Report is far more detailed and transparent than previous performed by the outside law firm, which I applaud. But I think it’s important to recognize that the university is committed to “preponderance of evidence standard”, which is not well defined but generally acknowledged to mean you’re at least 51% sure a statement is true. This is nowhere near “beyond reasonable doubt” that some readers will assume. I’m guessing Vaughn took the fall because Blue was already gone, since Vaughn informed Blue he gave everyone a stern talking to in 2018 and Blue told him the matter was closed, but now the university thinks it shouldn’t have been closed. It’s also important to judge actions in 2018 or any other year by norms in that time, not by 2021 standards, which are rapidly changing. While I don’t support eating goldfish or drinking with the intent to vomit, I also feel that voluntary drinking games or strippers on personal time and private property need not be the university’s business. I do not support the existence of anything resembling a “hazing task force” because these typically turn into make-work departments that have to self justify and the training programs they produce typically amount to rehashes of the proven-to-fail “just say no” campaigns.

This is a dumb design. The guy is 97. I’m sure the coastal commission and environmental impact report can be used to run the clock. I’ve stayed in hotels with windows facing interior atriums, like embassy suites kind of places and interior views can be workable. But this just looks like human storage. Kind of reminds me of a scaled up version of Leach Hall in Tercero, which was ultimately bulldozed as an ineffective design. I get the idea is that a bed is just a place to sleep and not every room can have an ocean view, but the cost for such an odd design is very high - about $330k per bed. The most recent dorm project in Davis was $131k per bed, which itself was expensive. Also not sure how this would meet fire code, where typically sleeping areas require two means of exit.

Whelan is a stud and deserves all accolades given. However, excellent teams tend to brag about their kickoffs, not punts.

I like the PxP guy, color guy is meh. It is odd to have no crowd mic and watch a silent game. Camera angle is weird and kind of making me seasick.

Facts about D Wade—
1. Didn’t ever finish college and was academically ineligible for a substantial portion of his college career.
2. Doesn’t actually make wine and has admitted knowing little about it other than enjoying drinking it. Has hired Pahlmeyer (FYI, not Black-owned) to produce it.

A wine-maker he is not. He is an already-wealthy person trying to diversify his investment portfolio and monetize his name/image/likeness in new ways. Nothing wrong with that at all, but none of that suggests he should be the face of the finest viticulture program in the world unless it’s a vanity position for some forthcoming major donation.

Golden 1 Center was a $120M naming deal. Our deal with the much smaller University Credit Union is much smaller I'm sure. Separate discussion as to whether sports deals are an appropriate use of money for a non-profit credit union or public health system. UCD graduates a lot of people that make the world a better place on a daily basis, but relatively few that are titans of industry. The campus does work with beer and wine conglomerates, but their interests seem to be elsewhere from athletics. We also have a lot of involvement with the likes of Chevron, Dow, Monsanto, and Bayer - probably none of which want to advertise their affiliation too loudly and get activists riled up. And at this point I doubt unaffiliated companies like Southwest Airlines and Comcast would be lining up to buy wine-and-dine suites in Davis.

1. To be competitive in FBS you have to cheat— one or more of financial, academic, or behavior funny business. It’s not that Stanford is above this, it’s that they are much better about being subtle and covering their tracks than say Florida State. To date, Mrak Hall has been better at showing its a** in the Bee than covering it.
2. There is a demographic problem. Until athletics either generate more interest among Asian and female students or demographics change, growing the student attendance is tough. If today’s students aren’t interested, they won’t be as tomorrow’s alumni either and I don’t think division changes that.
3. Part of the money equation is corporate sponsorship. The biggest operations in the Sac area are government agencies, quasi government adjacent things like UCD health and SMUD, and credit unions. To Rocko’s credit we have tapped some of those. What Sac doesn’t have is home or hub offices for a lot of Fortune 500 companies that want to put their name on things and then buy a skybox where executives can get drunk and look at said logo.
4. Neither UCD or CSUS have successfully marketed themselves to potential community fans with no ties to the university. Maybe there’s a case for division here but build-it-and-they-will-come is a risky gamble considering we would likely not be good for some time.

agreed. UG is a great player, but if he runs into a brick wall on first, why run the same play on second hoping for a different result? Too many predictable third and longs. I often hear “the run will open up the pass.” From the cheap seats I see the opposite, that if you have TEs or WRs who need double coverage to contain and you threaten to use them at will, somebody has a wide lane for a run.

Excellent teams keep their foot on the gas for 60 minutes. It seems like we are routinely willing to give up on drives at the end of the half and come back to have anemic 3rd quarter before turning the heat back on in the 4th.

is that how it works? I was never really sure whether KHTK owned the broadcast or if UCD did and rented airtime. And I’m not sure how Learfield is involved other than they are. I looked up Buzzard and it appears he is available. The pandemic messed up his basketball camp and DJ businesses so he’s been delivering pizzas as of late. I have enjoyed listening to Marsh over the years but this last broadcast with BD was, as he might say, nothing doing.

This is good news. It would seem to indicate that the accusations maybe weren’t so credible after all or perhaps existed in the past not involving the current students. I’m sure they have to slow walk any return to normal to avoid howling from self-proclaimed victim advocates, but whether or not the current staff turns out to guilty, my guess is they’re headed for pasture anyway based on performance.

@NCagalum estimates exist that somewhere between 5-60% of students are a victim of some sort. The dept of education assumes about 20%, but the number is shaky. Because far fewer than 20% of students report anything, schools assume they have a huge under-reporting problem. In an effort to “fix” their percentages (and self justify their jobs) campus investigators frequently push for 100% conviction rates, often in absence of fact. As you saw, there are individuals who manipulate the system for other axes they want to grind. I’m sure administrators realize this but won’t admit it publicly for fear of appearing soft on abusers. Ironically, there is anecdotal evidence that some “real” victims don’t come forward because of the dog and pony show schools make of the noisy nonsense cases.

Maybe they should call back Steve Buzzard. He was on the call for like 10 years and I think Marsh was color back then.

The way I see it, every student brings 3 dimensions to the table: god-given ability, preparation, and interest. Standardized tests are good at measuring preparation. And it turns out preparation tends to be skewed along economic lines, which happens to incidentally often skew along racial lines too. Ability is harder to measure. Historically we might have used grades and recommendations. But both of those have become diluted in value because of grade inflation and that very few people will write a non positive letter even if so warranted. To some degree this is cultural (everyone is a winner these days) and to some degree k-12 schools are incentivized to inflate things because the administrators are evaluated on the admission rates they achieve. Interest has always been hard to quantify because it is by definition qualitative, but might be best represented by an essay or portfolio. Historically I think admissions summed those three dimensions and allocated seats to the overall high score holders. And if the goal of our university system is to increase the collective body of knowledge to benefit society as a whole, this makes sense to pick smart, interested people who are already prepared to succeed. Out of the gate they are perhaps going to be the fastest to develop a new economically important variety of tomato.

And then somewhere along the line, we as a society became concerned with “fairness,” and how to define that. Specifically what about high potential individuals, who, through no fault of their own, received substandard preparation. Simultaneously, college became less about societal benefit (who would develop the tomato) and more about individual benefit, since more college often means higher income, and how that wealth potential should be redistributed. Discussions of well roundedness are just dogwhistles for how to statistically adjust ability and preparation at scale. Ability is probably equally distributed across demographic lines. Preparation tends to be skewed toward middle and upper class. But there are two huge faulty assumptions in the academic echo chamber - 1. That interest is equal across demographic lines. It just isn’t. Culturally, a lot of Asian families deeply value education, while it is not as important in machismo culture of a lot of Latin families. Similarly, some fields just don’t have equal interest across gender lines. As much as we might want to wish into existence more young men wanting to be nurses or women wanting to be computer engineers, it just ain’t what exists no matter what elephant we try to put on the scale to adjust that among 18 year olds. 2. We assume that we can “fix” the preparation gap in the last couple years of high school or first year of college. So false. The preparation gap isn’t fundamentally based on which high school had electronic whiteboards. If only it were so simple as buying “things” we would have done it by now. But lo, it is based on things that start so much earlier in life that politically all sides refuse to address - income inequality, food security, housing, childcare, healthcare, family stability, and cultural values.

Among admissions, UC has substantially put their thumb on the scales so that white and black students are represented at proportionate levels to state population. Asian students are way over represented, Hispanic students way under represented, and men of all races somewhat underrepresented. The lightning rod is how do you take seats from one minority to another because at this point they have exhausted the number of white males to take seats from.

So how does this apply to the original debate of hiring? Research shows minority students learn better from teachers that “look” like them. But in a chicken and egg paradox, there are often few qualified minority candidates so to what extent should we lower objective standards to cater to this?

I work in private industry in a historically white male dominated field. On a macro level, some diversity is good. Best example I have is I recall sitting in a meeting of 10 old men debating which type of tampon women would prefer we stock in the restroom. I called a timeout and said maybe we should ask some women who work here, since we only identify tampons as the “green or pink” type. But on a micro level, diversity hiring quotas are horribly unfair to individuals. My company has decided they want upper management to be 60% diverse by 2025. Well, they aren’t firing white men just because, so it means right now nearly 100% of promotion opportunities are reserved for women and minorities. I’ve been passed several times for lucrative promotions because of my demographic and have often had to report to someone with less education, experience, and ability who had the “correct” equipment between their legs. Since they have exhausted the pool of qualified diversity candidates, it has become a race to the bottom on qualifications and simultaneously a race to the top on pay. It would be great if my field was more diverse and I have no qualms about fair tough competition. But that interest would have needed to have been planted 20-30 years ago. Not something you can just wave a wand and wish into existence among established professional adults.

I appreciate your current lens as well as I hope you appreciate the lens that myself and others have that spans more years, some of us from a distance, others involved in much closer ways. It is saddening to hear you say you say that democratic self governance couldn’t be made to work in favor of making the band a corporate program. It is important to note that the last 15 years or so have been marked by assorted staff directors and campus rec managers manipulating the band to serve their personal interests as career spring boards rather than providing good mentorship and the problems of 2019 were indeed timebombs set several years ago by people long gone, exploited by an aspiring professional activist with an axe to grind and a failing newspaper willing to lead with anything that bleeds. The things that have many reasonable alumni are pissed about are that the university still wants to own the 100 years of deep community goodwill built by the band while simultaneously disowning the very people who helped build it. Further, the name change was partly a bad faith effort to circumvent a 1992 agreement that basically said the administration agreed to never do exactly what they did. They also unilaterally changed the text and intent of donor agreements after the donations were made to the endowment fund. We can litigate those things in a different thread if you wish, as I promise we are not just angry internet trolls. But back to the topic at hand - the new uniforms are objectively ugly, the performance just wasn’t good, and the drum heads were seen as a giant middle finger by some of the same people who will get shopped for donations next quarter. Hopefully they improve and are willing to improve relations with the alumni group - there is an important distinction between the organization and a few rogue individuals who are no longer welcome in it.

the current incarnation of the band is a dumpster fire and not worthy of wearing blue and gold. The university hired two hacks from the Midwest to run it, hence the brand new uniforms that are 20 years out of style everywhere except the Ohio valley. To maintain control, they decided to make the student director and drum major paid student jobs and they advertised them as acting roles requiring no musical experience. The amount of money they are dumping into it for worse results than what students did on their own is astounding. If there was a band version of Northern Colorado football, this is it.

Interesting facts about this —
* competitive cheerleading does exist in other countries
* competitive cheer and competitive dance have grown very similar (main difference is how they point their fingers and toes)
* there is a branch of competitive cheerleading called “stunt sport” that is under consideration of being an NCAA sport. Poly fields a team.
* global cheerleading is mostly owned by one billionaire, Jeff Webb. He owns the competitions, the uniform makers, the photo companies, etc. Totally vertically integrated. He has invested significantly in getting the IOC’s ear.

It’s probably fair to say that modern cheerleaders (who do very little actual cheering) are athletic, I guess the question becomes are all competitive athletic endeavors sports? Lots of politics involved at the Olympic level. I mean ribbon dancing is really only an Olympic sport to boost medal counts for Eastern Europe.

This sounds personal for you, so if you know the Knapp family or have been affected by a similar accident, I’m sorry for your loss. 1. I’ve been involved in municipal roadway projects and know the difference between a shoulder and bike lane. Fair point on them not being kept swept. 2. Agreed that people shouldn’t treat driving like it’s Grand Theft Auto. 3. I would go for a ride with you, but I’m about 3k miles away and I’m not quite up to a ride that long. There are both discourteous/unsafe drivers and cyclists and they tend to stick in our memory more than all the ones who followed norms. We have a cultural problem with self-centered behavior regardless of number of wheels. 4. Agreed that the driver behind me in the example is the problem. And as much as I’d love to make his impatience his problem, in the interest of not being party to his accident I’d rather have him in front of me than behind me for principles sake. 5. In my area it is common for cyclists to be on high speed county roads trying to get between regional trail networks that don’t quite connect by a few miles. Poor municipal planning indeed asking a roadway to support a use mix it wasn’t designed for. The price of low taxes. 6. I have no idea the context of this accident. It sounds like a text and drive young driver? Regardless of circumstance it is a tragedy and likely an avoidable one. Increasingly complex phones and cars compounded with growing anxiety and FOMO in society, and deteriorating infrastructure isn’t a good mix. The reality is too many people have licenses that don’t have the right temperament and maturity. Kind of amazing that barbers and auctioneers have stricter licensing and continuing education requirements than drivers. I’m not sure that harsh sentencing is a great deterrent or a useful way to fill our prisons. You’re asking kind of irrational people to be deterred by something very rational. I recall an experiment where drivers were rewarded with (nearly worthless) credit card points for not texting while driving and it proved more salient with the type people who text while driving.

There's what's legal and there's what's courteous and so often I think safety is driven by courtesy and predictability more so than legality. In my area we have some amazing long distance bike trails that have periodic gaps in the system that dump onto rural (but quickly suburbanizing) roads. For me as a motorist, yeah it is annoying to get stuck behind a bike doing 25 in a 55 the same way it is to get stuck behind farm equipment but it's life and I try to do my part of the courtesy equation by keeping a safe distance. The most stressful position as a driver is being the first car behind a bike on country road with traffic stacked up behind. I'm trying to keep space from the cyclist ahead of me, I'm watching the car behind me that is tailgating me hard blasting me with high beams and I'm watching the guy 5 cars back who's going to try to pass all of us but doesn't see the oncoming traffic around the curve. Where it becomes frustrating is when the courtesy is not reciprocated, for example when a cyclist holding back a line of cars does not take advantage of a turnout to let traffic pass like tractors typically do. Or worse yet, when there is a marked/striped bike lane but a cyclist elects to take the vehicle lane or a group of cyclists decides to take multiple lanes. Legal but not the way to make friends. I say that predictability is key. If there's no bike lane, go ahead and take the lane, but use hand signals, obey signage, and pull onto turnouts where possible to let traffic pass. Hugging the white line puts me in guessing mode of not knowing if you're trying to get me to pass, you're getting ready to pull over to the right, or you're swinging wide to make a sweeping left turn. I tend to take a more wait and see approach to driving, but that doesn't mean the driver behind me does and as much as don't want to hit you I also don't want to end up in a pileup with him either.

The UCD press release says basically nothing, except that this logo was designed by committee, which shows. They kept tossing around diversity and inclusion buzzwords, which I'm not sure if they are referring to some sort unnamed programmatic change of substance or if just a new logo is supposed to make us feel more huggy about diversity? In real terms, changing from a multicolor rectangular word mark to a simpler square format logo and wordmark will look better on social media and phone screens. Not sure why they didn't just come out and say that.

If they announce a "culture review" or "independent investigation," it will be a strong indication that they have a weak case or the responsible parties are no longer affiliated with the university. If they retain the services of Van Dermyden Makus law firm, we will know that somebody is about to get scapegoated. The principals at that law firm are former UCD campus counsels and are still personal buddies with old timers in Mrak. They have tended to bring them in when an internal investigation is unfavorable and they want a glossy report to deflect responsibility away from administrators who maybe knew or should have known something.