Ever since the University of Akron whipped up an $840,00 contract in June for an inexperienced start-up company named Trust Navigator, the question remained about how UA President Scott Scarborough and the Board of Trustees could have so hastily signed on with the Cleveland area company. To many, it just didn't make academic or business sense.
As we have recently learned, the owner's other company, an investment firm, is being investigated by the Ohio Department of Commerce for alleged fraud and insolvency.
Trust Navigator, on the other hand, was formed a few days before the ink dried on its contract with UA. Its mission was to serve as "success coaches" for freshmen students to ease their way through the classroom. A TN officer said his new company had no experience in success coaching and would rely on UA for guidance.
UA officials said a second company , Inside Track, of San Francisco had entered a bid 0f $1.3 million for the plan.. The Beacon Journal reported that both companies were interviewed by phone. Oh?
Still, the question: How did it all happen so fast for Thomas Roulston III, the owner of Trust Navigator whose family has a long history of financial investment work ?
One theory is that it was an inside job. If you're one to connect dots, try this one; Richard Pogue, an influential and well-connected Clevelander and former UA Board of Trustees chairman, sits on the board of Thomas Roulston III's sister's investment company, WealthTrust Fairport, LLC, where she - Heather Roulston Ettinger - is listed by Bloomberg Business as a managing partner.
At the same time, Sandra Pianalto, former chairman and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, is an advisory trustee of the UA board and a board member of WealthTrust.
That's a mighty one-two punch for a guy like Roulston. You might recall that Roulston said at the time of the UA announcement that his new company had no experience in the success coach field. Was he looking for a clubby way to get his investment company out of debt?
So may we conclude that it was a done deal? That would explain everything, right?
P.S. In response to a media request for UA's reaction to the Ohio Commerce Department probe, UA spokesperson Wayne Hill was authorized to merely say that the infant program was working well. That, of course, was not what the question was about.
Friday, October 30, 2015
Thursday, October 29, 2015
The GOP spare parts assembled on CNBC stage
The Republican presidential debate was hustled by the national media as an event that would clearly define some of the candidates for the long trail ahead.
Would, for example, Jeb Bush finally launch his campaign on the CNBC stage? (We did find out about his fantasy football passion.)
Would Donald Trump, the comic relief, level Ben Carson once and for all?
Would Carson tell us what the hell his tax plan of tithing is really all about?
Closer to home, would John Kasich stop being Mr. Nice Guy (a loosely defined notion for a guy with a history of brutishness) and hype his new image with a terrorizing assault on the other nine?
Alas, the answer was none of the above.
Instead the group turned out to be a bunch of Republican spare parts, full of figures and worn statements that made life meaningful for fact-checkers.
About Kasich, who is still bottom feeding in the national polls: He continued to jitterbug behind his podium while raising his hand for attention like a school kid who wanted to go to the bathroom. New York Magazine described his performance as that of a "fidgety neurotic". And an MSNBC analyst said our governor simply disappeared. In house-hunting terms, no matter how hard he tries, Kasich doesn't have curb appeal.
The pundits raced to determine who won the debate, I can save them a lot of time with one word: NOBODY.
Still, in watching the 10 little stray Indians, I guess I would have to share the fears of other witnesses that we might be viewing someone on the stage who could be president someday.
Would, for example, Jeb Bush finally launch his campaign on the CNBC stage? (We did find out about his fantasy football passion.)
Would Donald Trump, the comic relief, level Ben Carson once and for all?
Would Carson tell us what the hell his tax plan of tithing is really all about?
Closer to home, would John Kasich stop being Mr. Nice Guy (a loosely defined notion for a guy with a history of brutishness) and hype his new image with a terrorizing assault on the other nine?
Alas, the answer was none of the above.
Instead the group turned out to be a bunch of Republican spare parts, full of figures and worn statements that made life meaningful for fact-checkers.
About Kasich, who is still bottom feeding in the national polls: He continued to jitterbug behind his podium while raising his hand for attention like a school kid who wanted to go to the bathroom. New York Magazine described his performance as that of a "fidgety neurotic". And an MSNBC analyst said our governor simply disappeared. In house-hunting terms, no matter how hard he tries, Kasich doesn't have curb appeal.
The pundits raced to determine who won the debate, I can save them a lot of time with one word: NOBODY.
Still, in watching the 10 little stray Indians, I guess I would have to share the fears of other witnesses that we might be viewing someone on the stage who could be president someday.
UA fund-raising takes major hit
A dagger to the heart of the University of Akron's donor operations? .
How else would you describe Eileen Burg's angry letter to the editor of the BJ declaring the family of the late H. Peter Burg's estate would suspend further grants to the school "until the current issues are resolved."
The issues, of course, are the badly managed rollout of debt-cutting efforts by the
Scarborough Regime that have created such chaos on the campus. (Crain's Cleveland Business took up the matter of President Scott Scarborough's credentials by describing him as a "rookie president" .)
Pete Burg was the iconic philanthropist who had been president and CEO of FirstEnergy in Akron . The Burg name is well estsblished at the University of Akron with an endowed scholarship as well as other donor venues, including the honoring of LeBron James with the annual H. Peter Burg Akron Chamber Leadership Award for the superb athlete's own generosity.
Scarborough & Co. has been trying to ignore the resistance movement with Lawrence Burns, vice president of advancement, attributing the decline in contributions as no more than a matter of "timing".
Thank you, Mr. Burns, you couldn't have put it in a more offending way for a widely respected titan in the ranks of the contributors. For a salary of $285,000 shouldn't we expect a bit more from management?
Eileen Burg's open dissent has been shared in other quarters with ties to the school. It has left UA with a besieged president with few defenders except for the trustees and the BJ's editorial page, which, oddly enough, referred to some of the complaints as "petty".
But Scarborough may have finally decided to listen. I've been told by two sources that he has tried to meet with Eileen Burg, who literally told him not to bother.
He also is having a sitdown Friday morning in a session sought by Akron Mayor Jeff Fusco at City Hall. Fusco will be joined by city planning director Marco Sommerville and a few others on his staff while Scarborough will be joined by three UA trustees.
The mayor's chief of staff, Ellen Lander Nischt, said Fusco is trying to get everybody together on the issues.
We can hope.
How else would you describe Eileen Burg's angry letter to the editor of the BJ declaring the family of the late H. Peter Burg's estate would suspend further grants to the school "until the current issues are resolved."
The issues, of course, are the badly managed rollout of debt-cutting efforts by the
Scarborough Regime that have created such chaos on the campus. (Crain's Cleveland Business took up the matter of President Scott Scarborough's credentials by describing him as a "rookie president" .)
Pete Burg was the iconic philanthropist who had been president and CEO of FirstEnergy in Akron . The Burg name is well estsblished at the University of Akron with an endowed scholarship as well as other donor venues, including the honoring of LeBron James with the annual H. Peter Burg Akron Chamber Leadership Award for the superb athlete's own generosity.
Scarborough & Co. has been trying to ignore the resistance movement with Lawrence Burns, vice president of advancement, attributing the decline in contributions as no more than a matter of "timing".
Thank you, Mr. Burns, you couldn't have put it in a more offending way for a widely respected titan in the ranks of the contributors. For a salary of $285,000 shouldn't we expect a bit more from management?
Eileen Burg's open dissent has been shared in other quarters with ties to the school. It has left UA with a besieged president with few defenders except for the trustees and the BJ's editorial page, which, oddly enough, referred to some of the complaints as "petty".
But Scarborough may have finally decided to listen. I've been told by two sources that he has tried to meet with Eileen Burg, who literally told him not to bother.
He also is having a sitdown Friday morning in a session sought by Akron Mayor Jeff Fusco at City Hall. Fusco will be joined by city planning director Marco Sommerville and a few others on his staff while Scarborough will be joined by three UA trustees.
The mayor's chief of staff, Ellen Lander Nischt, said Fusco is trying to get everybody together on the issues.
We can hope.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Kasich moves daringly to lift himself from 'The Others'
Gov. Kasich, who has been relegated to "The Others" category as a presidential candidate, has decided to reinvent his crustier self to become relevant among his peers. He teed off on all of the other Republicans, raging that he's "fed up" and "sick and tired" of the crazy campaign.
The governor has been boasting that he's a blue-collar kid whose father was a mailman. He also is proud to remind his audiences that he was reelected in a landslide without saying his phantom Democratic opponent had virtually dropped out of the race long before the polls opened.
To demonstrate that he is the only candidate on an enlightened path to the White House he took the daring step of being the first Republican to file his candidacy in Alaska. Cool - but a lot colder in winter.
The governor has been boasting that he's a blue-collar kid whose father was a mailman. He also is proud to remind his audiences that he was reelected in a landslide without saying his phantom Democratic opponent had virtually dropped out of the race long before the polls opened.
To demonstrate that he is the only candidate on an enlightened path to the White House he took the daring step of being the first Republican to file his candidacy in Alaska. Cool - but a lot colder in winter.
Monday, October 26, 2015
UA 'white noise' not going away
In his State of the University address UA President Scott Scarborough told us that people who don't understand something tend to be against it. In embracing the Scarborough Era, the BJ's Mike Douglas told us that he was struck by signs of "group think" from those "cudgeling Scarborough at almost every turn, even in the pettiest ways." That was a takeoff of an earlier column by former UA trustee and common pleas judge Jane Bond, who rightly wrote that the Board of Trustees were victims of their own "group think".
And as one who has written a column or two to protest the playbook of the folks so smugly running the university these days, I happily accept the BJ's editorial page editor's reference to the unforgiving petty critics like myself, one of the perps.
So allow me to respond pettishly with the Scarborough manuevers since he brought his caravan of friends to the downtown campus from Toledo University with the full approval of the screening committee and then the Board of Trustees, a near-anonymous group even for people who have been following this travesty.
May I begin with the the fat salaries of the new Scarborough team
despite the alarm bells of a $60 million school debt (with salaries of predecssors in parentheses):
And more pettiness:
A new Corp of Cadets stressing discipline and obedience, even though UA has an ROTC program. As a former ROTC student at the University of Illinois, I recall the same behaviorial goals were in force right down to spit-polished shoes and starchy shirts. At UA, it's a $100,000 salary for the Corps leader
And more pettiness:
The hiring of Trust Navigator, which was born without prior experience three days before its $840,000 UA contract to serve as a student success coach, which UA already had before it got rid of 54 jobs in the UA Division of Student Success.
And more pettiness:
The dismantling of the school's baseball team to "save" $700,000 - while adding more than $650,000 for new athletic scholarships.
Finally, more pettiness:
The chaotic handling of the E.J. Thomas Hall improvisation... Etc. Etc Etc Etc.Etc.
Scarborough reportedly is telling friends that the boos are nothing more than "white noise" - that strange ever-present nearly-silent sound that has also come to mean a distraction in whatever the moment.
So Mike, if all of the above is petty, make the most of it. It appears that white noise, or not, it's going to be around for while for those who are paying close attention.
And as one who has written a column or two to protest the playbook of the folks so smugly running the university these days, I happily accept the BJ's editorial page editor's reference to the unforgiving petty critics like myself, one of the perps.
So allow me to respond pettishly with the Scarborough manuevers since he brought his caravan of friends to the downtown campus from Toledo University with the full approval of the screening committee and then the Board of Trustees, a near-anonymous group even for people who have been following this travesty.
May I begin with the the fat salaries of the new Scarborough team
despite the alarm bells of a $60 million school debt (with salaries of predecssors in parentheses):
Todd Rickel, vice provost, and former White Hat Management player), $295,000 ($119,579).
Lawrence Burns, vice president advancement, $285,000. ($121,400).
Godfrey Ovwigho, chief information officer, $226,000 ($100,000).
Lateesha Ransom, Honors dean, $266,000 ($97,880).
And more pettiness:
A new Corp of Cadets stressing discipline and obedience, even though UA has an ROTC program. As a former ROTC student at the University of Illinois, I recall the same behaviorial goals were in force right down to spit-polished shoes and starchy shirts. At UA, it's a $100,000 salary for the Corps leader
And more pettiness:
The hiring of Trust Navigator, which was born without prior experience three days before its $840,000 UA contract to serve as a student success coach, which UA already had before it got rid of 54 jobs in the UA Division of Student Success.
And more pettiness:
The dismantling of the school's baseball team to "save" $700,000 - while adding more than $650,000 for new athletic scholarships.
Finally, more pettiness:
The chaotic handling of the E.J. Thomas Hall improvisation... Etc. Etc Etc Etc.Etc.
Scarborough reportedly is telling friends that the boos are nothing more than "white noise" - that strange ever-present nearly-silent sound that has also come to mean a distraction in whatever the moment.
So Mike, if all of the above is petty, make the most of it. It appears that white noise, or not, it's going to be around for while for those who are paying close attention.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
From New Hampshire to UA: What can we believe?
From the weekend wash:
The spinmeisters for UA's Team Scarborough's were forced to their limit in Saturday's ABJ report that the University had taken a heavy hit in contributions over the current "rebranding" plan that is only making things worse on the campus.
Confronted with figures that show a 42 pct. decline ($1.34 million) from s similar July-August period last year, UA vice president of advancement Lawrence Burns shrugged off the numbers as a matter of timing and don't reflect donor unhappiness with how things are going at the downtown school.
His lack of higher education in arithmetic, however, ignores such major donors as the UA Women's Committee, whose president Louise Harvey has already said it is suspending further gifts.
But it has been common for President Scarborough and his Knights of the Roundtable to smugly dismiss bad news. As he declared in his State of the University address, when people don't understand something they resist.
So it doesn't seem unfair to apply the same yardstick to Lawrence Burns.
* * * * *
The Columbus Dispatch, the cornucopia from whom all Kasich blessings flow, has cast its lot with the governor's bid to be the top blue-collar guy in the country. The paper's latest report from New Hampshire told the readers of "frequent applause" at Kasich's town hall in Hanover, and that GOP activist Betty Maiola praised him as the "best speaker she has heard so far...I agreed with everything he said." She added he could be a "very good president".
You may remember that the Big D, as the paper is known in Middle Ohio, spent a lot of presidential coverage in 2012 clapping hands for Mitt Romney with Sen Rob Portman tagging along at his side. Let political historians report that Barack Obama won Franklin County , the primary readership area of the Small D.
* * * * *
Kasich did appear on Morning Joe Scarborough's show where he was met head-on by Steve Rattner, the guy who led the auto-industry bailout under President Obama. Does Obama deserve any credit for Ohio's economic recovery, which was greatly nourished by Obama's bailout and stimulus? Kasich was asked.
You'll love this: "OK, he did well on that," Kasich replied, "but he still didn't fix the economy." For historical context, it should be noted that Kasich opposed the bailout and the stimulus.
* * * * *
Finally, shouldn't we all feel some sympathy for Trey Gowdy, the leader of the brutal attacks on Hillary Clinton. The Benghazi committee chairman told Politico that he is trying to make it through some of the "worst weeks of my life. Attacks on your character, attacks on your motives are 1,000 times worse than anything you can do to anybody physically - at least it is for me."
That's it! Gowdy just earned the coveted Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award in a highly competitive field of lunatics.
.
The spinmeisters for UA's Team Scarborough's were forced to their limit in Saturday's ABJ report that the University had taken a heavy hit in contributions over the current "rebranding" plan that is only making things worse on the campus.
Confronted with figures that show a 42 pct. decline ($1.34 million) from s similar July-August period last year, UA vice president of advancement Lawrence Burns shrugged off the numbers as a matter of timing and don't reflect donor unhappiness with how things are going at the downtown school.
His lack of higher education in arithmetic, however, ignores such major donors as the UA Women's Committee, whose president Louise Harvey has already said it is suspending further gifts.
But it has been common for President Scarborough and his Knights of the Roundtable to smugly dismiss bad news. As he declared in his State of the University address, when people don't understand something they resist.
So it doesn't seem unfair to apply the same yardstick to Lawrence Burns.
* * * * *
The Columbus Dispatch, the cornucopia from whom all Kasich blessings flow, has cast its lot with the governor's bid to be the top blue-collar guy in the country. The paper's latest report from New Hampshire told the readers of "frequent applause" at Kasich's town hall in Hanover, and that GOP activist Betty Maiola praised him as the "best speaker she has heard so far...I agreed with everything he said." She added he could be a "very good president".
You may remember that the Big D, as the paper is known in Middle Ohio, spent a lot of presidential coverage in 2012 clapping hands for Mitt Romney with Sen Rob Portman tagging along at his side. Let political historians report that Barack Obama won Franklin County , the primary readership area of the Small D.
* * * * *
Kasich did appear on Morning Joe Scarborough's show where he was met head-on by Steve Rattner, the guy who led the auto-industry bailout under President Obama. Does Obama deserve any credit for Ohio's economic recovery, which was greatly nourished by Obama's bailout and stimulus? Kasich was asked.
You'll love this: "OK, he did well on that," Kasich replied, "but he still didn't fix the economy." For historical context, it should be noted that Kasich opposed the bailout and the stimulus.
* * * * *
Finally, shouldn't we all feel some sympathy for Trey Gowdy, the leader of the brutal attacks on Hillary Clinton. The Benghazi committee chairman told Politico that he is trying to make it through some of the "worst weeks of my life. Attacks on your character, attacks on your motives are 1,000 times worse than anything you can do to anybody physically - at least it is for me."
That's it! Gowdy just earned the coveted Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award in a highly competitive field of lunatics.
.
Friday, October 23, 2015
On Benghazi, don't bet a trey against an ace
The most that any loyal Republican could have hoped for in the ashes of the Benghazi hearing was that nobody watched it. It was an episode of Our Gang Comedy played by Zombies that left committee chairman Trey Gowdy and his six GOP compatriots reeling in the face of a powerfully cool and collected woman who is likely to be the Democrats' presidential nominee.
As we tuned in to the telecast for short bursts of the 8-hour and 20-minute interrogation of the former secretary of state, we could only wonder why the accusers didn't once realize how much more they were adding to their awful image as jackasses on the loose. And for Hillary Clinton it was a triumph over mostly white guys whose testosterone was working overtime - a clear victory for the ascendancy of women in politics.
Even the party conservatives were astonished by the Republican panel's inept stagecraft.
Red State blogger Erick Erickson huffed that it was a "political spectacle and a bust". John Dean, Nixon's man, thought it was "embarrassing". Others used words like "disaster" to vivify the work of the modern Inquisition.
Not the least of the panel's toilers was Ohio's very own Rep. Jim Jordan, a former Ohio State University wrestling coach known mostly as the chairman of the ultra-right-wing Freedom Caucus. His maddening rush at Clinton with debunked Benghazi tales earned him the honor of being first among the "obnoxious" panelists (He would be wise at this point to turn down any challenge to engage in Indian wrestling with Clinton.)
After awhile Fox News, which had been primed to bury Clinton with this event, apparently shrunk from the idea as the testimony worked to Hillary's favor. Fox began cutting away for commentary from its stable of carefully chosen "experts".
To Trey Gowdy who says he ain't going to stop the $4.5 million hounding of Hillary, I can only remind him that in poker, "an ace always beats a trey".
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Were you able to follow the State of the University address?
That was quite a performance by UA President Scott Scarborough on his long state of the university address to counter his critics who have cast him as the bull in the China shop. It went on for nearly 90 minutes with a dizzying barrage of PowerPoint figures, a new video of a supportive LeBron James, historical readings (!), warm greetings to politicians among the swollen audience of hundreds in E. J. Thomas Hall, cherry-picked quotes from projections by experts on the fate of universities, and a requisite introduction of his wife. E.J. Thomas Hall, for Heaven's sake, an oddly reborn edfice that had fallen from Team Scarborough's grace.
He even went so far as to tell the protesting scholars in the audience that when people don't understand something they resist it - a careless putdown of the confused college graduates who are not on his side. An extraordinairily self-confiident preachy man at 52 with a slight Texan tilt in his voice, he has managed to remain standing through four universities, sort of. In mission and tone, think of Dr. Phil.
His mighty verbal sword failed to cut away his repetitious narrative, and he went on with his rebranding plan to make the University of Akron "great" with an outreach to students to God knows where. The rebranding would include such New Age identity as "polytechnic" that would even remove the "A" (for Akron) from the band uniforms and cripple some of the school's departments to bruise a $60 million debt.
What he didn't say is that a debt-ridden school can't afford, as others have complained, to create a Corps of Cadets and more student coaches. But these things are his way of assuring everyone that he's a man of the moment in higher education.
And he didn't mention that his predecessor , Luis Proenza, drove up the debt as the trustees stepped aside without demanding accountability. As we've written before, if they aren't the gatekeepers, what good are they? (The trustees sat in their normal sphynx-like posture in a row near the stage and it's doubtful whether they or anybody else fully grasped what all of those fleeting charts were all about.)
Scarborough spoke on the day that a new print voice, the Devil Strip (local bimonthly), had published some troubling benchmarks on his days as a young politician in Texas. He was the Travis County, Tx., Republican chairman and even ran for state rep - and lost the primary. Still his trademark was stamped clearly: politically and religiously conservative, damning homosexuality and other social "evils". The Austin newspaper noted:
"Travis County GOP Chairman Scott Scarborough , whose term is expiring , told delgates they should "lift up King Jesus through their work as Republican activists."
So how did he make it from his days in Texas to the stage of E.J.Thomas Hall, which had been on his hit list?
Well, you may wonder how the trustees let so much bad ink pass. You my also know that the Republicans hold a 6-2 majority on the board with two Democrats merely along for the ride. That's not all. Trustees chairman Jonathan Pavloff had been chairman of the Summit county Republican executive committee.
You won't need PowerPoint to follow this: The six Republicans, including Pavloff, owe their seats to Summit County GOP party chairman Alex Arshinkoff. who, we're sure, was quite impressed to know that Scarborough was a bird of the feather. Everything else fell neatly into place.
Thank you, Alex. You should have been there Tuesday to take a bow. .
P.S. When Scarborough , borrowing from Donald Trump,says he wants to make UA great, it extends the overused adjective which has little meaning because of its abuse. It is regularly applied beyond precise meaning to everything from hamburgers and dandelion killers to depressions and wars. Great Scott! Just being good is good enough for most of us.
.
He even went so far as to tell the protesting scholars in the audience that when people don't understand something they resist it - a careless putdown of the confused college graduates who are not on his side. An extraordinairily self-confiident preachy man at 52 with a slight Texan tilt in his voice, he has managed to remain standing through four universities, sort of. In mission and tone, think of Dr. Phil.
His mighty verbal sword failed to cut away his repetitious narrative, and he went on with his rebranding plan to make the University of Akron "great" with an outreach to students to God knows where. The rebranding would include such New Age identity as "polytechnic" that would even remove the "A" (for Akron) from the band uniforms and cripple some of the school's departments to bruise a $60 million debt.
What he didn't say is that a debt-ridden school can't afford, as others have complained, to create a Corps of Cadets and more student coaches. But these things are his way of assuring everyone that he's a man of the moment in higher education.
And he didn't mention that his predecessor , Luis Proenza, drove up the debt as the trustees stepped aside without demanding accountability. As we've written before, if they aren't the gatekeepers, what good are they? (The trustees sat in their normal sphynx-like posture in a row near the stage and it's doubtful whether they or anybody else fully grasped what all of those fleeting charts were all about.)
Scarborough spoke on the day that a new print voice, the Devil Strip (local bimonthly), had published some troubling benchmarks on his days as a young politician in Texas. He was the Travis County, Tx., Republican chairman and even ran for state rep - and lost the primary. Still his trademark was stamped clearly: politically and religiously conservative, damning homosexuality and other social "evils". The Austin newspaper noted:
"Travis County GOP Chairman Scott Scarborough , whose term is expiring , told delgates they should "lift up King Jesus through their work as Republican activists."
So how did he make it from his days in Texas to the stage of E.J.Thomas Hall, which had been on his hit list?
Well, you may wonder how the trustees let so much bad ink pass. You my also know that the Republicans hold a 6-2 majority on the board with two Democrats merely along for the ride. That's not all. Trustees chairman Jonathan Pavloff had been chairman of the Summit county Republican executive committee.
You won't need PowerPoint to follow this: The six Republicans, including Pavloff, owe their seats to Summit County GOP party chairman Alex Arshinkoff. who, we're sure, was quite impressed to know that Scarborough was a bird of the feather. Everything else fell neatly into place.
Thank you, Alex. You should have been there Tuesday to take a bow. .
P.S. When Scarborough , borrowing from Donald Trump,says he wants to make UA great, it extends the overused adjective which has little meaning because of its abuse. It is regularly applied beyond precise meaning to everything from hamburgers and dandelion killers to depressions and wars. Great Scott! Just being good is good enough for most of us.
.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Scarborough speech: Let the spin begin
We're not imaginative enough to predict how University of Akron President Scott Scarborough will try to spin gold in his State of the University address on Tuesday in E..J. Thomas Hall.
Maybe he will tell his sour campus community that all change is mighty difficult, particularly when you must hire so many outstanding executives at salaries befitting their responsibilities while at the same time promising to cut expenses.
But keep in mind that he set out more than a year ago telling us the same thing about the difficulty of desperately needed change to shrink multimillion dollar debt.
Or he might explain his New Age theory of why the school needs a polytechnic rebranding in reaching out to prospective students in Dubuque who had anticipated studying Shakespeare and Faulkner and were being recruited by Harvard.
Or he might report that the campus appears to be a tad tidier since he demanded that professors pick up trash if they are to be respected.
Or he might defend the creation of a cadet corps as symbols of fastidious behavior even though it might encroach on the campus ROTC mission.
Or he might insist that a living and breathing Board of Trustees actually exists, a notion that would be a stretch greater than the alleged trustees' necks in nodding their approval of his every whim.
The dissenters like the AAUP and other groups will be there to protest Team Scarborough's bizarre academic stagecraft. His power base is taking some serious hits on the campus and around town. But will they be enough?
Maybe he will tell his sour campus community that all change is mighty difficult, particularly when you must hire so many outstanding executives at salaries befitting their responsibilities while at the same time promising to cut expenses.
But keep in mind that he set out more than a year ago telling us the same thing about the difficulty of desperately needed change to shrink multimillion dollar debt.
Or he might explain his New Age theory of why the school needs a polytechnic rebranding in reaching out to prospective students in Dubuque who had anticipated studying Shakespeare and Faulkner and were being recruited by Harvard.
Or he might report that the campus appears to be a tad tidier since he demanded that professors pick up trash if they are to be respected.
Or he might defend the creation of a cadet corps as symbols of fastidious behavior even though it might encroach on the campus ROTC mission.
Or he might insist that a living and breathing Board of Trustees actually exists, a notion that would be a stretch greater than the alleged trustees' necks in nodding their approval of his every whim.
The dissenters like the AAUP and other groups will be there to protest Team Scarborough's bizarre academic stagecraft. His power base is taking some serious hits on the campus and around town. But will they be enough?
Friday, October 16, 2015
Trump to come to Cleveland with his own hotel
I have not yet confirmed it, but a possible impeachable Repubican source tells me that Donald Trump will have his own exclusive hotel at the party's convention in
Cleveland next year.
"He's considering a couple of doable options" the source said. Reviving Ralph Perk's old plan, The Donald would dock a cruise liner, as big as the Queen Mary and aglow with more than a thousand flambeaux, on Lake Erie. He would have enough space for all of the creature comforts that he feels he would need to station his team of minor advisors, publicists and hair stylists." It would then remain in port to accommodate his inaugural ball.
Another option is that he would buy one of Cleveland's toniest hotels like the Ritz-Carlton and install round the clock TV facilities for uninterrupted commercial-free coverage of the historic moment when he would set out to make America great.
The latter figures to be his best bet because a cruise ship might be grounded in the St. . Lawrence River. Besides, nobody ever took Mayor Perk's idea seriously and the presidential convention went someplace else while Perk's wife went bowling.
Cleveland next year.
"He's considering a couple of doable options" the source said. Reviving Ralph Perk's old plan, The Donald would dock a cruise liner, as big as the Queen Mary and aglow with more than a thousand flambeaux, on Lake Erie. He would have enough space for all of the creature comforts that he feels he would need to station his team of minor advisors, publicists and hair stylists." It would then remain in port to accommodate his inaugural ball.
Another option is that he would buy one of Cleveland's toniest hotels like the Ritz-Carlton and install round the clock TV facilities for uninterrupted commercial-free coverage of the historic moment when he would set out to make America great.
The latter figures to be his best bet because a cruise ship might be grounded in the St. . Lawrence River. Besides, nobody ever took Mayor Perk's idea seriously and the presidential convention went someplace else while Perk's wife went bowling.
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