September 28, 2006
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 by Barzelay at 2:36 AM | Comments (4)
April 8, 2006
Oops: Followup to "Thank you for your gift of $0"
Today I received a followup email to the one
Oh, and to make matters even worse, they sent out this email twice. Oh, and why do they need so much HTML for a simple email? Oh, and did we really need Allen Rosso's signature represented to us in image form? Oh, and... no, I'm done.
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Posted by Barzelay at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)
April 5, 2006
Thank you for your gift of $0
I just got the following email:
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I invite you to visit Posted by Barzelay at 9:55 PM | Comments (11)
July 15, 2005
Professor Farley Saga
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Two and a half years ago, Vanderbilt Professor Jonathan Farley (he looks so nice when he isn't backed by a picture of Che) wrote an article in The Tennessean (reprinted here in a San Fran paper) commenting on the name change of Confederate Memorial Hall, and on confederate memorials in general. It included some vitriolic stabs and invective rhetoric. The most conspicuous of these statements were
"Lest we forget, the Confederacy aimed to destroy the United States. Every Confederate soldier, by the mores of his age and ours, deserved not a hallowed resting place at the end of his days but a reservation at the end of the gallows. The UDC honors traitors."and then...
"Indeed, the race problems that wrack America to this day are due largely to the fact that the Confederacy was not thoroughly destroyed, its leaders and soldiers executed and their lands given to the landless freed slaves."
Farley became a victim of institutionalized censorship, and fortunately moved to better jobs at MIT and Harvard, but not before I wrote this "From The Editor" column in The Slant
My column was not solely positive toward Farley (I say he is "one of these idiots" who has trouble talking about race without being a moron, and call him a "crackpot math teacher") but it was certainly not negative. I was all about his right to say that stuff, and I was even happy that someone had said it. I didn't agree with everything he said, especially the second statement quoted above, but I was supportive of his right to say it, and very critical of the administration for their suggestions that he used poor judgement in writing the article. On the whole, I think my column was probably the most supportive thing written about him in Vanderbilt or Nashville media.
And then, a couple weeks ago, I was contacted by Vanderbilt Professor Jonathan Farley in regard to my column of two years ago. I knew it wasn't going to be pleasant, because he called my family's house in the morning on Saturday, June 26th; Calling a twenty-two year old at 9:00am on a Saturday means you must be seeking revenge on him for something. Jeff Woodhead, another Slant guy who mentioned Farley in a column about commemorating Martin Luther King in Orbis, also received a call from Farley.
»» Continue reading "Professor Farley Saga"
Posted by Barzelay at 2:58 PM | Comments (13)
July 12, 2005
Vandy gives up on Confederate thing
Well, so that's done. Vanderbilt loses, "Confederate" stays on facade. This issue has been beaten to death, but I can't not comment. I think the ruling was fair: leave the name or pay up. On the other hand, it would be rather crazy to tell a black person to go live in a dorm named "Confederate Memorial Hall." I've said before that I think the name should stay; why change history? And I don't mean the history of the Confederacy, I mean the history of Vanderbilt as a racist institution in the pocket of the Old South. To me, that's a better lesson, and the surprise of seeing that word in a place of glory provides such a contrast with normal expectations that every time people see that word it can remind them how far we've come. I'm usually against the idea of being "offended."
But if Vanderbilt really thinks it's a problem, the court has given them an easy, viable solution: Pay the money. $50,000 isn't that much to Vanderbilt. They probably spent that much on the legal fees for the lawsuit already. Just pay it and do what you want. Then everyone's legally satisfied, and you also demonstrate that the Confederate Memory no longer holds the power and financial sway to persuade schools to keep its glory alive against their ethical principles.
*UPDATE (07/13/2005 2:06PM): As Jacob pointed out in the comments, it was $50,000 adjusted for inflation, which is apparently now $700,000 or so. That's a bit different. Vandy would be insane to pay that much to remove the name. Leave it up for sure, and use it as a lesson.
Posted by Barzelay at 12:25 PM | Comments (3)