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Scandal fatigue
The title of this post comes from a Colorado Daily piece on the reputational trials and tribulations (Ward Churchill, athletic recruiting violations, "racially motivated" incidents, false accusations of date rape) that the University of Colorado has suffered in recent months. But the term might be far more widely applied; the University of Colorado is far from alone in its ungainly habit of landing in the news for the inappropriate and unflattering behavior of its faculty, staff, and students.
The University of California, for example, is arguably experiencing scandal fatigue at present, as outrage about corrupt administrative salary practices and skyrocketing fees is compounded by the news that illegal aliens attending state campuses enjoy a discounted in-state tuition rate of $6,700 per year, while U.S. citizens from other states pay $24,500. This last has become the subject of a lawsuit alleging that the University of California has violated federal law by discriminating against out-of-state students.
One might also count the University of North Carolina among the scandal-fatigued. As FIRE noted last week, UNC can't seem to go a year without making headlines for its chronic inability to respect students' First Amendment rights. This year, the University is distinguishing itself by prosecuting students at the Greensboro campus who protested the school's unconstitutional "free speech zones" outside the free speech zone.
Academic scandal fatigue, as the Colorado Daily uses it, appears to refer both to the public's exhaustion at seeing an institution of higher education endlessly and repetitively embarrass itself and to the phenomenon of a university's repetitive, incidental self-shaming over time. In other words, scandal fatigue arises when a college or university not only can't seem to get it right, but also can't seem to get the ongoing chronicle of its failings out of the media. As such, it's a useful phrase for a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly common as people pay ever more attention to the ways and means of higher education administration.
Readers are invited to submit additional examples of academic scandal fatigue in the comments below.
Posted by acta online at December 19, 2005 02:27 PM
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