For months, UW-Whitewater has publicized on its website a sham study from a burglar-alarm company as confirmation that Whitewater has the safest campus in Wisconsin. The study is a shabby fraud, with a methodology so far below proper academic standards that it taints the serious work of faculty and students at the school, in the UW System, and anywhere else there are people who believe in legitimate research. See The Marketing of Misinformation: UW-Whitewater’s Use of a Counterfeit ‘Campus Safety’ Study, For UW-Whitewater’s Administration, Talking Points Won’t Be Enough, and Truth-Telling and Tale-Weaving.
On September 19, Jeff Angileri, UW-Whitewater’s Assistant Director of Media Relations, wrote a press release announcing the campus police chief’s role on a federal crime commission (“UW Whitewater Police Chief to Lead FBI Task Force”). See screenshot. In the press release, Angileri manipulatively inserts a reference to the counterfeit safety study between paragraphs describing Chief Matt Kiederlen’s completely unrelated appointment to a federal commission. (Kiederlen had nothing to do with the so-called safety study.)
Angileri’s press release is a feeble attempt to cover a campus-safety study that’s little more than crap in the catsup of an unrelated commission appointment.
A few remarks:
Angileri uses a press release to associate UW-Whitewater Chief Matt Kiederlen‘s role on the federal commission with a mendacious study from a complaint-riddled burglar-alarm dealer. Does Angileri not grasp the academic standards of the university where he works, and from which he was graduated years ago? When he walks past so many thoughtful students and professors on his way to Hyer Hall, does he not comprehend that his lies undermine their search for truth?
Would Kiederlen care to defend the methodology of the ‘safety study’ directly? Would he care to call upon his colleagues on the Beyond 2021 commission, or the men and women who manage crime data for the FBI, to defend the so-called study UW-Whitewater touts? A person would make himself ridiculous trying to do so, but people choose freely: sometimes well, sometimes poorly.
New UW-Whitewater Chancellor Dwight Watson doubtless has to worry about enrollment declines on his campus, but he has a greater question before him: can you save an academic institution by ruining its academic reputation?
Note well: there is nothing in this city that can successfully make the worse appear the better reason.
UW-Whitewater, and the city in which the campus is nestled, will always deserve better than mendacity and mediocrity.
Send Angileri’s rancid work back to the kitchen – no discerning man or woman would be fooled into accepting crap covered in catsup.
(For a review of UW-Whitewater’s systemic, years-long problems of assault & harassment, see the FREE WHITEWATER category Assault Awareness & Prevention.)
To be honest I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This post drives home a towering problem on campus. When you mention Hyer Hall you are mentioning the weakest part UWW. It’s been a bad dozen years. It’s not a faculty or student centered campus, it’s an administration centered campus preoccupied with numbers. It hits the nail on the head to say that when the media relations team gets involved it’s spin, spin, spin. Masters or doctorate? Defending a thesis or dissertation? Forget that. Get a castoff from tv or newspapers to spin for you.
But wait, there’s more!!! Jeff spins that press release but the title of your reply (covering crap with catsup) will stick in memory long after his announcement.
I’ll say it again. Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
UW-Whitewater is a proper university with students and faculty who deserve more than a say-anything marketing effort. If it’s wrong for the federal administration to distort science for its own ends (and it is very wrong), then it’s wrong for a college administration to debase sound methods and analysis by relying on grossly sub-standard reports.
pr pup serves s—t sandwich. sara leaves no fingerprints. chief’s pretty announcement gets hijacked by pup. hyer hall looks like ad agency. blogger defends academic integrity/victims rights. blogger gets the soundbite. it’s only tuesday.
One follows where the week leads.
In wine, truth… enough of the time.
This is a losing battle for the university. It is easier to start a losing fight than to quit one, however. It shows in this case where the “study” is intellectually indefensible but they cannot emotionally let go go of it. They’re so invested in their position they cannot see that it’s ridiculous. There really is something truly pathetic about a UW System school relying on this silly report as a selling point.
Yes, there truly is.
I would also like to commend you for making a clear distinction between our faculty and students and a few in administration. It’s an absolutely important point that needs to be made over and over. We are not making these dumb policy decisions.
[…] See also From UW-Whitewater’s Administration, Too Many and Too Few Words, The Marketing of Misinformation: UW-Whitewater’s Use of a Counterfeit ‘Campus Safety’ Study, and UW-Whitewater’s Administration Covers Crap with Catsup. […]