It now seems certain that the Scarborough team at the University of Akron has settled on a war of attrition to outlast its critics. No matter that the latest reports from the front reveal a university president who has retreated from public dialogue. We only know that Scott Scarborough has turned over the exposition of the authorized script to trustee chair Jonathan Pavloff's less than definitive utterances.
There's an irony here. Although Scarborough once argued intensely that the school is setting out to acquire a national audience with its rebranding, UA is in fact achieving that goal, not as a success story but rather as a school locked in it's own worst image in the national social and academic media.
In a piece I just posted, Ellen Wexler of Inside Higher Education wrote of UA's current chaos with surgical precision. When I asked, she told me that she had attempted to talk to Scarborough but her request came back with a statement from UA vizir Larry Burns. No word from the ventriloquist.
I could also mention the board of trustees, a UA auxiliary unit gifted in doing what it's told with full confidence that it will remain in-sourced as Planet Scarborough reaches out for further privatization. But don't get me started.
Akron, you have a problem.
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