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From “InsideVandy,” the Vanderbilt online student community, TDD was unfortunate enough to stumble upon this anecdote:
I was at a party the other day and the girls I came with went to the bathroom in a herd as girls do. One of them came back and told me the following story:
“Oh geez, this girl was in the next stall and she said, ‘There’s no paper in this stall and that sucks but it’s okay; I’ll just drip dry.’ Then she left the stall and pranced around the bathroom screaming ‘DRIP DRY DRIP DRY’ while flailing her arms.”
This is not the worst thing I’ve heard all week (sadly), but it’s definitely up there. Please please please aspire to have a little more class next weekend, Vanderbilt.
Gross.
Atop the list, of course, is some guy named James of Akron St. Vincent St. Mary.
The Duke flavor comes in at No. 8 with someone who committed to Duke, but reneged on it to turn professional. And it’s not who you think it is:
8. Morgan Pressel — Class of 2006
Pressel was not yet a high school senior when she cruised to the 2005 U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship title and finished second at the 2005 U.S. Women’s Open. When she wasn’t golfing against the likes of Annika Sorenstam, Pressel was busy winning three state titles before graduating from St. Andrew’s (Boca Raton, Fla.) and turning pro.
Shaquille O’Neal, the NBA superstar who earned a degree from the online University of Phoenix so he could pursue his interest in law enforcement, took part in a botched police raid recently.
Shaquille O’Neal was present during a botched child pornography raid last month while working in Virginia as a reserve sheriff’s deputy, a Bedford County Sheriff’s officer said.
The Miami Heat center, who pursues his interest in law enforcement during the offseason, denied Tuesday taking part in serving the search warrant at the wrong house Sept. 23. However, Bedford County Sheriff’s Lt. Michael Harmony confirmed to The Associated Press that O’Neal was there.
O’Neal, in Orlando to play a preseason game Tuesday, was asked about the raid and several times somewhat playfully responded, “It wasn’t me.”
The 13-time All-Star has expressed an interest in becoming a Bedford deputy or sheriff somewhere else after his NBA career ends. He also works as a firearms-certified reserve police officer in Miami Beach.
While Matt Jones–a.k.a. Magloire–bemoans The Devil’s Den for calling out the fallacy that Duke is “lily white,” we’d like to present a snapshot of the two universities for consideration of any visitors we may be welcoming over the next day or so.
(Granted, a comparative study does not necessarily vindicate one institution from being lily white, say, if one school were 88% white while another was 80% white. Considered alone, however, Duke’s undergraduate student profile is vindication enough. We present them alongside Kentucky’s figures for illustrative purposes only.)
University of Kentucky
2004 Enrollment: 18,492
% White: 88.3
% Black: 5.6
Duke University
2005 Enrollment: 6,244
% White: 56.0
% Black: 11.0
% Asian: 14.0
% Hispanic: 7.0
Furthermore:
Lexington, Kentucky
Population: 255,000
Percentage of citizens that are white: 80.5%
Percentage of citizens that are black: 13.3%
Durham, North Carolina
Population: 191,731
Percentage of citizens that are white: 43.0%
Percentage of citizens that are black: 40.6%
And as TDD poster “UH” reported:
Studies show that Duke is viewed favorably by 4/5 (80% if you can’t do the math) in Durham. That is pretty strong. The national media does its best to represent that fact differently. Here is an interesting unrelating stat. Members of the Durham community approved of the reinstatement of the lacrosse program in higher numbers than were seen nationally. The media again would have folks believe otherwise.
But there’s more:
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education–on October 20, 2006–ranked America’s leading universities “according to their relative success in attracting, enrolling, and graduating African-American students as well as their progress in bringing black professors to their campuses. Universities are ranked according to a blending of 13 widely accepted quantitative measures of institutional racial integration.”
Duke University had the highest average diversity rating of the nation’s most selective and academically prestigious universities. Also ranking among the top five in racial diversity are Emory University, Princeton University, Washington University, and Vanderbilt University. It is of interest to note that three of the top five universities in our ratings are in southern states. Forty years ago, these institutions were lily-white. The progress they have made has been impressive.
…
1. Duke University (Average Score: 90.36): Duke finished at the top of our survey for the simple reason that it consistently ranked near the top for each category and did not rank anywhere near the bottom in any category. Duke finished no worse than ninth in any one of the 11 categories for which data was available. Duke also had the best performance among the top-ranked universities in its five-year gain in the percentage of blacks in its freshman class. For the 2001-02 academic year, blacks made up a striking 11.2 percent of the first-year class at Duke. This was up from 7.8 percent five years ago. Duke’s worst performing category was in the percentage of tenured faculty who are black. However, with a tenured faculty that is 2.7 percent black, Duke still was rated higher in this category than 17 of the other 26 high-prestige universities.
Clearly one explanation for the strong performance of Duke in so many categories is the sincere commitment of President Nan Keohane to racial diversity. Duke’s strong improvement in black faculty levels may be attributed to an incentive plan which makes it highly advantageous for academic departments to engage black faculty.
This high ranking does not mean that Duke University is a Shangri-la for black students. Serious racial issues remain on the Duke campus. Residential segregation has been a problem in recent years. Some observers have noted that there is little overall interaction between many black and white students on the Duke campus. Also, there has been a high rate of faculty turnover among blacks.
A decade ago, Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. called his one year experience at Duke the most racist experience of his academic life. But clearly the climate at Duke for both black students and black faculty has improved immeasurably since that time.
Duke, like all other elite institutions of higher education, has a long way to go in creating the ideal learning and living environment for all its students. But Duke is a leader in building that environment for any and all that matriculate. It has recognized its weaknesses, and is hell-bent on ameliorating them. This is the hallmark of a great university. Duke has issues with race, of course–but it is no lily-white institution, not in the least.
James Baldwin once wrote of the importance of facing an issue in order to overcome it. That is precisely what Duke has been doing throughout its decades of existence. And it has taken no issue more seriously than that of race relations on campus. Its tremendous strides in the past decade alone merit praise, not unfounded castigation.
Let’s be clear: The Devil’s Den is not the story here. The author–Matt Jones–and his mischaracterizations of Duke are the issue. This has nothing to do with basketball, and everything to do with Jones’ assertion that Duke is “lily-white.”
On his blog, Jones–a Duke Law alum–bemoans his recent excursion to The Devil’s Den premium boards.
Jones writes as follows:
You know sometimes some of the most fun things in this business are when you are being roundly criticized. I dont mean that I like criticism, the neurosis in me always dwells on it, but sometimes it is fun to watch people get worked up. Such a thing happened the last few days as the Duke premium Scout site has gotten up in arms about our harmless little blog. As we discussed on the show, they were frustrated about something I wrote on here in a thread comparing UK, Duke and Florida and proceeded to rip me. I defended myself and they all came after me and I decided to stop banging my head against the wall (or if you believe them, I was “defeated”). I talked about it a bit on the show and that was that. But the Dukies like to keep going. Someone took the time to not only listen to our show, but TRANSCRIBE THE SEGMENTS ABOUT DUKE, and put them on the site. They now are up in arms about my comments to Decourcey on Duke scheduling and have been ranting about it all day. Here is a little secret to my Duke friends….learn the lesson Fox News learned when they went after Al Franken…..if you dont like something, ignore it. Getting worked up about it only gives it validity. That is a good lesson for all of us. In other news, I am going to see if one of them will come on our show on Sunday for a “debate”. I think it will be fun and good radio.
Once again, decorum forbids us to post conversations from the premium forum, but if Jones continues to mislead his readers, we may have to make an exception.
But let’s be clear: The reason for all the hubbub was Jones’ assertion that Duke was “lily-white.”
We reiterate: This has nothing to do with basketball, and everything to do with the slandering of a university.
Jones is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
That lesson–first taught by Senator Moynihan to a hapless foe on the Senate floor–is yet to be learned by Jones.
The annual Fuqua Business School’s Leadership Conference began yesterday with a keynote address by Chiquita Brands International Chairman and CEO Fernando Aguirre. Coach K then delivered a motivational speech to the sold-out conference.
Today, the conference will gather at Cameron Indoor to watch the men’s team practice, which will precede a sports panel headlined by former Duke star and National Defensive Player of the Year Billy King, now President of the Philadelphia 76ers.
According to the Times Higher Education Supplement, Duke University is the 13th-best institution of higher education in the world, and 10th-best among U.S. colleges and universities.
Duke dropped two spots from a year ago, but was still up 39 places from its 2004 rank.
Harvard topped the poll for the second consecutive year.
Duke alums have slowly but surely made their way in front of the camera as broadcasters and analysts in recent years, among them Jay Bilas, Seth Davis, John Feinstein, Jim Spanarkel, Mike Gminski and Jason Williams.
Their concentration, of course, is college basketball.
But now Duke has a women’s golf expert making the television rounds.
A wealth of experience and a variety of talents unmatched in the world of televised golf will comprise The Golf Channel’s broadcast team when the network’s PGA TOUR tournament telecasts commence in 2007, with members including six-time major championship winner Nick Faldo and the first, full-time female play-by-play golf commentator in the history of television, Kelly Tilghman, who is a 1991 graduate of Duke University.
With every PGA TOUR official money event either beginning or airing in its entirety on The Golf Channel, the 10-person team will handle a full slate of 43 official events in 2007, including the first three events of the year. Viewers will first see members of the team in action on Jan. 4 during the first round of the Mercedes-Benz Championship from Hawaii.
“A team of Golf Channel professionals – who have lived and breathed golf for more than 10 years and understand its traditions – former players and seasoned golf broadcasters makes for quite an impressive lineup,” said Golf
Channel Executive Producer Tony Tortorici.
Voicing dissatisfaction with Duke University’s promises about retail development on campus, the Durham Planning Commission recommended Tuesday night that the City Council reject a proposed rezoning of the school’s Central Campus.
The 7-4 vote came after neighborhood leaders and the managing partner of Northgate Mall said Duke hadn’t gone far enough to guard against the possibility that the 128-acre Central Campus redevelopment would undercut private-sector businesses.
The worst sports site on the internet, CBS Sportsline, has a feature up on Dean Smith’s least favorite ex-UNC basketball coach.
Says Doherty:
The Man upstairs drives this train. If Sean May doesn’t break his foot, yeah, I’m probably still at North Carolina. But he did.
I’m sure that makes him sleep better at night.
But this line from one of Doherty’s new players at SMU, Ike Ofoegbu, is absolutely hilarious:
Expectations are high because of Coach Doherty, because of the name Coach Doherty. We’re all excited because we’re getting a chance to learn from the best.
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