What E. Gordon Gee did to WVU is Disgraceful

It is not debatable that we live in both an era of infinite communications and an information dark ages at the same time. For years now, for instance, the Assholes with Casseroles (tm) group Moms for Liberty have successfully banned books from schools across the country, and attempted to ruin the lives of countless librarians, despite the majority of Americans disagreeing with them. Search engine and social media algorithms have effectively validated fringe and/or false beliefs, and pushed anti-intellectualism and huckster snake oil upon the masses, resulting in vaccination rates dropping to dangerous levels, amongst other horrors. Further, state governments (you know which states) have ignored the fact that investing in higher education helps their states as a whole, and even attracts more business to instead fight invented culture wars for... reasons?

For those of us who work in higher education, we have grown accustomed to the sword of Damocles forever hanging over our heads, despite the obvious public good we provide, for at least the last 30 years, with said sword resting on our throats since around 2008.

Still, what the former Vanderbilt Chancellor did today was beyond shocking.

In short, the bow-tied shit-weasel in-chief decided to slash hundreds of faculty jobs at West Virginia University, including their entire world languages department.

Tom weighed in on this tonight with an apt opinion on our Xitter account (pronounce that as you will), and I weighed in with visceral anger:

Think about it this way: WVU, though a terrible university in a terrible state, likely provides the lion’s share of foreign language faculty for the elementary, middle, and high schools of West Virginia. Now, not.

WVU students will instead pay full tuition to do Duolingo or some shit, and not be able to be certified in foreign language education.

Further, in case you’re one of those “Good, the Humanities should suffer” assholes, know that Gee also cut undergrad and graduate majors in Mathematics. Math. He cut Math. So yeah, shut up and join us in righteous anger.

If you’re still one of those, “Only Engineers matter” types, you’re going to want to see this, as there are sweeping cuts to all engineering departments, as well:

This is just the coda to a horrid administrative career in which faculty from every institution he has ever poisoned wanted to have this man drawn and quartered.

When I was an undergraduate idiot in the early 2000s, I didn’t understand the hate that my professors tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to hide regarding their feelings about Emperor Bow Tie. You know, until I did.

When I wrote for The Slant, Gee was married to a wonderful woman named Constance. She gave us about $500 per year out of her personal account because she supported our satire (likely because she got a kick out of how often we mocked her husband, but I cannot state this with certainty). She even went so far as to join us in the “Dance Marathon” contest one year, in a joint attempt to raise money for charity. Seriously, she was awesome.

Then, when Constance had a quite serious illness that required medical cannabis, Chancellor Gee not only did not come to her defense when the smear campaign reached the media, he divorced her.

You are a disgrace, you bow-tied blowhard.

Sincerely,

Anchor of Gold