Tapsearch Com EditorDon Quixote at the University of Texas
About Tom Paliama , a regular contributor to the EthicsBox.
Tom call this - " An obituary for me "
I call it ......
A Man from La Mancha doing his time at the University of Texas
Tom has led the way in seeking a balance between sports and education especially in the way the costs of college sports affect education in general.
I met Tom a few years ago and soon after that he asked me to send my quotation from Thomas Merton that guides me in my advocacies for human dignity in the workday, fair trade and local value added economies.
Apparently, it guides Tom too.....
" Do not depend on the hope of results,
When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no worth at all, if not perhaps, results opposite to what you expect.
As you get used to this idea, you will start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of te work itself."
Thomas Merton
Here is what others says about Tom Palaima .......
REQUIEM FOR A GADFLY
Our Stories
Thomas Palaima tried to take on the University of
Texas's powerful sports program. Guess who won?
By Evelyn Ngugi'
It is a balmy Sunday afternoon in April. Young
mothers in burnt orange sundresses carry their
infants (protected from the sun by tiny burnt
orange baseball caps) down the hill of 21st
Street to Darryl K. Royal Stadium. Young children
run ahead of their parents. Not far behind,
elderly couples carefully shuffle down the hill
hand in hand. One man wipes his brow with a burnt
orange handkerchief. They all have a chance to
inspect the new players for the fall, take
pictures with Bevo and Big Bertha, and this year:
stick around for a free showing of Toy Story 3 on
the 55 by 134 feet "Godzillatron."
Even in April, the annual Spring Jamboree
attracts Longhorns to the Mecca of Texas football
for the Orange-White Scrimmage. Forty-five
thousand Longhorns, to be exact.
This is the power of University of Texas
football. We're four months away from a serious
game, but despite last season's disappointing 5
and 7 record - the worst in Coach Mack Brown's 13
years as head coach - the sport has a firm grip
on the loyalties and imagination of the community
and the culture. It's not just the games - it's
the TV broadcasts, the $10 million in annual
trademark licensing revenue, the tailgate
traditions, the families that bleed burnt orange.
This is Texas. Football is a sport, a culture,
and a religion. It has its faithful and its
heretics.
***
Taped to Thomas Palaima's office door in Waggener
Hall are rectangular clippings of op-eds he's
written.
"Work long and hard for what is right for society."
"No more excuses for UT's excesses."
Added to that will be his most recent piece for
the Chronicle of Higher Education- "The NCAA and
the Athletes it Fails."
Palaima is 5'9". White hair, white beard. Wears a
black belt with a brass "P" on the buckle. He
looks like the Ancient Greek professor he is. His
office looks more like a cave. Ancient Greek
texts line the shelves. On the white concrete
wall are framed 4x6 photographs of his
archeological digs. Corinth, 1977. Prague 1982.
Hohhot, Mongolia, 1990.
Palaima got his Ph.D. in 1980 from the University
of Wisconsin and came to Austin in 1986. He
created the Prehistory and Aegean Scripts program
in the Classics department. He is a connoisseur
of all things Ancient Greek, specializing in war
and violence. "You wouldn't believe the
similarities between Homer's society and the U.S.
during the wars in the Iraq," he says. He can
recite lines of the Iliad in its original Ancient
Greek.
But most recently Palaima has earned another
title. He's become "that guy" - one of the most
vocal critics of the university's NCAA program.
It all started in 1999 when then-UT Chancellor
Bill Cunningham published his new millennium
vision for the campus in the Austin-American
Statesman. Cunningham saw the university as a
"magnet for business" meant to attract and foster
new industries.
"Nothing in it about fine arts and humanities or
the culture of higher education," Palaima recalls.
Is college supposed to churn out a bottom
line-minded workforce, Palaima asked himself, or
help students figure out what kind of adults they
want to be? "It seemed so one-sided," he says.
Palaima submitted his response---"Is Corporate
Model Right for Higher Education?"---to Maria
Henson, op-ed editor at the time. "It was a
rather long response and required a lot of
editing," he says.
The finished product got people talking. Big
people. Department chairs, deans, executive vice
president types, Palaima says. They contacted him
in confidence, because they agreed with him.
Palaima won't name any of them even now, but he
says the response shocked him. "I just can't
understand how they would write to me saying
'thanks for this' but never be vocal about it,"
he says.
With encouragement from Henson, Palaima became a
regular contributor to the Statesman. "The
windows have been opened," he says. In the
following years, Palaima says he witnessed
"scandalous behavior and wrong values."
The commentaries he wrote as a result reflected
his belief that on UT's campus sports
entertainment reigned supreme, to the detriment
of the students who play on the teams. For his
pieces, he spoke with athletic academic advisors,
the men and women's athletics council, UT
athletes past and present. "Because of that, I
became an accidental expert," he says.
He quickly came to realize that to afford
multi-million dollar coaches and achieve a status
of success worthy of an $8 million
"Godzillatron," you have to win games and earn
fans who will spend money on whatever the burnt
orange logo touches. Coca-Cola, Nike, Budweiser,
AT&T and other brands attach themselves and their
money to the Longhorn brand through sponsorships.
In 2008 Palaima became the university's
representative on the Coalition on
Intercollegiate Athletics, an organization of
faculty members from 57 of the nation's 155
Division 1-A NCAA universities. It meets annually
and publishes reports advocating reforms. His
predecessor, Michael Granof, an accounting
professor had thrown in the towel after five
years. "He thought COIA would be ineffective
because of the money and power and UT
presidential gaga-ism over sports," Palaima says.
"I thought after nine years of writing and
looking locally, doing something nationally was
worth a try."
We continue this at Really Long Link part 2
Ray Tapajna, Tapsearch Com Editor and Artist
Tom call this - " An obituary for me "
I call it ......
A Man from La Mancha doing his time at the University of Texas
Tom has led the way in seeking a balance between sports and education especially in the way the costs of college sports affect education in general.
I met Tom a few years ago and soon after that he asked me to send my quotation from Thomas Merton that guides me in my advocacies for human dignity in the workday, fair trade and local value added economies.
Apparently, it guides Tom too.....
" Do not depend on the hope of results,
When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no worth at all, if not perhaps, results opposite to what you expect.
As you get used to this idea, you will start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of te work itself."
Thomas Merton
Here is what others says about Tom Palaima .......
REQUIEM FOR A GADFLY
Our Stories
Thomas Palaima tried to take on the University of
Texas's powerful sports program. Guess who won?
By Evelyn Ngugi'
It is a balmy Sunday afternoon in April. Young
mothers in burnt orange sundresses carry their
infants (protected from the sun by tiny burnt
orange baseball caps) down the hill of 21st
Street to Darryl K. Royal Stadium. Young children
run ahead of their parents. Not far behind,
elderly couples carefully shuffle down the hill
hand in hand. One man wipes his brow with a burnt
orange handkerchief. They all have a chance to
inspect the new players for the fall, take
pictures with Bevo and Big Bertha, and this year:
stick around for a free showing of Toy Story 3 on
the 55 by 134 feet "Godzillatron."
Even in April, the annual Spring Jamboree
attracts Longhorns to the Mecca of Texas football
for the Orange-White Scrimmage. Forty-five
thousand Longhorns, to be exact.
This is the power of University of Texas
football. We're four months away from a serious
game, but despite last season's disappointing 5
and 7 record - the worst in Coach Mack Brown's 13
years as head coach - the sport has a firm grip
on the loyalties and imagination of the community
and the culture. It's not just the games - it's
the TV broadcasts, the $10 million in annual
trademark licensing revenue, the tailgate
traditions, the families that bleed burnt orange.
This is Texas. Football is a sport, a culture,
and a religion. It has its faithful and its
heretics.
***
Taped to Thomas Palaima's office door in Waggener
Hall are rectangular clippings of op-eds he's
written.
"Work long and hard for what is right for society."
"No more excuses for UT's excesses."
Added to that will be his most recent piece for
the Chronicle of Higher Education- "The NCAA and
the Athletes it Fails."
Palaima is 5'9". White hair, white beard. Wears a
black belt with a brass "P" on the buckle. He
looks like the Ancient Greek professor he is. His
office looks more like a cave. Ancient Greek
texts line the shelves. On the white concrete
wall are framed 4x6 photographs of his
archeological digs. Corinth, 1977. Prague 1982.
Hohhot, Mongolia, 1990.
Palaima got his Ph.D. in 1980 from the University
of Wisconsin and came to Austin in 1986. He
created the Prehistory and Aegean Scripts program
in the Classics department. He is a connoisseur
of all things Ancient Greek, specializing in war
and violence. "You wouldn't believe the
similarities between Homer's society and the U.S.
during the wars in the Iraq," he says. He can
recite lines of the Iliad in its original Ancient
Greek.
But most recently Palaima has earned another
title. He's become "that guy" - one of the most
vocal critics of the university's NCAA program.
It all started in 1999 when then-UT Chancellor
Bill Cunningham published his new millennium
vision for the campus in the Austin-American
Statesman. Cunningham saw the university as a
"magnet for business" meant to attract and foster
new industries.
"Nothing in it about fine arts and humanities or
the culture of higher education," Palaima recalls.
Is college supposed to churn out a bottom
line-minded workforce, Palaima asked himself, or
help students figure out what kind of adults they
want to be? "It seemed so one-sided," he says.
Palaima submitted his response---"Is Corporate
Model Right for Higher Education?"---to Maria
Henson, op-ed editor at the time. "It was a
rather long response and required a lot of
editing," he says.
The finished product got people talking. Big
people. Department chairs, deans, executive vice
president types, Palaima says. They contacted him
in confidence, because they agreed with him.
Palaima won't name any of them even now, but he
says the response shocked him. "I just can't
understand how they would write to me saying
'thanks for this' but never be vocal about it,"
he says.
With encouragement from Henson, Palaima became a
regular contributor to the Statesman. "The
windows have been opened," he says. In the
following years, Palaima says he witnessed
"scandalous behavior and wrong values."
The commentaries he wrote as a result reflected
his belief that on UT's campus sports
entertainment reigned supreme, to the detriment
of the students who play on the teams. For his
pieces, he spoke with athletic academic advisors,
the men and women's athletics council, UT
athletes past and present. "Because of that, I
became an accidental expert," he says.
He quickly came to realize that to afford
multi-million dollar coaches and achieve a status
of success worthy of an $8 million
"Godzillatron," you have to win games and earn
fans who will spend money on whatever the burnt
orange logo touches. Coca-Cola, Nike, Budweiser,
AT&T and other brands attach themselves and their
money to the Longhorn brand through sponsorships.
In 2008 Palaima became the university's
representative on the Coalition on
Intercollegiate Athletics, an organization of
faculty members from 57 of the nation's 155
Division 1-A NCAA universities. It meets annually
and publishes reports advocating reforms. His
predecessor, Michael Granof, an accounting
professor had thrown in the towel after five
years. "He thought COIA would be ineffective
because of the money and power and UT
presidential gaga-ism over sports," Palaima says.
"I thought after nine years of writing and
looking locally, doing something nationally was
worth a try."
We continue this at Really Long Link part 2
Ray Tapajna, Tapsearch Com Editor and Artist
