Tag Archives: University of Louisville

More bucks than brains: James Ramey and the ruination of the University of Louisville

 

What was he thinking? - University of Louisville president posed for photo in sombrero, poncho at the his 2015 Halloween party

University of Louisville president James Ramsey  posed for photo in sombrero, poncho at the his 2015 Halloween party

In the late 1990s, Kentucky’s legislature initiated a program to upgrade and reform the state’s postsecondary education system, it was called “Bucks for Brains.” (The state’s promotional tagline at the time was “Open for Business.”)

I was recruited to the University of Louisville in 2001 and spent two-and-a-half years on the faculty there as a department chair and distinguished university scholar, which gave me an up close and personal experience with a university administration that’s, as they say where my family’s from, sigogglin.

John W. Shumaker, a classics scholar, was UofL president when I arrived and he proved to be an incredible fund raiser, increasing the university’s endowment from under $200 million to $550 million.

Of course, the UofL has long been the recipient of corporate largesse, especially from the Louisville’s corporate giants Brown-Forman (one of America’s largest spirits and wine companies); Brown & Williamson (which chemically enhanced the addictiveness of cigarettes, remember whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand? No? Well I’m sure you remember Russell Crowe playing Wigand the blockbuster movie The Insider); Papa John’s Pizza (UofL football Cardinals play in Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium); and Yum! Brands (“feeding the world” crap food via KFC, Pizza Hut, and, of course, Taco Bell, more on the Mexican connection later).

The Brown & Williamson Club at the University of Louisville's Papa John's Cardinal Stadium

The Brown & Williamson Club at the University of Louisville’s Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium

After Shumaker left to head up the University of Tennessee (where he resigned in disgrace after 3 years), he was replaced by James R. Ramsey, who had been Kentucky’s state budget director under Gov. Paul E. Patton (who became wealthy by exploiting Kentucky’s coal miners).

Patton’s major achievement as governor was overhauling postsecondary education in the Kentucky. But Patton’s political career was de-railed by duelling scandals: (1)  an extramarital affair and a sex-for-favors scandal; and (2) pardoning four of his political advisers who were indicted for violating Kentucky’s campaign finance laws and for allegedly abusing his patronage powers.

All of this is just everyday Kentucky politics, so Patton wasn’t distracted enough to forget he had to find a soft-landing for his budget director, thus Ramsey, with no university administration experience, became the 17th president of the University of Louisville.

Since Ramsey has been in office the UofL, in endowment has continued to grow and is now pushing the $1 billion mark, which is really the only logical explanation for why he hasn’t been bounced because Ramsey’s administration has more ethical lapses than Carter has liver pills, pretty much proving that the UofL has more bucks than brains.

Robert Felner: Former Dean, Convicted Felon

Felner arrived in Louisville with some spiffy credentials: PhD in psychology from Yale; former head of the department of psychology at the University of Illinois; a CV packed with pages upon pages listing his publications in top journals and, most importantly for the UofL administration, a staggering number of grants.

Despite several red flags about Felner’s candidacy for dean of UofL’s College of Education and Human Development, Ramsey and his long time provost, Shirley Willihnganz, couldn’t wait to get Felner on campus.

Ramsey was in such as rush to land Felner he and Willihnganz forgot to tell the interim dean (and other finalist for the position) they hired Felner, so he was left to discover the decision when Felner call his secretary and started giving her instructions. So much for that HR seminar!

Things in CEHD soon started to fall apart.

I resigned from my department chair position two weeks after Felner took over as dean and later moved to UBC.

Within a few years, there had been 30 grievances filed by faculty and students against Felner for a wide range of abusive managerial practices and a faculty vote of no-confidence in Felner’s leadership of the CEHD. Reasons given by faculty for the vote of non-confidence included:

Public humiliation of faculty, work place harassment, retaliation for voicing opinions, little or no governance, decisions that hurt College, unacceptable and unfair hiring practice; rude, offensive, unethical behavior by CEHD representatives; denial of support for research to those who differ in opinion; and extreme inequity of pay. (See CEHD meeting notes published here.)

Despite the abominable conditions in CEHD, UofL Provost Willihnganz and Ramsey both supported Felner publicly.

One year after the vote of no-confidence, Felner announced he was leaving the UofL to become president of the University of Wisconsin, Parkside.

The Chronicle of Higher Education described Felner as “riding high” a couple of years into his deanship at UofL, well-paid, and having secured a $700,000 grant from the US Department of Education. However, he “pressed his luck” during his last weeks in Louisville.

Even though only $96,000 remained in the account, he implored Louisville officials to approve a $200,000 subcontract with a nonprofit organization in Illinois that had already received $450,000 from the grant. Perhaps, he suggested, the university could draw on a special fund that had been established by the daughter of a former trustee.

The Illinois group, Mr. Felner said, had been surveying students and teachers in Kentucky. That survey would “let us give the feds something that should make them very happy about the efficiency and joint commitment of the university to doing a good job with an earmark, as I know we will want more from this agency,” he wrote in an e-mail message on June 18.

But on June 20, his last day as Dean of CEHD before he headed off to Wisconsin, those big black SUVs with government plates (like the ones you see on Criminal Minds) rolled into the CEHD parking lot. US Secret Service, US Postal Inspectors, and UofL Police questioned Felner and escorted him off campus, along with his computers and records.

There was a simultaneous raid on UW-Parkside to confiscate material Felner had shipped ahead of his arrival there.

In October 2008, a federal grand jury indicted Felner on nine counts of mail fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion. According to the indictment,

the Illinois nonprofit group, known as the National Center on Public Education and Prevention, was simply a shell that funneled money into the personal bank accounts of Mr. Felner and Thomas Schroeder, a former student of his and the group’s “executive director.” Prosecutors say the two men siphoned away not only the $694,000 earmarked grant, but also $1.7-million in payments from three urban school districts, money that ought to have gone to the legitimate public-education center that Mr. Felner had created in Rhode Island.

In January 2010, Felner pleaded guilty to nine Federal charges, including income tax evasion.

In May 2010, Felner was sentenced to 63 months in US Federal Prison for his role in defrauding defrauding the UofL and the University of Rhode Island, where he had been director of the School of Education, of $2.3 million of US Department of Education funds earmarked for No Child Left Behind Act research.

aka Robert Felner

10775-033 aka Robert Felner was released from US Prison in May 2014

For a a short course on the felonious Felner see the PageOneKentucky.com summary of events. For a full course on the Felonious Felner and the incompetence and ethical lapses of Ramsey’s UofL administration click here. (Shout out to Jake at PageOneKentucky for excellent investigative reporting on Felner and the UofL.)

For Workplace Blog coverage of Felner click here.

And here is a Louisville Courier-Journal profile of Felner that pretty much sums up the guy that Ramsey defended until he pleaded guilty: Robert Felner profile: Arrogant, outrageous, abusive and duplicitous.

Felner Footnotes: Indians, John Deasy, Non-Disclosure Agreements & Ramsey as the Frito Bandito

(1) When Felner announced his resignation, UofL president Ramsey wroted to Felner and said he was worried about “letting the Indians get back in control of the reservation.” That’s some serious respect for university faculty and the idea of shared governance, eh?

(2) Los Angeles school superintendent, John Deasy, has had his academic credentials called into question. Deasy was given a PhD by the University of Louisville after he was enrolled for four months and received a total of nine credits.

Deasy’s doctoral advisor was, surprise, Robert Felner! Deasy had previously awarded $375,000 in consulting contracts to Felner, while Deasy was Superintendent of Santa Monica schools.

Ramsey appointed a “blue-ribbon” panel to investigate Deasy’s degree. The panel found that getting a PhD in four months at the UofL was not cause for concern, thus plunging the UofL’s academic reputation down into the neighbourhood of fly-by-night for-profit “higher” education.

Deasy is now working in an unaccredited training program sponsored by educational de-formers the Broad Foundation, which teaches school leaders business methods and supports charter schools and closing public schools.

(3) Ramsey has been making double retirement payouts to UofL administrators for their silence.

Records show that the school paid a full year’s salary to outgoing vice presidents Michael Curtin ($252,350) and Larry Owsley ($248,255) and to assistant to the president Vivian Hibbs ($66,391) to induce them not to “disparage, demean or impugn the university or its senior leadership.”

In March 2014, UofL made a $346,000.00 settlement with university counsel Angela Kosawha:

The University of Louisville is paying another large settlement in connection with the retirement of a high-ranking official — this time, $346,844 to its top lawyer. University counsel Angela Koshewa is on a three-month leave of absence before she officially retires June 1. Documents obtained under the Kentucky Open Records Act show the university is paying Koshewa — who has questioned some expenditures and proposals backed by President James Ramsey and Dr. David Dunn, the executive vice president for Health Affairs — twice her final salary.

It costs a lot for Ramsey to cover up details of his administration’s incompetence and shenanigans, but remember there are lots of bucks at UofL.

(4) Provost Shirley Willihnganz stepped down as UofL provost earlier this year. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that

Under her watch, however, university employees have stole, misspent or mishandled at least $7.6 million in schemes at the health science campus, the law school, the business school and the athletic department’s ticket office.

Willihnganz also was criticized for approving about $1 million in buyouts for former high-ranking employees, some of which included agreements not to disparage the university or its leaders.

She also was forced to apologize to CEHD faculty in 2008 for failing to take any common-sense action against Felner for his intimidation, harassment, humiliation and retaliation against faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Willihnganz said at the time that she tended to dismiss the early complaints against Felner — including a no-confidence vote by faculty — because he was a “high performer” and because the complaints came from professors and staff “entrenched in their ways and resistant to change.”

She later told faculty at a meeting that she was sorry. “Mostly what I think I want to say is people have been hurt and something very bad happened, and as provost I feel like I am ultimately responsible for that,” she said.

No duh! She actually is directly responsible for the Felner disaster (along with Ramsey), that’s probably why she feels that way. And speaking of resistance to change …

(5) This next item has nothing to do with Felner, except that his former boss and advocate, James Ramsey, is also the long time boss of UofL basketball coach Rick Pitino who admitted to having sex with a woman in a swanky Italian restaurant in Louisville. Apparently that’s not a problem with Ramsey and the UofL because Pitino said it wasn’t rape.

And, now Pitino is using hookers and strippers to recruit high school basketball players to come to the UofL. See Dave Zirin’s pieces on the latest Ramsey supervised scandal:

(6) And I almost forgot. Remember the Taco Bell/Mexican connection. This week Ramsey had a little halloween party at the UofL. Ramsey goes racist (again). Yes, he dressed up like the Frito Bandito.

UofL President James Ramsey illustrating his knowledge of multiculturalism

UofL President James Ramsey says “Yo quiero Taco Bell.”

And you thought the HR training at UofL was bad, get that guy to the diversity office and cross your fingers that they’re better than the university’s accounting folks.

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U of L provost who hired notorious ed school dean Robert Felner steps down

Shirley Willihnganz, the University of Louisville provost who hired “notorious ed school dean” Robert Felner has stepped down from her $342,694 a year position and will return to the faculty after a sabbatical.

Willihnganz told the Louisville Courier-Journal that the “Felner episode” was the biggest regret of her 13 years as a top administrator at U of L.

Willihnganz hired Felner as dean of the U of L College of Education and Human Development in 2003. Felner’s deanship has been described by some as a “reign of terror” because of his abusive treatment of staff, faculty, students and alumni.

Despite dozens of grievances filed against Felner and a faculty vote of no-confidence, Willihnganz and her boss, university president James Ramsey, were dismissive of complaints and vigorously defended him. Ultimately, Willihnganz was “forced to apologize” to the faculty, saying “mostly what I think I want to say is people have been hurt and something very bad happened, and as provost I feel like I am ultimately responsible for that.”

In addition to his well documented abusive behavior, Felner was also engaged in criminal activity while working for the U of L and under Willihnganz’s supervision.

In 2010, Felner was sentenced 63 months in federal prison for a scheme that bilked $2.3 million of US Department of Education money from U of L and the University of Rhode Island.

On June 20, 2008, Federal investigators (Secret Service and US Postal Inspection Service) raided Felner’s office at the U of L College of Education and Human Development (and his new office at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside, where he was in the process of taking over as campus president) to seize documents and a computer.

Read more about the Felner saga and his journey from “high performer” (Willihnganz’s description) to infamous ex-con here.

Courier-Journal reporter Andrew Wolfson asked me to comment on Willihnganz response to Felner. The statement below was quoted, in part, in the C-J story.

Of course it’s hard to disagree that the hiring of Robert Felner as dean of CEHD was, in hind sight, a disastrous decision by the U of L administration and Dr. Willihnganz in particular, but it was not entirely unpredictable. As chair of the largest department in CEHD at the time, I vigorously opposed Felner’s hire and called for the administration to resist the “old boy” network within the college that backed him. The provost’s office failed to do its due diligence in the hiring, despite a plethora of signs that Felner was not a good choice for the university. At the time, I was aware that other universities had considered Felner for deanships, but excluded him based upon thorough investigations of his career. The fact that President Ramsey and Dr. Willihnganz remained in office after defending Felner’s abusive leadership style, and ultimately criminal behavior, says much about the lack of accountability for decision making at the U of L. The damage done to the university’s reputation has been significant and is not merely the result of Felner’s felonious activities and generally abusive treatment of staff and faculty, but can also be laid in some measure at the feet of Dr. Willihnganz and President Ramsey.

The Courier-Journal reports modest positive accomplishments during on Willihnganz’s years a provost, including increased graduate rates and slight improvements in the U of L’s standing in university reputational rankings.

But, these accomplishments pale in comparison to the Felner episode and a long series shameful debacles that have tarnished the reputation of Kentucky’s second largest research university. The C-J reports that,

Under [Willihnganz’s] watch … university employees have stole, misspent or mishandled at least $7.6 million in schemes at the health science campus, the law school, the business school and the athletic department’s ticket office.

Willihnganz also was criticized for approving about $1 million in buyouts for former high-ranking employees, some of which included agreements not to disparage the university or its leaders.

Academic Fraud?
As the chief academic officer of the U of L, Willihnganz allowed the university to bestow a PhD degree on one of Felner’s associates, John Deasy, after enrolling in the CEHD doctoral program for a total of four months and apparently never actually taking any courses.

As reported in the education newspaper Substance,

John Deasy earned his PhD directly under Felner, in a period of four months, earning nine UL credit hours.

Prior to coming to UL, Deasy had awarded Felner’s research company, the National Center on Public Education and Social Policy, a $375,000 grant from the Santa Monica district where Deasy was head.

Before he came to UL, Felner had been dean at the University of Rhode Island’s College of Education from 1996-2003. Deasy studied there in the same period, while Deasy was also a Rhode Island school superintendent.

According to a highly placed source, formerly at UL, Deasy’s dissertation’s title page carries the date, “May, 2003,” while it is signed off, “April 9, 2004.” He entered the program in January, 2004.

A UL investigation of the Deasy PhD did not condemn the practice. James Ramsey, UL president, who had turned a blind eye to Felner’s notorious corruption (the faculty gave Felner a “no confidence vote” in 2006, but he served at least two more years at UL with Ramsey’s full support), gave his nod to the “blue ribbon” investigation.

Deasy is apparently cut from the same cloth as his mentor, having recently resigned as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, under a cloud of allegations regarding ethics violations in relation to a $1 billion contract to supply iPads to LAUSD students.

A federal grand jury is currently investigating Deasy’s iPad scheme, which involved Apple and Pearson, the latter one of the world’s largest education publishers.

Many in LA were quite pleased by Deasy’s resignation as district boss.

In the end, it can be argued that the mistakes made by the U of L administration in hiring and protecting Felner, allowed Deasy to obtain a questionable PhD, which surely helped him land the high-paying job as superintendent of the second largest school district in the United States.

As LAUSD’s “Deasy episode” unfolds in a federal jury investigation, it could be that Willihnganz’s legacy will include the “graduation” of two federal convicts from the U of L College of Education and Human Development.

Convicted felon and former U Louisville ed school dean Robert Felner to be released from federal prison today

Cross-posted from Workplace Blog:


Robert Felner, former dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville and convicted felon, is schedule to be released from federal prison today.

Felner was sentenced to 63 months in prison for his role in defrauding the U of L and the University of Rhode Island of $2.3 million of US Department of Education funds earmarked for No Child Left Behind Act research.

The U of L reported suspected fraud to federal officials and, in June 2008, on Felner’s last day of work at U of L, federal officers conducted simultaneous raids on the U of L College of Education and Human Development and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, where Felner had accepted the presidency and was in the process of moving. The investigation involved the US Secret Service, US Postal Inspection Service and the Internal Revenue Service.

In January 2010, Felner pleaded guilty to nine Federal charges, including income tax evasion.

For a refresher course on the felonious Felner see PageOneKentucky.com’ summary of events. For a full course of Felner on PageOneKentucky click here. (Shout out to Jake at PageOneKentucky for excellent investigative reporting on Felner and the U of L.)

For Workplace Blog coverage of Felner click here.

Here is a Louisville Courier-Journal profile of Felner: Robert Felner profile: Arrogant, outrageous, abusive and duplicitous.

A couple of footnotes to the Felner Story:

(1) Los Angeles school superintendent, John Deasy, has had his academic credentials called into question. Deasy was given a PhD by the University of Louisville after he was enrolled for four months and received a total of nine credits. Deasy’s doctoral advisor was Robert Felner. Deasy had previously awarded $375,000 in consulting contracts to Felner, while Deasy was Superintendent of Santa Monica schools.

(2) U of L has been making double retirement payouts to administrators in exchange for their silence.

Records show that the school paid a full year’s salary to outgoing vice presidents Michael Curtin ($252,350) and Larry Owsley ($248,255) and to assistant to the president Vivian Hibbs ($66,391) to induce them not to “disparage, demean or impugn the university or its senior leadership.”

And last month U of L made a $346,000.00 settlement with Angela Kosawha:

The University of Louisville is paying another large settlement in connection with the retirement of a high-ranking official — this time, $346,844 to its top lawyer. University counsel Angela Koshewa is on a three-month leave of absence before she officially retires June 1. Documents obtained under the Kentucky Open Records Act show the university is paying Koshewa — who has questioned some expenditures and proposals backed by President James Ramsey and Dr. David Dunn, the executive vice president for Health Affairs — twice her final salary.

Current U of L President James Ramsey and Provost Shirley Willihnganz are the same campus officials who hired Robert Felner, and defended him when he was initially charged with defrauding the university.

The Fighting Hasidim vs. Dook Blue Devils

Well it’s March Madness once again. And this year I feel just a bit more connected to the big college hoops tournament than usual (even though no Canadian newspaper prints a two page spread of the brackets where I can fill in my predictions).

Of course, my beloved Tar Heels, from the University of North Carolina, are in the mix (and have a No. 1 seed in the South Regional) and have to be considered one of the favorites to win the whole shebang. Indeed, just today they were proclaimed the winner of Inside Higher Ed’s Academic Performance Tournament! Although IHE’s tournament has little to do with who actually wins the hoops competition (e.g., past APT winners include Bucknell, Holy Cross, and Davidson).

I’m particularly interested in the Midwest bracket of the NCAA tournament, where my other alma mater, the Buckeyes of THE Ohio State University are an eight seed and open play against the Siena Saints. Siena was the only local Division I hoops team when I lived in Albany, NY and thus I logged a lot of time following the Saints (both the men’s and women’s teams). Siena, btw, changed their nickname from the “Indians” back in the 1990s—more on nickname changes later.

The winner of the Ohio State v. Siena game will likely play the University of Louisville Cardinals (who will surely trounce the winner of the the “opening round” game between Alabama State and Morehead St.). I spent two and a half, let’s call them “interesting”, years on the faculty at UofHell (as it is often unaffectionately referred to) , arriving in town about the same time Planet Red landed former UK (“Go Cats”)/Boston Celtics coach Rick Pitino. Pitino outlasted me at The ‘Ville and for reasons that I will keep to myself, I’ll be cheering for either the Buckeyes or Saints in the second round match up, but admit that the Cards do have a spot in my heart (it’s just down the list, a bit at about No. 6, behind the Bearcats of Binghamton University).

The Bearcats have that special (No. 5) place in my heart because I played a very small, yet I believe significant part, in their climb from Division III mediocrity to grasping the brass ring of Division I basketball success (even if they did it by tossing academic standards in the gutter).

Back in the 1990s there was a very contentious debate on campus at Binghamton about moving its athletics program from Division III (where no athletic scholarships are offered) to the big time of Division I. The argument broke down on familiar lines. Many (probably most) faculty members at Binghamton sided against the move because it was perceived as a potential threat to academics (Binghamton was and is one of the most highly regarded campuses of the State University of New York system, the “academic jewel of SUNY” as they say). The pro-Division I argument was that ratcheting up the athletics programs would allow BU to rub shoulders with it’s academic peers in conferences like the Patriot League (incidentally the home of two past champions in IHE’s Academic Performance Tournament, Bucknell and Holy Cross).

The first move toward Division I membership by Binghamton was made in the late 1990s, when I just happened to be on the BU Athletics Board. We endorsed taking the first step to Division I by voting to move the athletics program to Division II (as required of the NCAA) and then to study the impact of that move on both the finances and academic standards of the university.

I left Binghamton for a position at the UofL in 2001, just before BU’s president and athletic director ignored a BU faculty senate vote and took Binghamton to Division I against the faculty’s will. My support for the initial move toward Division was not really popular with some of my faculty colleagues (or Dr. Mathison for that matter), but I do believe there are ways around “either/or” thinking that tends to crop up in debates over academics and athletics on campus.

So there you have my connections to this year’s tournament. But let’s not forget one indisputable bonus of BU’s move to Division I—getting that new nickname, the Beacats! Once the move to big time athletics became a real possibility, the administration wanted to tap into the profits schools derive from selling branded clothing to alumni and fans and the old nickname, the “Colonials”, just wasn’t moving t-shirts.

The Colonials mascot always reminded me of The Jolly Dumple, the famous mascot of Crazy Go Nuts University. The Jolly Dumple appears to be a dumpling with two large hands forming “thumbs-up” signs, with a drop of saliva flying out of his mouth, and wearing a tricorn hat. The costume is made of a highly combustible material called polymascotfoamalate (according to the HomeStarRunner wiki).

BU hired a marketing firm and spent big bucks in the search for a new nickname, a process that Tony Kornheiser skewered in a hilarious Washington Post column in 1999 (see below). The marketing company set out the following criteria for the new name: “gender-neutral, non-offensive, powerful, aggressive, dignified and marketable.”

I suggested a new nickname for BU that aimed at highlighting the university’s high academic standards and in particular the strong connection of its faculty to theory-building in the social sciences: “The Post-Colonials,” a choice that clearly fit the criteria.

Kornheiser’s suggestions included: The Smelt. The Binghamton Empowered Persons. The Bisexuals. The Binghamton Bada-Bing! The Bolivian Swarming River Rats. The Golden Geldings. The Binghamton Crosbys. The Fighting Beiges. The (Name of Your Corporation Here). The Binghamton Bacilli. The Fighting Hasidim. And, his favorite, The Swiss.

Go Bingo! Beat Dook!

The Fighting Hasidim
Tony Kornheiser

5 December 1999
The Washington Post

After 53 years of proudly being called the Colonials, my alma mater, Binghamton University, recently rated by Der Spiegel as one of the “better schools” in south-central New York state (motto: “We’re Only 207 Road Miles From Yale”), has decided to change the nickname of its athletic teams.

No, this wasn’t some political-correctness fix. Colonials isn’t a hideously embarrassing racial slur, like, say, Redskins–if there could possibly be somebody insensitive enough to use that as a name for a sports team. Colonials is a benign term, meaning either “a member or inhabitant of a colony” or, as I’ve just learned, those pathetic buckle shoes nobody has worn since the time of the Pilgrims, with the possible exception of Elton John.

(Jeez. All this time we were named after shoes? Whose idea was that, Judy Garland’s?)

Binghamton decided to dump “Colonials” for a much more practical reason: “Colonials” wasn’t moving T-shirts. End of discussion.

Name changes are nothing new to my school, which was originally Triple Cities College and then–when I went there–Harpur College. When people asked me where I went to school, I would say “Harpur” very fast and deliberately slur the pronunciation to see if I could fool some dopes into thinking I went to “Harvard.”

Later, it became SUNY–Binghamton. Now it’s simply Binghamton U. In a few years, it’ll probably be a Starbucks. (I took my daughter up there a few years ago, showed her the familiar red brick neo-penal architecture, and she said, “Daddy, it looks like a drug rehabilitation center.” I smiled and told her, “Sweetie, you don’t know how close you are.”)

I have to laugh when I think back to the athletic teams we had when I was in school. We were not a jock school. There was no football team. The center on our basketball team was only 6 feet 2; he had a terrific view of the opposing center’s armpits. After his junior year, he left to join the circus! Everything you need to know about the state of Harpur College athletics is embodied in the name of one of the school’s legendary stars: Jack “The Shot” Levine.

We never won anything. It wasn’t just that your guys could beat our guys; your girls could beat our guys. The piccolo section of your band could beat our guys.

Along with a new nickname, Binghamton wants a mascot, too. When I was at Harpur, we never actually had a mascot the students could relate to–I’d have suggested a cuddly stuffed animal who sat immobilized for five hours playing the first side of the “Moby Grape” album and babbling about how if you cut open a Cheez Doodle, the colors were really far out.

It’s okay with me if they want to change “Colonials” to something else, but I must express my outrage at how the new nickname was arrived at.

A marketing company was hired to prepare a list of 30 names. I quote from the alumni newsletter: “The following qualities were considered in selecting the name: gender-neutral, non-offensive, powerful, aggressive, dignified and marketable.”

(So I guess “Big Hairy Chicks on Crack” had no chance.)

What kind of nickname can you get from that commercialized, politically correct crap?

I asked my friends at work to brainstorm a name using those guidelines. Here’s what they came up with:

The Smelt.

The Binghamton Empowered Persons.

The Bisexuals.

The Binghamton Bada-Bing!

The Bolivian Swarming River Rats.

The Golden Geldings.

The Binghamton Crosbys.

The Fighting Beiges.

The (Name of Your Corporation Here).

The Binghamton Bacilli.

The Fighting Hasidim.

And my personal favorite: The Swiss.

But for some reason, Binghamton picked Bearcats.

There’s no such thing as a bearcat. It’s a mythical animal. A fraud.

My friend Tammy, who has two cats, points out quite correctly: “Of course, it is mythical. I am absolutely, positively certain my cats would never, ever, like, do it with a bear.”

(Tammy also asks, “Why aren’t there beardogs?” But that is a question for another day–and possibly another galaxy.)

The alumni journal praises the choice of Bearcat: “A cross between the power and ferocity of a bear, and the cunning and quickness of a cat.”

Well, if what you want is power and ferocity, and cunning and quickness, why not choose a nickname like “Psychotics With Chain Saws”? You think that’s not marketable? That’s got big-time “WWF Smackdown!” potential!

The University of Cincinnati has been the Bearcats for 100 years. And Cincinnati is a good athletic school. Its basketball team is No. 1 in the country now. Everyone will assume that Binghamton stole the nickname from Cincinnati. And, let’s face it, stealing from Cincinnati is about as desperate as it gets. I mean, what a dump. If Binghamton is the way your foot smells, Cincinnati is the way your foot tastes.

If you’re going to steal somebody’s nickname, steal something with power and majesty. Call yourselves: the New York Yankees.

(The Smelt is looking better, isn’t it?)

Not only isn’t “Bearcats” original, but the logo they picked is almost exactly the same as that of the NHL’s Florida Panthers. So we’ve got a phony-baloney animal and a rip-off logo. It’s all schmutz. As an alumnus in good standing (well, okay, an alumnus still standing), I am herewith ripping up the $50,000 check I had just written to the Binghamton Alumni Association.

And they can forget about a major donation until they come up with a nickname that stands for something. Something that says it all. How about the Binghamton Balding Kornhuskers!

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