On Robert Illig

If you found your way to this dark corner of the internet, you must surely be a tried and true-blue scam-lover who knows all about Professor/Demigod Robert Illig of Oregon.  For a refresher:

We see students without jobs and think that if we throw them a few of our dollars we can go back to our scholarship and not worry about whether they are getting real careers and real training? We can study the 17th Century and believe we are preparing them for the 21st?
“What we owe them is our time and effort and skill, not our paltry raises (which, by the way, don’t even cover the increase in the cost of living). …
“And am I to blame for the bad economy? Are my efforts so lacking as to make the difference between students with jobs and without? Is my teaching and mentoring so deficient as to merit what is essentially a pay cut....

I am crying in admiration of beauty, in fits of joyous laughter, in subtle sadness that my hubris is hopelessly reserved, so that I may never rise to this level.  Are you there, God?  It's me, LSTC.  Yeah, can you give me a uterus so I can reproduce with this and gestate his mythological offspring?  Thx.

As the article above points above points out, Oregon relented on its plan to siphon faculty raise money into scholarships.  This is democracy, kids; if you bitch loud enough and make an expertly-earned six figures, you will eventually get your way.

In any event, you know who the REAL asshole is in the Illig story?  The jackass who spilled the beans on professorial angst, of course!!!

 “We might not know who initially leaked the email to UO Matters,” [student Tom] Marshall says, “but I hope whoever the culprit was is aware that they have likely hurt our law school.” 

Duh.  In the absence of publicity, Oregon quietly crushes any proposal and the faculty get raises.  With disclosure, Oregon crushes the proposal, the faculty get raises, and people waste time and energy jealously bitching about superior people when they could be out networking and representing poor people.  And now the law school has had an elite professor threaten to leave and go back to earning gazillions in a large firm.

Learn how to keep your damn mouths shut, hippies.  This is a great swindle, but some of you need to learn how to close ranks and keep it hush-hush.

And in that light, Illig's worst fault is being silly enough to put his thoughts in writing.  As all lawyers know, if you want to be totally honest about something, pick up the damn phone.  If you're trying to snow someone over, put it in writing.  99%, 160k?  Writing, with disclaimer.  Reminding everyone that your cock is eight feet long?  Not in writing.

This is basic stuff, comrades.  Scam on.