THERE IS NO JOKER IN A SHEEPSHEAD DECK. If the rules of Schafskopf did provide for a joker, the chairman of the Marquette University board of trustees, one John F. Bergstrom, would certainly have qualified, for agreeing to rename the Marquette Golden Eagles the Marquette Gold, (sorry, Ted, that's as bad as some of the WNBA team names) but apparently not, as one caller to Charlie Sykes, speculated, because Marquette's new basketball conference already includes another Jesuit university with Golden Eagles. Sean at The American Mind has been following the story closely; scroll up. Jib at the Badger Blog Alliance hoists a protest flag on the multiculturalists (weren't Jesuits chaplains to the conquistadores?)

I'm just asking. I mean, after all, it was Catholic Spaniards who relieved the Inca of all of their Gold in the 16th century, as well as decimating the Inca population. Surely that weak association between a Catholic university and gold would seem to be more insensitive than a culturally neutral word like Warriors.

Lots of other reaction at that site. Combine this with some knowledge from south of the Cheddar Curtain, and perhaps the yet-to-be-named mascot ought to be a porcupine.

Meanwhile, the assessment of the obvious continues at Marquette. Here's Marquette Warrior (who did weigh in on Gold) on administrative follies persisting in the face of logic.

How course based assessment could still be alive in the face both of fierce faculty opposition and the explicit directions of the North Central is a mystery.

Why anybody would want an assessment of dozens of individual courses when the (say) social science part of the assessment could be done as part of a broader process applying to all students is another mystery.

Perhaps, pace University Diaries, academicians have reasons other than their failure to sell the Crolyist Vision to be miserable. Mascots may come, and mascots may go, but the expense-preference behavior goes on forever.