack on former Special Counsel Jack Smith.  There are some points Curmie wants to make here.  Most if not all have been made by someone else, but Curmie hasn’t seen them all in the same place before.

We start with a supposition on Curmie’s part: that the whole point of this Senate hearing was to distract attention from the disaster that is a nation run by a sociopathic idiot in the White House, a swarm of sycophantic legislators more interested in pleasing the President than in doing their jobs for the citizenry, and a Supreme Court that only occasionally and half-heartedly deigns to curtail the outrages committed by the Executive branch.  Curmie might be wrong about the motivations, but he sees no evidence to suggest that he revise, let alone abandon, that impression. 

It is widely speculated that the reason Smith was called to testify was that everyone in what passes for a brain trust in the GOP assumed that he’d plead the Fifth Amendment to virtually all questions, allowing them to dance around, proclaiming that his findings were partisan, and bellow that he was seeking to avoid responsibility by dodging questions.  They were, as usual, wrong.  Instead, he showed up, thanked the committee for the opportunity to discuss his work, answered every question, and pretty much mopped the floor with the Republican interrogators.  Schmitt was the foremost loser, of course, although it’s the horror on the face of Sen. Katie Britt as the scheme goes up in smoke that’s going to be a meme for a very long time.

OK… how’d we get here?  Schmitt obviously wanted to catch Smith in a lie and then take a victory lap, hoping, according to some pundits, to improve his chances to be the VP nominee in 2028.  Or, hypothetically, to get Smith to admit that he was in Atlanta, watching the Hawks play the Warriors on February 3, 2024.  It’s a strange strategy, though, as he tried to prove that Smith was in Atlanta specifically on the day after Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis admitted to her affair with lead prosecutor Nathan Wade. 

We know that Smith was in fact elsewhere—we’ll get to that in a moment—but let’s suppose that Schmitt was correct, that Smith was indeed in Atlanta.  The question “So fucking what?” seems pertinent.  Seriously, is being in the same rather large city as someone behaving unethically a reason to suspect him of collusion?  Curmie can state with absolute certainty that he has been in the same city at the same time that a major crime was planned and/or committed.  So have you, Gentle Reader, if I might be so bold.  So, in all likelihood, has Curmie’s friend’s newborn.  That doesn’t mean we’re guilty of anything.  Moreover, if there really was collusion, one suspects that Smith would have been smart enough to use a burner phone and handle everything that way.

Let’s face it, Eric Schmitt would come in third in a battle of wits with a broken stapler and a rotting tree trunk.  The staffers who provided the ammunition for his carefully-planned “gotcha” moment aren’t much better, but on a good day they could probably hold their own against the stapler.

Anyway, Schmitt acts all smarmy and thinks it’s time to spring the trap: “What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were it Atlanta at a Warriors/Hawks game on February 3, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair?”  Note that he has to read the whole sequence.  One wonders who actually wrote those questions.

Smith looks befuddled, and Schmitt moves in for the kill.  “If don’t think you know we have this stuff, so I’ll give you a second to process it, so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself.”  This flourish is accompanied by the unveiling of that remarkably stupid poster (seen above) that is held up briefly, then quickly disappears.  Smith asks to see it again, and Schmitt declares that Smith has already perjured himself, and gets testy when other Senators ask to see the poster.

You will note, Gentle Reader, that there is nothing on that poster that mentions either Atlanta or a basketball game.  All that’s clear from what we can see is that Smith has a reserved seat for some event in some venue somewhere.  It could be a concert in Cheyenne, for all we know.  Exactly how that was supposed to scare Smith even if he were guilty is unclear.  We suspect there may have been more damning “evidence” in Schmitt’s files or something, but the logical thing to do if you want to defame a witness on national television is to present the best stuff you’ve got.  You might also try not call him a “dirtbag” if you don’t know (as opposed to smugly presume) you’re on firm ground.  Ah, but Schmitt is an idiot, remember…

Smith continues to deny attending a Hawks game, presumably ever, then has a thought: he had been to a women’s basketball game between Iowa and Maryland at about that time, early February of 2024.  Curmie presumes that Smith was working out of Washington, DC at the time; it’s only a little over a half-hour drive to get to the Terps’ home court.  Smith said he wanted to see Caitlin Clark play.  That’s reasonable: she was already something of a phenomenon, far and away the most famous female collegiate player ever, and well within sight of the all-time scoring record she would ultimately break a few weeks later.

Then Senator Amy Klobuchar enters the conversation.  She checks with a staffer, confirms that the Iowa team is called the Hawkeyes (sometimes shortened to “Hawks”), and suggests a possible source of confusion.  That’s when all the air goes out of Schmitt’s balloon.  Klobuchar then checks: yes, that game was indeed on February 3.  And that, as they say, was that.  Video confirming that Smith was indeed at the Hawkeyes game was simply the icing on the cake.

Interestingly, however, despite the multitude of headlines and the plethora of memes about the Atlanta Hawkeyes, etc., the conflation of Hawks and Hawkeyes wasn’t, apparently, where Schmitt and his minions screwed up.  It was something a little more telling in political terms.  Whatever information Schmitt had seems to have identified the event Smith attended as a basketball game.  It obviously didn’t say anything about Atlanta; that was a surmise on Schmitt’s part. 

A report by CNN’s Lauren Fox says that Schmitt was trying to find out where Smith was, so they 

... referenced and cross-referenced what the schedule for games around the country was that night for both men’s basketball in the NBA, as well as men’s basketball in college, and they only found one game, which was this game in Atlanta…. 

But what had not been considered was whether there was a women’s college basketball game at the University of Maryland against the Iowa Hawkeyes.

The fact that Smith was watching the Hawkeyes rather than the Hawks is nothing more than a coincidence, in other words.

The “cross-checking” Fox mentions presumably included the time of the opening tip, 7:30.  There would be dozens of games played on a Saturday in February, but whereas Curmie doubts that there was only one 7:30 local start time, it’s possible. What matters is that Sen. Klobuchar’s guess of a linguistic confusion was incorrect.  (She also reported that Clark scored 30 in that game; it was actually 38, with 14 assists.)  Her main point still holds, however: Schmitt and his staff didn’t do their homework before hurling around accusations. 

The problem wasn’t the coincidence of “Hawks” and “Hawkeyes” playing at the same time.  It was, rather, the casual sexism of being unable to understand that a grown man might want to watch a women’s game, even one that a). featured a player about to break the record for points in a collegiate career, and b). was within easy driving distance. 

Eric Schmitt is stupid, reckless, and more interested in grandstanding than in anything in the same universe as the truth.  He is a Republican politician, in other words.  If he wants to see what a dirtbag looks like, he need only look in the mirror.

Stanford's AI Problem Isn't Just an AI Problem

 

Having made his living as a theatre scholar/teacher/practitioner for a few decades, Curmie is well aware that what appears to be real on stage, isn’t.  That isn’t really a medieval Danish prince up there; it’s an actor pretending to be one.  But there is informed consent all around: the actor voluntarily assumes the role, and the spectator agrees to pretend to believe in the impersonation.  No one in the audience believes that’s actually Hamlet.

Curmie also knows that headshots for actors should show actors in the millisecond in which they look their absolute best.  There’s a caveat, however: they have to look like their subject.  If you’re auditioning for strangers, you can be brilliant, but if the casting director doesn’t recognize you from your headshot, your chances of getting that callback go down.  And if you’re called back because of what your headshot looks like, you’re no longer in the running if you don’t look like that photo.  Inauthenticity is not merely unethical; it’s counter-productive.

Why these introductions?  Well, Stanford University has admitted to using AI to doctor a photograph of students celebrating the Lunar New Year in 2024.  The trio are holding plates of noodles outside an eatery called Star Ginger, apparently a franchisee in one of the campus dining halls.  That’s the image you see on the left in the photo above.  It was used in a marketing campaign almost immediately.  One presumes the university photographer got the appropriate permissions from the pictured students.  So far, so good, right?

Sure.  But it’s a more recent version of that shot, the one on the right, that’s been getting a lot of attention of late.  As you can see, that’s both the same photo and not at all the same photo.  The Hispanic man on the right wearing a GAP sweatshirt has been magically transformed into a black woman in a Stanford shirt.  The face of the Asian woman on our left has been conspicuously narrowed.  They played around with the face of the other man, the one in the middle, too, although not as obviously.  Curmie assumes that whatever that is that blocks the area above the guy’s head and below his chest is a function of the photo’s use on a “welcome” banner sponsored (if that’s the right word) by Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises.

The guy on the right of the original photo, the one who was literally disappeared, is Billy Ramirez.  He was a freshman when that picture was taken; he’s a senior now.  He says he was driving to campus for the fall semester this year when a friend sent him the two images together.  He told The Stanford Review that he was initially “baffled,” and thought it was “hilarious.”  Ultimately, though, he was upset: “I don’t agree with Stanford making those choices about how we were represented. Seeing my identity changed and being left out of the picture made me feel, in a way, silenced and erased from a representation that was supposed to include me.”

That latter reaction may be a bit much, but in general terms it’s understandable.  And it’s easy to see why, after all the local publicity, Ramirez doesn’t want his “legacy at Stanford to be ‘the AI guy.’”  It is certainly more than a little ironic that the change was made for a welcome banner.  The apparent subtext: “Everyone is welcome here at Stanford.  Well, except for people who look like that guy.  At least the other two are OK if we touch them up a little.”

Anyway, the image seems to have been posted on Fizz, a social media platform for Stanford students only, on the 20th of September.  That Review story was published on the 21st.  It was in the New York Times the next day.  One day later, the self-described “Other Two” released a “Letter to the Stanford Community” on Substack.  Finally, on the 24th, the Review ran an article about the university’s admission that yes, that photo had been altered by AI.

Curmie finds it interesting that the statement from Stanford officials seems rather unconcerned with the misrepresentation per se, but they’re pretty steamed up about the use of AI to do it.  They’ve got their skivvies in a twist about a violation of university rules.  They do concede that “Not only the fact that the image was altered, but the ways in which it was altered, reflect a serious error in judgment. We have apologized to the students in the photo whose images were altered or erased…. Quite simply, this was wrong and should never have happened.” 

There are several ways in which the doctored image goes against university policy as defined in a document titled “AI guidelines for marketing and communications.” [].  Curmie quotes a couple sections: “Use AI in ways that are transparent, accurate, and do not mislead.” Obtain written permission before using an individual’s name, image, voice, or likeness (including realistic or recognizable AI-generated depictions or imitations) in published content.” “Do not create or publish AI-generated content that falsely depicts Stanford people, events, research, facilities, or achievements.”  You get the gist, Gentle Reader.

Of course, as that New York Times article points out, universities have been doing making similar misrepresentations for years, using Photoshop or a variation on the theme.  Usually, although not always, it’s to pretend the school has more minority students than it actually does.  That makes it even more ironic that it’s a Hispanic man—a representative of a demographic that is, according to students, under-represented in the Stanford undergrad population—whose image was removed altogether. 

It’s certainly understandable that a university would want to exercise some control over content used in their own forums.  You don’t want someone showing up in a photo wearing a shirt from a competitor, for example.  Thus, when Curmie took students to Ireland, one of his rules was that no clothing could represent an American university other than our own, nor could it overtly advertise a product.  (This latter part might justify changing Ramirez’s GAP sweatshirt to something less commercial, but of course no more than that.)

That said, were Curmie of a cynical disposition (perish the thought!), he might suggest that the university’s emphasis on the AI element might be an intentional distraction from the larger issue of intentional misrepresentation and the motives for the… erm… over-enthusiastic editing.  All the students directly involved—the three people in the original photograph and the editor of the Review—are certain that the impulse to change the image was to present a false image of student diversity.  Curmie suspects the black woman would agree if she… you know… actually existed.

This doesn’t mean the students are correct in their assumptions, but they are at the very least plausible.  And here we see a variation on the Streisand Effect.  Seriously, Stanford: you couldn’t even stage a photo with an actual black female student?  At best, that’s transcendently lazy.  At worst, it calls attention to what many people regard as the situation your clumsy attempt at manipulation sought to cover up.  Even if that wasn’t the intention, it sure looks that way.

Yes, it could be relevant that threats from the Trump administration about anything that might possibly be regarded as a DEI initiative put Stanford in a difficult situation.  But “dishonest,” “sloppy,” and “stupid” are adjectives that no university, let alone one of Stanford’s reputation, ought to want attached to their name, and you can’t blame Trump for the fact that those descriptions sure seem accurate.

More to the point, the most relevant section of those AI guidelines is this: “You must take personal responsibility for any work you produce using AI. This means reviewing outputs for accuracy, ensuring alignment with institutional values, and confirming compliance with these guidelines and university policy. This responsibility cannot be delegated.”

Curmie understands that Stanford promises to prevent anything like this ever happening again.  He believes that they will at least make every effort to do so… or, rather, he will when they announce the names (plural) of the people they fired over this incident.

About That Converse Ad: Everybody, Please Breathe

When Curmie first saw the image you see here, it had been posted to Facebook by a leftie site: maybe it was one he follows, but he thinks it was one FB thinks he should follow.  Anyway, it came with a heading that Curmie will attempt to re-create or at least paraphrase reasonably closely.  It said something like, “If you don’t know about the controversy surrounding this Converse ad, good.  Just tell us, unprompted, what you see.”

Ahem. 

There are, of course, three prompts there.  It’s a post from a political site, not a personal friend.  It tells me there’s a controversy.  And the very act of telling me they want my unprompted reaction made me start thinking about what might be the problem.

Thus forewarned, Curmie immediately (yes, immediately) saw what the OP wanted him to see.  Would he have noticed anything problematic had he just seen it without any introduction?  Not necessarily, but, he suspects, probably.

What’s actually being shown here is a model—Curmie is told it’s K-Pop star Karina and he nods as if he knows who the hell she is—in a white skirt, holding a pair of sneakers in her left hand.  If you look closely, you’ll see that this description is accurate.  But the key phrase here is if you look closely.

At first glance, however, the lighting does form a vertical triangle on the white skirt resembling a KKK hood.  And yes, the dangling sneakers do suggest that they’re attached legs rather than a hand if for no other reason than that’s what we expect to find in shoes.  The fact that Karina’s wrist and lower arm are in deep shadow, and even the narrowness of her ankles and lower legs, which we see below the skirt, also contribute to the effect.  Without a readily apparent reason why the image looks the way it does… well, Curmie understands how a lot of folks, especially but not exclusively black people, got rather upset.  Looked at from a certain perspective, the suggestion of a lynching does indeed present itself.

The ad has, of course, now been removed, but an archived image of the original can be seen on the Snopes page.  It was posted to a Converse social media page, apparently their website, as well, with the cutline “A Chuck 70 upgrade for all day and all night. Our newest Chuck is the icon reimagined with a more comfortable feel. As seen on KARINA.”  That is, the company did indeed intend the image to be a stand-alone.  We’re not talking about a screenshot of a instant in a video or anything like that.

Curmie has a few questions, to some of which he sees no indisputable answer. 

1). What, exactly, is the intent of this ad?  Sure, it catches attention in a film noir sort of way, but Curmie confesses that he doesn’t understand how this image is going to convince anyone to buy those shoes.  Of course, there are a lot of ad campaigns that similarly baffle Curmie.  (Insurance ads seem to be the worst offenders.)  And, to be fair, the lighting does draw our eye to the shoes rather than the model.  But that lighting also contributes to what we can only hope is a misreading of intent.

2). How could anyone looking at that image not see the potential for a problem?  There had to have been a good many people, from the photographer to the ad agency to Nike (who owns Converse) execs who just nodded and moved on.  Did none of them see what so many others saw?

3). The story on the WWD site references another Converse ad, which showed: “a man is climbing up a ladder while holding on to a pair of shoes that are dangling above him and hanging from a tree, while another man is looking up.”  They quote an irate post on Threads, describing this as even worse than the Karina ad, calling it “Abhorrent. Unfathomable. Repugnant.”  Is this relevant?  At least Curmie was able to track down an answer to this one: No, it isn’t, as the sneakers in that image are clearly uninhabited.

4). Why would anyone intentionally alienate a considerable part of their clientele, or allow anyone else to do so?  Being “edgy” is certainly an insufficient reason.

5). Given that the image apparently appeared on the website in late August and on social media on September 3, why did the story not appear until a week or so ago?  This is one that sort of undermines the outrage, although it doesn’t render it irrelevant or insignificant.

Converse (of course) issued an apology: “We’re sorry. We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognize that we got this wrong. We removed it from our channels and are working to remove it everywhere it appeared. This should not have happened, and we will do better.”  Like virtually all such statements, this one has been criticized from one direction as inadequate and from the other as cowardly.

There have, of course, been allegations of intentional racism from, let’s just say, predictable sources.  There are plenty; here’s one, from Rep. Troy Carter (D-LA): “Do not insult our intelligence by dismissing this as an unfortunate misunderstanding. An advertising campaign does not just appear. It is conceived, photographed, reviewed, approved and distributed. At every stage, someone had the opportunity—and the responsibility—to say no.”

Equally predictably, there are those who choose to ridicule the ad’s detractors.  Over at Ethics Alarms, Jack Marshall declares the furor an example of “crap from the race-baiters and political correctness thugs,” and cites with approbation a Substack post by “Holly Mathnerd,” in which she suggests facetiously that she has committed a hate crime by hanging her own sneakers by the laces on, one presumes, a doorknob or something similar.

Yawn.

As you have no doubt guessed, Gentle Reader, Curmie visits Ethics Alarms, where he was once a frequent commenter and occasional columnist, a lot less frequently now than he once did.  But this incident reminded him of a variation on the theme from back in December of 2022.  The story was about a New York Times crossword puzzle which some people thought showed a swastika design.  To some, that image virtually leaped off the page; others, including Curmie, struggled to see the problem even when we knew what to look for.

Curmie is not generally noted for being a peacemaker, but he was then, even being granted EA “Comment of the Day” status for suggesting that, “We all find it difficult to believe that someone could fail to see what to us is obvious, or that someone could make a serious accusation based on what we fail to see at all. Maybe we should consider that none of us is omniscient.”

Perhaps it’s time for Curmie to follow his own advice.  He was about to launch into a full-throated screed about how irresponsible Converse was, but then he remembered that incident with the crossword puzzle.  Is there any real evidence that Converse intentionally posted a racist image?  Of course not.  Does that mean that those who saw something nefarious or at least problematic were wrong, or delusional, or paranoid?  Again, no.  Was Converse’s apology appropriate?  Yes.  Will it be accepted by anyone on either side of the issue who’d rather shout than think?  Not a chance.  That’s a shame, but it’s reality.

Everybody needs to take a breath, here. 

And now: a change of subject that isn’t really a change of subject.  Gentle Reader, you know how sometimes when you get an earworm, there’s a logical reason (you just heard it on the radio or as background on a TV show, or whatever), but sometimes you just start thinking about a song you haven’t heard or even thought about in weeks, or even years?  Often, it’s not the whole song that gets stuck in your head, but that one guitar riff or the moment the percussion jumps in volume, or those couple of lines of lyrics.

Curmie’s latest earworm is from singer/songwriter Chris DeBurgh’s “The Getaway.”  The lyrics stuck in his head are, “Let's stick ‘em in a room together and make them fight it out, until they see nothing from nothing will leave nothing at all.”

Oh. That’s why I was thinking of that song.

Why Is Curmie Thinking about Charles Frohman?

The guy in the photo is our title character, Charles Frohman (1856-1915).  We’ll get to him in a moment.

The chances are, Gentle Reader, that you already know as much or more about the reasons Ed Sheeran, Macklemore, and Robert Kraft appear in many of the same stories these days.  If you need a quick synopsis, here’s a reasonably inclusive story about the whole business. 

Well, not quite the whole business, as when Sheeran capitulated to Kraft (the owner of Gillette Stadium, where Sheeran is scheduled to perform this weekend) and dropped Macklemore from his Loop tour for the apparently unforgiveable crime of saying “Free Palestine,” all the other supporting and warm-up act musicians for upcoming gigs—Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Finneas, Irish singer Aaron Rowe, the Irish band Beoga (Sheeran’s backing band), and the Danish pop group Lukas Graham—quit in solidarity.  A lengthier and more recent play-by-play of the last couple of weeks is here.

Sheeran has been ridiculed for cowardice; SNL UK was particularly brutal.  He has argued all along that dropping Macklemore from the tour was not his call, but was made by promoters.  That’s true, but of course there’s more to the story than that. 

In his first concert since the… erm… fecal matters interfaced the whirling rotors, Sheeran engaged in a little self-pity and even cried onstage, but also delivered an apology, noting that “What happened in Israel and at the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7 was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain. What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate.”  Even that came under immediate scrutiny, however: one critic described it as “pro-Israel, teleprompter-read propaganda” that could have been written by Kraft himself; another called it “everything you'd expect from a person in his position: equivocating, meaningless bullshit that was most likely written by someone else.”  Ouch.

OK, Sheeran is in a tough place.  Curmie actually buys his story that he didn’t want to disappoint his fans.  And his self-consciously apolitical approach is understandable, at least up to a point.  Creating a space where everyone, irrespective of their political views, can come together to enjoy the music is indeed a worthy goal.  But there comes a point at which that stance won’t work anymore. 

And it’s certainly not true that music, or indeed any art form, is or ought to be apolitical.  Such an argument would certainly raise an eyebrow from the likes of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, or Bob Dylan… or, hell, from Francis Scott Key, for that matter.  But whereas most of the criticism of Sheeran has come from those whose perspective on events in Gaza mirror Macklemore’s, that isn’t Curmie’s argument.  What matters isn’t whether we agree on the content of his speech; it’s whether he has the right to say it. 

Significantly, this isn’t a Colin Kaepernick case whether the protest has nothing to do with the job; Macklemore’s political stance, agree with it or not, is part of the performance.  If you go to a concert featuring Jason Aldean, you’re gonna hear some right-wing rhetoric.  If it’s today’s birthday boy, Bruce Springsteen: it’ll come from the left.  Both are fine with Curmie, although he obviously prefers one to the other.

Sheeran, if he had a spine, would have looked Kraft square in the eye and said something like, “Macklemore is my friend, and he’s part of the company on this tour.  If he goes, I do, too.  I’ll apologize to my fans and refund their money, but this isn’t about who’s right and who’s wrong in a situation 5500 miles or so to the east,  It’s about something far more significant than a political disagreement; it’s about free speech.”

Maybe Kraft would back down, as authorities in Jacksonville, Florida did in 1964 when the Beatles refused to play to a segregated audience.  Maybe he wouldn’t, echoing South African officials when Dusty Springfield took the same stance that same year.  Even if Kraft were to remain intransigent, however, one suspects that Sheeran, whose net worth is about $400 million, could still afford to super-size his Big Mac combo even without getting more income from this tour.  Either way, he’d have stood up for the cause of free speech.

We might wish that Sheeran were made of sterner stuff, but he’s not really the villain here.  It’s a lot easier to blame someone else for a lack of courage than to exercise that courage oneself.  The real culprit would be Robert Kraft, who is the very caricature of a corporate multi-billionaire: he’s been smug, acquisitive, and hubristic for decades. 

Don’t get Curmie wrong on this: Kraft, like everyone else, is entitled to his opinion on international events, and to speak his truth as he sees it.  If he chooses not to accept Macklemore’s apology for an incident a dozen years ago in which the rapper appeared on stage in what could reasonably be described as a caricature of Jewishness, so be it.  He can even choose to conflate criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism, although Curmie thinks that’s idiotic.  What Kraft cannot legitimately do is to prevent the speech of someone who disagrees with him, and he sure as hell doesn’t have the right (ethically, at least) to round up a posse of his fellow fat-cats to join in the boycott.

And now <drumroll> we’re ready to talk about Charles Frohman, a theatre manager and promoter at the turn of the 20th century.  Frohman was the driving force behind an organization which pretty much dominated the American theatre scene for about 20 years.  It was called The Syndicate.  If, Gentle Reader, that sounds like the name of some manifestation of organized crime, well, it pretty much was… except that it was legal.  And ol’ Charlie sure does look the part, doesn’t he?  All those gangster movies we’ve watched for years wouldn’t lead us astray, would they?

What Frohman and his buds did was to establish a virtual monopoly.  They managed both theatre productions and performance spaces.  In an era in which New York was not yet the epicenter of American theatre activity, national tours were more important and ubiquitous than they are today.  The Syndicate didn’t concentrate on big cities, but rather on the various smaller venues in between on the railroad lines.  Companies needed those one- or two-night stops to make the tour profitable, so there would be performances in towns of only if few thousand people.  If there was an opera house there, that was enough.

The Syndicate’s deal was that productions managed by the Syndicate could play only in Syndicate-run spaces, and those spaces could book only Syndicate-backed productions.  At the height of their influence, the Syndicate controlled about 1500 venues and productions featuring most of the biggest stars of the age—William Gillette, John Drew, Maude Adams, et al. 

If you control all the venues, you can control the performers, and vice versa.  That’s the lesson of the Syndicate.  And that’s a variation on what Robert Kraft is attempting to do by enlisting all his billionaire buddies to help him suppress any performer who is unwilling to play his game by his rules. 

There are differences, of course.  Kraft isn’t looking at small towns the way the Syndicate did.  He’s concentrating on huge venues, both because those are the ones over which he and his fellow billionaires can exercise control, and because the likes of Ed Sheeran, who can fill them, knows you can sell a lot more tickets to a lot more fans and make a lot more money for an event in an NFL stadium that seats 60 or 70 thousand than in even a huge auditorium that seats a third that many folks. 

The other difference is that Frohman and his cohorts were interested primarily in making money.  Kraft seeks, rather, to control the narrative: who can speak, and what they can say. 

And that, Gentle Reader, is much worse than just wanting to be rich(er).