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caffeinatedTopic: "DevelopmentalStudies"(4)
"We may not make a university student out of him, but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbage man when he gets through with his athletic career."---from the opening statement by University of Georgia attorney Hale Almand, defending the University against charges of placing student athletes in preferential treatment, 1986.
Professor Jan Kemp died Friday from complications associated with Alzheimer's; she was 59. Named by PEOPLE magazine as a hero "of the eighties," she was admired and reviled for filing a lawsuit against the University of Georgia after she was fired for refusing to inflate grades for UGA football players. The six week trial resulted in the firing of the long-time President of the University, Fred Davison, and Kemp eventually collected $1.1 Million.
The crescendo of the trial came when the "Developmental Studies" Department Head, Leroy Ervin, was overheard on a secretly-taped faculty meeting to say "I know for a fact that these kids would not be here if it were not for their utility to the institution. . .They are used as a kind of raw material in the production of some goods to be sold as whatever product, and they get nothing in return."
Dr. Kemp remained in the Athens community the rest of her life, teaching in the local technical college and high schools until her physical condition would no longer permit her to do so.
In 1986, Barack Obama was 25.
Fitting it is, opines Frodo, that Saxby Chambliss attributed his run-off election victory to "Georgia values."
