wifeisafurd said:
71Bear said:
wifeisafurd said:
71Bear said:
Scandal? Nah...
It was a situation in which an employee violated corporate policy. Subsequently, an investigation was conducted, a decision was made and the employee was terminated.
Where is the scandal?
These types of situations occur frequently in the corporate world and are addressed accordingly without any publicity.
Heck, I was involved as an investigator in several incidents during my career. It is just part of working in a world in which people believe they are exempt from the rules.
Nothing to see here, just move along..........
Private employer situation agreed. This however is a college football program, at a big name school. I'm just telling you if it happened at Cal, Nina Arseholemov would. be writing front page articles.
Given Cal's very poor track record of investigating unseemly behavior by key employees in a prompt manner, I can understand why the media follows activities in Berkeley so closely. In this particular instance, it appears that Stanford moved quickly to address the matter (from the date the employee was placed on administrative leave to his termination).
Despite the desire of Cal partisans to find a salacious story behind the investigation, it appears to be be a rather routine situation thus warranting little media interest.
A guy does something wrong.
The issue is investigated
He is terminated.
Yawn......
If it had happened at Menlo College, would there be any interest about it at this site?
Cal's problem has always been trying to drag Stanford down to their level rather than trying to build up to match the Cardinal. Until the latter occurs, Cal will forever be a few steps behind their rival...
And if Aunt Becky bought her child into Menlo College would it be a story?
As less subtlety noted, your not understanding that context. matters Turly had a big hand in turning Furd into one of the most elite programs - no. 7 in P5 teams over the last decade, and the top program on the West coach. If why he is released is related to providing players performance enhancing drugs, that is a huge story. They cheated, and there is a question of how widespread the culture of PEDs was at a school where massive weigh gains became the norm, and the team based its entire scheme around being bigger and more physical.
If it is something like harassment, then I agree, something wrong, investigating and termination, and well, yawn. At least now in 2019. But before you go spouting out about Cal's inability to address these situations demanding press coverage in comparison to Furd, take a good look at how well Furd has been doing in that context, to wit:
1) CRISPER scandal
2) Sex scandal in Furd Business School (the love triangle)
3) The 190 (190 claims of sexual harassment that were not invetigated)
4) The Math Lecturer scandal (wrestling with Foxcatcher anyone?)
5) The Morretti sex scandal
6) Stanford Faces Backlash From Students Over Handling of Sexual Assault
7) Ex-Stanford Professor Says Reporting Sexual Harassment Cost Her a Job
8) What makes Cory Booker's groping incident different than the ...https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/21/politics/cory-booker-brett...sexual.../index.html. (old and cold in my book, but shows the culture)
9) The reprisal scandal: Furd accused of allowing reprisals against those that made sexual harassment claims in the early 2000's.
10) The Chu rape (Furd suspended a famous professor for two years after finding he repeatedly harassed and raped an undergrad student (the professor was ill at the time of the hearing and Fund showed leniency). To add insult to injury the Furd Senate then passed a resolution and formal tribute to the professor's lasting legacy to mentoring of undergraduates and, especially, graduate students in their academic and research careers at and beyond Stanford.
11) Former Stanford Grad Students: Our professors raped us (in Furd alumni magazine)
12) Stanford band AGAIN placed on probation in 2015 due to MORE reports of sexual harrassment and hazing.
If Cal even had anything close to this the school would be on SNL skits. You just don't know what you are talking about, when you make a comparison to Cal. It was so bad Furd actually had an independent investigation after alums threatened to pull funds (that sure has hell would have been front page news if at Cal) and completely changed policies and procedures in 2018.
The problem, of course, is the lack of transparency at Furd, and the school's ability to isolate its problems from media scrutiny.
Which then gets us to your absurd comment about bringing Furd down rather than emulating Furd. Cal gets disparate media coverage. That you can't see that is not my problem. In any event, Cal is Cal and should stay that way. Furd does a lot of things well and does is it in a way that will not work at Cal whether it be due to public vs private differences, culture or value differences or other distinctions. It is a basic, for example, as Furd researches to address specific problems while Cal often does general research for the sake of research. Cal needs to be the best it can be in the context of what Cal is. It does not need to emulate Furd or have envy at Furd's success.
A few points:
On the academic side, I have zero envy toward Stanford. Didn't apply. Would never have gone there over Cal. Stanford and Cal both provide an elite education. They are different. I prefer the education I received at Cal. Would never trade it. It is a personal choice. I would also say that if you look at what is going on today, more and more elite high school students seem to be fitting a public school profile or a private school profile. As in kids that get into elite public schools are not getting into elite private schools, but kids that are getting into elite private schools are not getting into elite public schools either. I would never want Cal to emulate Stanford on the academic side. I'd call that a tragedy
I might somewhat envy not having to deal with Cal bureaucracy and administration, and there is really no excuse in how bad it was when I was there. But then the question needs to be asked, would I pay $100K to avoid that? Don't think I'd pay even $200. So, they can envy the $100K I still have, as far as I'm concerned.
I think there is good reason to have some envy of their athletics if you care. They have had great success. IMO, we cannot and should not emulate their athletics programs.
1. Given attendance at events by students I think it is fair to say that athletics is not particularly popular among students of either school.
2. Stanford has a couple of donors that essentially will write a blank check to support athletics. Why? I don't know. We don't have that.
3. Stanford is a privately funded institution with its own goals which can change whenever they want to. If, for some reason, their athletics were not fully self sustaining, they can pull money out of the general fund which is mostly a private endowment. No one would even see it happen let alone care. Cal is a publicly funded institution with a legislated goal of providing top high school students in the state with a quality college education. If the athletics are not self sustaining, money gets pulled out of the general fund, which is partially supported through tax payer dollars. Most people are not going to see taxes going to support Cal's baseball team as appropriate.
4. 1 in 8 Stanford undergraduates competes in college athletics. 1 in 30 Cal undergraduates do. In addition, Stanford just loves to take Olympic level athletes whether they compete for the school or not. I've always thought that level of emphasis on athletics at Stanford is out of whack. Given what I've learned through the academic scandal about the role athletics play in providing admissions advantages to affluent kids, I think even more so. As a private institution, that is their business. As a public institution with Cal's academic mission, approaching what Stanford does would be completely inappropriate. Personally, I've always been for cutting sports. We have more than most and I think it is financially not healthy. After the academic scandal, my personal opinion is that I don't really care if a sport (I'm looking at you, men's crew) can financially sustain itself they either serve some other purpose or they get zero admissions advantages and recruit from the general student body (as I believe used to be true with crew). My opinion keep Football and Basketball, the required conference sports, whatever we have to for Title IX balance with those, a couple of sports where we are elite, and decide whether the rest can compete with no admission advantage. I digress, though. Bottom line, we cannot emulate Stanford's formula
5. I think there are things that Stanford has done to develop a partnership between academics and athletics. I'd like to see Cal try to do that to the extent that academics can be convinced that it is mutually beneficial.
As for media coverage, I think there is one other thing you haven't mentioned. Stanford guards its reputation to the extreme. Even with respect to Pac-12 officiating, the officials have reported that Stanford will scream bloody murder every week about something. I guarantee you that if any publication not affiliated with Stanford students or alumni tries to investigate anything going on at Stanford they are going to face a fierce legal threat. Cal can't do that. It isn't worth the trouble for media sources to kick that hornet's nest.
Regarding Stanford's success in bulking up their athletes. No one else could get away with that without more public questions. Stanford has thrown its academic reputation behind it saying it is the result of their brilliant techniques. Frankly, sounds a lot like the Chinese doctor who claimed Chinese athletes were doing so well due to ground up caterpillars. But they are Stanford so no one questions. The story with the Glove is total bullshyte. Not that it might not be an effective technique. I understand the concept and suspect it is very useful. There is no way it is responsible for any sizable portion of their success, however. Maybe they are doing a lot more perfectly legitimate things that are leading to the success and the Glove just makes a good headline. But if the Glove were that effective the entire sports world would be using it and someone would be a billionaire by now. That media seems to buy that as explanation and not look further is a joke and I agree with you it would be a huge story if evidence came out that PED's are involved. I suspect there are things going on that Stanford would not be happy becoming public and that they either provide academic cover or are willfully turning the other way, but as no one will investigate, there is no proof. IMO, the fact that Stanford has extolled the virtues of essentially research breakthroughs yielding the results, any scandal in that area would be particularly noteworthy because it would not just implicate the athletic department but make the academic side complicit as well.