Category: Cal Poly

Cal Poly and their foibles

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Forget USC or UCLA…. Cal Poly SLO is NUMBER ONE !!! huh?

In the old SPARTAN’s saying,” the best soldiers come from the toughest schools”… they weren’t talking about Cal Poly San Luis Obispo…. although they like to pretend they’re better than anybody. Believe me… I’ve heard it all.

The local spin doctors continue to massage the message… The local paper the Telegram Tribune in bold headlines screamed:

“Living in SLO and going to Cal Poly is a great time; it’s so fulfilling that the university ranked 15th among the ‘happiest’ in a Princeton Review survey”

Hey, wait a minute!… what does that really mean? Should we really care how ‘happy’ a student is? Real happiness comes later with a great start in a career that a good school gives you! 

The TRIBUNE rejoiced in Cal Poly being compared to more prestigious universities… although, regrettably, in but one of the more ‘warm and fuzzy” categories:

“Poly students say they are so content, in fact, that a just-released survey from the Princeton Review has ranked them 15th “happiest” of 115,000 students surveyed at 361 schools.”

When Cal Poly Students get ‘happy’, it costs the city $500,000…..

Is Your kid in this mess? I know... they're just trying to have fun, right?          

Well, as they said in ‘Animal House’: “being fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life ,boy’… or words to that effect. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t say anything about Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s academic rigor. ( not to slight Cal Poly Pomona… which has to be better as they are ‘hell and gone from Cartagena, Angel!’)

LINK to only one Cal Poly Incident…. just young people working to express themselves.

Anyway, back to the ‘Tribune article, some typical student comments:

“I’m going to stretch out my time here,” said 20-year-old Wood…”I’m hoping for five or six years.”

“School is hard. That doesn’t contribute to the happiness factor,” said Taylor Gilmore

Have you told Mom and Dad yet, dude? Maybe they were thinking about shedding some unwanted pounds earlier than you intended. Sounds like ‘Failure to Launch… the prequel.’

Okay, I have trashed Cal Pooey San Luis Obispo enough for the moment… and it is true that I do have little respect for some of the folks there… but, the question any thinking parent should ask,”Do you want your child to go to a college (often on your own nickel)… just because it might make him/her happy?” I guess this would be okay if their future didn’t matter… oh yeah… I forgot… they’re going to move back home when they eventually graduate… work — after all — is so hard.

A little to many Palunas?Well, here we see a typical Cal Poly coed at a party… and we wonder why it takes the average student roughly 6.5 YEARS to graduate?? Hey, is that your daughter?

Over the years, Cal Poly has made academic claims… in fact, all too many claims have proven to be less that truthful. Who can forget the infamous ‘Dinosaur DNA’ fiasco? Often times you will hear a lot of well meaning folks call themselves  number one in a lot of areas… but the truth is often very sobering… 

It is said that Cal Poly often refers to themselves as the ‘conservative’ alternative to Berkeley (definitely not the faculty or their administration)…. where’s the ‘conservative’? And why did President Baker recieve the infamous ‘Sheldon Award” from U.S. News and World Report?

….read on.

Continue reading “Forget USC or UCLA…. Cal Poly SLO is NUMBER ONE !!! huh?”

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Willie Brown, San Luis Obispo & Cal Poly?

Finest display of used bubble gum in the entire world! Dis is high culture indeed!Golly momma, lookie what the big city feller said about us in de Tribuuune!”

Well, the horses and buggies went out and the tongues were wagging when “Bootstrap” Willie Brown was quoted in the local San Luis Obispo paper :

“Willie Brown tells Angelides to stay in SLO, “wherever there are no known systems of technology and communications”…

Not to be slighted the Telegram Tribune which boasts around a full 16 pages on a good day fired off an editorial! Here’s a few of the quotes that …well… shucks… just shows how much corn is growing in some of the ears around here:

“Just us rubes here, Willie”           ( Yee-ha!)

“It’s a simpler life, the SLO Life. And now the rest of the world knows our little secret. Thanks a bunch, Willie.”        
(… there’s several ways to read that, boys… oh yeah.. yeeeehah!) 

“We don’t know about Dinuba or Chico…”         
( frankly, you gotta travel to know about other places, dude)

Now, I don’t kid you when I say that there are folks in these parts that have never been to the big city of New York, fear the bay area and evil Elay … and there are some who have never been out of the county …and are PROUD of it! Hard to believe it’s 2006. Old hippes around here refer to themselves as ‘hobbits’ and this land as ‘middle earth’… get the picture? Frankly, I think too many generations have married their sisters.

On a positive note, many local young men and women see that San Luis obispo county has little to offer them … intellectually, socially or for a future for themselves or their families … and they move on to greater glory. Unfortunately, it’d be really nice if they took some of the ‘hobbits’ with them. Oh ….there I go again being a ‘disturber of the peace.’

Cal Poly.... One of the bright spots at Cal Poly is folks like my wife who teach there. However, if she had to depend on the assets of the university she’d still be typing on a Smith-Corona (remember those?). By the by, I think Cal Poly just got their first computer but I think it’s working on Windows 3.1. They have their issues. 

I am asked so often why my children did not go to Cal Poly? I always answer them by saying,” because they could do better.”

Steve Martin starred in a movie called “My Blue Heaven” that was filmed here. It was about a squeeky clean community filled with federal witness protected felons… ah… the town was named “Friburg”. Hmmmmm…. very funny, boys. Anyway, in the movie, they referred to the town as the ‘place you go when you die’… a good place… but not a fun place…. it wears thin after a while.

Truth hurts.

San Luis Obispo has many charming things about it. It’s a great place to relax… but when you want to put your brain and your body in gear… it’s also great, because it’s only 200 miles from either Los Angeles or San Francisco.

They don’t call it “SLO” for nothing.

Roger Freberg

PS– I have to tell how “Bootstrap Bill” Willie Brown got his name … I was up in Sacramento back in 1991 getting then Senator Ken Maddy and former Assemblywoman Andrea Seastrand to sign a few hundred ‘Welcome Home’ proclamations for the men and women who fought in the first Gulf War… and there… I listened to Willie Brown discribe how he had ‘pulled himself up by the bootstraps’ to the pinacle of greatness that he now enjoyed. It was a good speech… but he wasn’t wearing boots… so this ol’ boy wasn’t too impressed.

The picture atop is of San Luis Obispo’s main tourist attraction… a wall in which one can deposit their used chewing gum… drinking beer with gum isn’t great, so before entering the bar, students made a contribution to our culture… I guess they ran out of desks.

 

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Southern California Trojans — it’s a ‘lifestyle!’

Two Tough Trojans? Laura and Me at the USC-UCLA Game!
Me and my Sweetheart!

The other day I was walking down our town — San Luis Obispo, California — wearing a t-shirt from my Alma Mater and a cyclist ( probably someone training for a local triathalon) passed me by and yelled, “Fight On!”. For those of you not connected to sport, this is a salutory greeting from one Trojan to another! I looked up to see him riding by all decked out in Trojan cycling attire and for one brief moment — I was transported back home to Troy, the Business School and to those I helped learn the art of ‘burn outs’ in weightlifting…. fun times. Oh yes, then, there were the football games! Continue reading “Southern California Trojans — it’s a ‘lifestyle!’”

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at $300 an hour or so…. being a Professor Ain’t too bad!

The Challenge of today's universities -- getting Professors to Teach their subject and stay on topic 

San Luis Obispo is a small college town with a modest university. 

However, as is true in so many colleges and universities around the country, some professors don’t realize how good they have it. Recently, a couple of local professors complained about the Cal Poly football coach’s raise. They felt that they had to settle for crumbs from the table and were justifiably (in their minds) unhappy.

The head coach’s raise certainly reflected the very recent success Cal Poly was having in football. Making the playoffs was a striking improvement over decades of mediocrity. The coach’s salary — as head coach’s salaries go — won’t roll anyone’s eyes; Cal Poly is division I double A after all. To put it in perspective, if Oklahoma was nice, they’d roll over Cal Poly 77-0 in a bad year.

So why all the fuss?

Well, the professors who wrote to the Tribune obviously felt that they are ‘underpaid’. However, let’s take a closer look at what they really get. First, many of them have the biggest perk of all — a job for life. In contrast, coaches go to work every day with a guillotine blade hanging over their necks. 

Professors here teach a whopping 12 hours a week for 30 weeks a year. As for health benefits, a state job is hard to beat. This works out to something like $300 an hour.

Football Coaches — especially head football coaches — seldom have a life. They work constantly throughout the year and seemingly 24 hours a day. The hourly rate of a Cal Poly football coach would be something around $30 an hour. In addition, coaches can be fired for any reason.

Oddly enough, I suspect both underpaid professors report more to the IRS than the much maligned football coach.

Roger Freberg