September 28, 2006

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Revelations About The Chancellor

Constance dancing, obviously high

The Wall Street Journal published an article Tuesday about possible overspending at my alma mater, Vanderbilt University, as well as at universities in general. And while I am fully in support of almost everything Chancellor Gee has done, it is true that oversight won't hurt anyone. I'm all for complete openness in all governance, corporate, academic, and sovereign. But frankly, given Gee's success at fundraising ($1.75 billion), $700k each year for the mansion and entertaining budget seems like chump change. On the other hand, I'm hardly unbiased--he wrote one of my law school recommendation letters, and I was also able to partake of some of the supposedly excessive spending at the Chancellor's mansion when I was invited to a dinner after one of the Chancellor's Lecture Series events.

In any case, the funniest revelation in the article was that Gee's wife, Professor Constance Gee, has been smoking marijuana at the mansion. Now, aside from the fact that it was rather silly for someone in her position to use an illicit drug anywhere where it might be noticed, I am totally in support of her right to use the drug. Perhaps if the mansion wasn't so extensively staffed, no one would have noticed, but with a full-time chef and plenty of part-time staff, someone was bound to find out. Given that fact, she must have made peace with the possibility that it would be discovered, and so I think she should just come out publicly in support of legalization. Instead, the Gees initially claimed that it was used medicinally (for an inner-ear ailment--brilliant), and now are not commenting at all.

The whole thing also exposes a large hypocrisy, which is that bunches of students are arrested, suspended, or expelled from Vanderbilt every year for drug use, while the Chancellor's wife is partaking on University property and only got a reprimand from the Board of Trustees. Why didn't the University forward that case on to Police Department? Well, for starters, there's logistics; having visited Braeburn, I realize the infeasibility of conducting a raid there: the mansion is so large that it would take half the total force of the Nashville Police Department a full day to search the place thoroughly. It takes a lot less time to search a dorm room. Pretty unfair, no?

But the funniest aspect of the whole thing is that I am now left wondering how Constance got the pot. Hundreds of hilarious scenarios come up.

• "Driver, would it be possible to make a quick stop on the way home?"
  "Sure, Ma'am. Where to?"
  "Well, I was hoping you could take me to... um... is there a ghetto around here?"
  "A ghetto, Ma'am?"
  "Yes, a ghetto. You know, just some street corner. Any street corner. I have an errand to run."
• "Another one arrested for dealing on campus, you say? The youth of today! What a horrid shame! Gordon, honey, would you let me handle the discipline this time?"
• "Professor Goudie, you teach English. Would you happen to know where I could score some grass?"
• Constance Gee walks up to one of her waitstaff. "What up nigga, you holdin'?"
  "Excuse me, Ma'am?"
  "I said is you holdin', dog."
  "Madam, I cannot believe that you would ask me this simply because I am an African-American... but since you asked, yes, I am holding, and it's really good shit."

Posted at September 28, 2006 2:36 AM | Comments (4)

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