SCHADENFREUDE. (Heck, he's on the deck of cards, let's just call it kicking him while he's down.) Embattled Southern Mississippi president Shelby "Ten of Diamonds" Thames now gets a bad report card from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, according to Chris at Signifying Nothing.

On the other hand, Christmas is coming, and perhaps Mr Thames does not deserve this particular stick. Why does the accreditor put Southern Mississippi on probation?

According to the statement issued by Southern Miss, SACS was concerned about assessment of institutional effectiveness, assessment of distance-learning effectiveness and strategic planning in academic units.

Administrative expense-preference stuff, in other words. Institutional effectiveness? Are the students getting and holding jobs? (I can report positive results for n=2: Brett Favre and a Laser sailor to be named later.) Distance-learning effectiveness? A fad. Effectiveness means breaking the student's expectation that logging onto the internet is a substitute for working hard. Strategic planning? Sometimes that means addressing other fads. Sometimes it's just plain silly. The Economics Department did a chairman search in early 1999. The University's advert included "participating in strategic planning in an era of downsizing" as part of the job description, at a time when the local high schools were having trouble finding space for all of their students. There's more than the bowl game contributing to our record enrollments.