Scott Cowen: "You're not going to remember your major"

Cowen's "chat" with the students
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

On January 17th, 2006, after students were back, Scott Cowen held a meeting with the engineering students to explain the Renewal Plan.

The entire meeting, IMHO, was to blow smoke up our ass and not run away with our tuition dollars ($40K/year at that point). Tulane had already pissed off a lot of parents by keeping the Fall 2005 tuition money.

The meeting ticked off the engineering students quite a bit. Fortunately, some of us recorded it and caught a real gem from Cowen that pretty much sums up his fuckmookishness:

"Question: 20 years from now, 30 years from now you will remember you came to Tulane. You're not going to remember what you major was or ... [garbled] ... but you will remember Tulane University."

-Scott Cowen
January 17th 2006
Meeting with engineering students

That's the quote, word for word (23 minutes in on Side B). Told to a bunch of ENGINEERING students. It doesn't matter what, say a Civil engineer learns in school, it only matters that they went to Tulane.

Unfortunately, the quality on the tapes is terrible. Cowen's booming voice is the only thing that the mic picked up.

Side A:


Side B:


If anyone would like to give a stab at cleaning up the audio, that would be greatly appreciated.


NOTE: Some minor edits. Also, the noladishu.blogspot.com version of this post has embedded audio players that don't seem to show up in Google Reader.

Dump Cowen, Not Engineering

Dump Cowen, Not Engineering
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

Today the Times-Picayune gave their Loving Cup award to Scott Cowen. I'll grant that Cowen has done some good things with the Cowen Institute and New Orleans Public Schools and keeping the doors open at Tulane, one of the largest private employers in the city.

But, even the article mentions the shuttering of engineering at Newcomb. There's no getting around the fact that in the aftermath of the the Federal Flood, the largest engineering disaster in US history, Cowen axed the programs that could have made the most difference. In his own words, "If they don't fix the levees, everything we've done [with the Renewal Plan] is for naught."* What are we going to do Dr. Cowen? Sue our way to Category 5 Levees?

In early 2006, there was a huge student protest on campus. Hundreds (thousand plus?) of students marched around the administration building. They demanded Cowen's resignation over the Newcomb and engineering cuts. Not a single news organization covered it. I'm posting a couple of photos to prove that it did indeed exist.

__________
* Citation coming.

Update- More:

"Football players build great levees"**



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** Tulane's football program, despite as favorable accounting as they can possibly manage, runs a deficit of at least $2 million a year. It was not effected by the "Renewal Plan."


UPDATE 2- From Tulane's last E-Week battlebot competition:

"Cowen Bot: Destroying that which others have worked so hard to build"