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by Mark
7-24-06
I think I figured out why everyone has been trying to bring Auburn down recently- including The Plainsman.
Ask yourself, what are four of God’s greatest gifts to man? The answer would be, in no particular order;
1. Engineering
2. College football
3. Nice people
4. Beautiful women
There is only one place in the entire universe where all four coexist in perfect harmony:
Unfortunately; not everybody likes engineering, college football, nice people and beautiful women.
Those people are called liberals.
As much as it
dumbfounds republicans, liberals tend to major in liberal arts. Journalism
is a liberal art. Journalists write for the New York Times and The Plainsman.
Think about it. Liberals hate engineers because they create cool stuff that
causes global warming. Liberals hate college football because it’s a
man’s sport. Liberals hate nice people because they’re usually
conservatives. Liberals hate beautiful women, because they’re also usually
conservatives. How do we know these liberals/journalists hate Auburn? Journalists
denied Auburn the 2004 National Championship in the AP poll, didn't they?
Thus, the New York Times and The Plainsman hate Auburn. We've always thought this, now we have proof.
When the Times story was published last week, we all had a knee-jerk reaction. Mine was;
“Well darn, it looks like Auburn’s been doing some shady stuff”.
After all, if a university in south Alabama is going to be called out for academic fraud on the font page of one of the biggest newspapers in the world… the said university has probably done some very bad things.
After reading the article, it’s pretty obvious this isn’t the case. The article was misleading when not flat out lying.
Something like this would be a huge opportunity for the journalists at The Plainsman. Those guys should’ve read this and thought “Hey, these guys are misleading people”, and grabbed at an opportunity to prove The New York Times wrong.
It’s not very hard to do. Here’s an instance of a blogger tearing up the article point by point. Read it right now if you don’t already know the facts.
Did The Plainsman bring up any of these points, or did they decide to give us a bunch of crappy scandal clichés?
Let’s check
(I’m quoting this
article):
| “There
are points in time here at Auburn when you think the controversies and
scandals would calm down, even for just a little while. Now, yet another scandal has rocked the Plains, and we can’t say we’re surprised at all. Although this academic controversy may not prove to be of the same level as Jetgate or any other scandals, we have to say we are highly disappointed with Auburn.” |
What “other” academic scandals can you think of occurring at Auburn
recently?
I can’t think of any. I doubt the guy who wrote this could.
Secondly, Jetgate was a football scandal! Why do these guys keep trying to spin Jetgate as an academic scandal when it was solely a football scandal? Why do the same people try to call this recent “scandal” a football one, when if anything, it’s an academic one?
More from The Plainsman’s staff:
| “This campus has allowed itself to breed a culture of corruption that allows scandals like this to grow and develop.” |
Culture
of corruption!??!?!
The real scandal is that Auburn’s journalism department stinks.
The article I
was quoting from above was by an anonymous staff writer, here’s stuff
from
the freakin’ editor:
| “In
the past, I have privately voiced my concerns with friends and family
about how Auburn places its football and other athletic programs on a
pedestal within the university system. Everything else doesn’t seem
to matter as much, besides maybe construction. At one point, I was so frustrated at the lack of class offerings in English, my major, that I even considered transferring. I stayed though, deciding that to quit Auburn now would be against everything I stand for and that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Or so I thought at the time. Now I can see that it was a naïve point-of-view, and that we’ve been once again snowballed by the administration. “ |
This came from the EDITOR!
His argument makes no sense. Carnell Williams took the classes AFTER his football eligibility was up, meaning even if the classes were too easy, they were not given to him to keep him playing football. According to this paragraph “everything I stand for” means “being unhappy and complaining a lot” which once again sorta means “liberal”.
The Times and
The Plainsman don’t dwell on the fact that that over EIGHTY PERCENT
of students that took advantage of the easy sociology classes were NOT athletes.
When the editor uses this instance to validate things like;
| “Honestly,
at this point, this latest scandal here at Auburn doesn’t surprise
me. The athletics department, it seems to me, believes it is invincible
and outside of the control of the university.” |
He’s lying to people. Even if he thinks it’s true, even if it IS true, the facts he found from The Times do not connect the athletic department to the reading classes. He brings to the table NO evidence that the athletics department believes it’s invincible. It just so happens the athletic department is one of the most successful departments on campus. This doesn’t mean it’s one of the best at the expense of others.
And what does “snowballed by the administration” mean? That’s a new one for me.
The Plainsman
had a real opportunity to flex some journalistic this past week, but instead
decided to go the easy route;
They summarized the NYT article and as a rebuttal; they summarized a Huntsville
Times article that contained the player’s defense.
Since the editor
says:
| “I
feel the Auburn family is on the brink of a dark time in the history of
our village on the plains.” |
I’m sure
The Plainsman will be covering this story for a long time. Let’s check
the front page article from the online version of today’s Plainsman:
So here’s TheAuburner’s challenge to The Plainsman: the first one to land an interview with Pete Thamel, the guy who wrote The Times article will be known henceforth as the “Most Awesome Publication on the Plains”.
So in review: Auburn is awesome*
E-mail mark at mark@theauburner.com
*Journalism and
Sociology departments are questionable at the moment.. but that's all. Also,
don't think I'm seriously saying TheAuburner is better than The Plainsman;
but come on, we're engineers. You should have lower expectations of us.
