Saturday Santorum: Penn State Edition!

It is the perfect confluence of assholery, Rick Santorum has come out as a Paterno/PSU apologist:

In an interview with Dallas-Ft. Worth’s KSKY 660 AM on Friday, Santorum, a Penn State alum, called the evidence “pretty darn thin” and said, “I’m sort of sitting back and waiting for the facts to come out as opposed to, at least as I’m being told, a version of the facts.”
He criticized the Freeh report, saying “a lot of the conclusions in the Freeh report aren’t matched by the evidence that they presented.” He said he read the 267-page report.

But Ed, you say, he's a bad example, most Penn Staters* aren't like him. That's true. They're worse:

Meet Tom and Sally Price. Tom is a Penn State graduate, and both are die-hard Penn State football fans. In an interview with News Watch 16 WNEP in Pennsylvania, Tom compared the sanctioned levied against his school to one of America’s greatest tragedies – the terrorist attacks of September 11.
“I just can’t put my arms around it. To me, it was our 9/11 today. I just saw planes crashing into towers,” said Tom Price.

Hey asshat, know what our 9-11 was? 9-11...dickweed.

We have Penn State bookstores selling "We are...pissed" T-shirts...these brain-dead yahoos weren't pissed when they heard the football showers were a pedophile rape chamber were they?  There's more, #teamoutlaw and PSU vs the world are trending on twitter. These are the types of morons who would charge artillery for slaveholders....hmmmm....similar psychology there....

Look, I have degrees from two land grant colleges (URI, Oregon State) and a Jesuit Ivy (Boston College).  Each had bad points, some much less than others.  I liked the departments in each one.  But I always understood that any attempt by the university to make the students feel like "they are" the school is really just marketing and  apology to make you forget that you are purchasing the opportunity for an education from them.  My short period of attendance is not who I am.  But I've never witnessed the cult-like devotion to the PSU football program (which in the mind of many vocal Penn Staters IS Penn State). I hate when people who attended Ivy League schools, SLACs and places like BC sneer at the land-grant and public schools, but I do acknowledge that the academics and student scholarship overall is higher at those places.  Yet I've heard engineers, accountants and others tell me with a glazed look in their eyes that Penn State is the best college education in America and that it owes that to Joe Paterno and the football program.

The sad part is that the scandal would not have hurt people who attended the school, but this vocal blind loyalty, victimization (over sanctions to an extracurricular activity) and insensitivity to child rape will.  Keep it up Penn Staters, you're are your own enemy.

*Penn Staters is a catch-all for those who attended the main campus (there's more than one, but they don't  rate, cuz you know, no Paterno) and Penn residents who rabidly follow the team, excuse me, the FOOTBALL team.

Penn. State Priorities

The Penn. State scandal grabs my attention not only because I am a PA taxpayer, but also because of my disgust at the widespread corruption and incompetence in American higher education.  As I've said before I am very much in favor of the mission of academia and against the attacks from the outside, but that does not excuse it's culture and behavior.

Anyway two unrelated items caught my eye yesterday that together bring into sharp focus that the priorities of PSU.  First, this comment from a student  the head of the university's alumni association chapter in London on CNN on the NCAA sanctions against the football program,

By essentially taking away the main pillar of the university, you are almost pulling the university down," former student Ujas Patel told CNN. What really hurts, he said, is taking wins away from Paterno, known affectionately by fans as "JoePa."

Really, football is the main pillar of a large research university?  Maybe it's true, because I had this in my inbox from the Mineralogical Society of America's listserv:

I am looking for an EPMA facility preferably near southwestern Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh), that is used to dealing with geologic materials.  In the past my company has used the facility at Penn State University, but that is no  longer possible as they no longer provide this service.

Yep, a large research institute apparently doesn't has the staff and or resources to provide availability to their analytical equipment.  Guess what, contract work like that can make such labs self-sufficient and able to afford scheduled maintenance, as well as pay for research on unfunded projects.  The latter is particularly important because NSF grants are very difficult to get.

Fight on Nittany Lions, fight on Ivory Tower. You've met your enemy...in the mirror.