At least he's telling the truth about the first 28 years.

I entered the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 1965 with the honor of having been selected to be a University Scholar. Freshmen designated for this are chosen to compete for it on the basis of high ACT scores followed by another competitive exam and then an interview.

I also was awarded a journalism scholarship upon my entry to OU, but changed majors later. The 1969 commencement bulletin lists me as the Outstanding Senior in Political Science. As a graduate student I enjoyed the additional honor of being named an intern in the Oklahoma State Regents student intern program.

I received an MA in sociology from OU and later carved out an occupation mostly in self-employment through contracted research and consulting. In the 1990s I was awarded four federal grants, totaling $494,000, from the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program of the US Public Health Service. I am listed in the 24th and 25th editions of Marquis' Who's Who in the South and Southwest, and some of my publications in health science are catalogued in the National Library of Medicine:

American Journal of Preventive Medicine (Sept/Oct. 1997)

Journal of the American Medical Association (letter, Mar 24/31, 1993)

AIDS Education and Prevention (fall 1991)

My purpose in citing this information about myself is only to establish my credibility for the message I want to offer parents shopping for a college for your offspring: if you want your son or daughter to have an education of high quality, choose some other place besides OU. It wasn't a bad school when I attended there during the Vietnam war years, but since then I have observed the standards of this institution deteriorate in many ways.

Below are some comments about different problems plus links, mostly to articles I have written about OU.

January 2003 Update

I. USA Today Bashes OU for Its Pathetically Low Graduation Rate for Athletes

USA Today said that OU is "a longtime loser" when it comes to academics. Don't miss this excellent and revealing editorial which OU boss Boren would not want you to see.

II. OU Forbids Bringing Water to Football Games and Charges $2.50 per Bottle

When I was a little kid during the 50s I used to watch Howdy Doody, the friendly TV marionette. The villainous character on the show was the miserly Mr. Bluster. The only episode I remember was the drought in Doodyville. Mr. Bluster had monopolized the local water supply, and was charging "a doller a swaller" for water. Mr. Bluster was definitely an evil stingy old man.

In the OU student newspaper (September 9, 2002) there is a letter from Jeff Isenberg, a former lifeguard who understands the risk of heat stroke. At the recent football game he observed one fan pass out from the heat. He also observed that the university, "in its infinite wisdom has banned the public from bringing bottled water in from outside the stadium." Calling attention to the fact that vendors are charging $2.50 for bottled water, he added that "this is medically wrong, legally wrong, and quite irresponsible of the university."

Mr. Bluster would be proud of David Boren and OU !

III. Boren Makes Gift of $17.6 Million to Athletic Department; Wants To Raise Tuition Again

Under an Open Records Act request, Boren critic Elmer ("EZ") Million has exposed the fact that during August 2001 Boren led OU into making an extraordinary loan of $12 million to the athletic department. The substance of the matter is that OU actually made a gift of $17.6 million to the athletic program. Here's how the deal worked.

This was an interest-free loan with a 20-year pay-out period. At the time it was made, the prime rate was 8%. An ordinary loan of $12 million would have required an interest burden of another $12 million over 20 years. Secondly, OU forgave $5.6 million of the principal at the front end. By adding these two sums together we arrive at a $17.6 million gift from OU.

The Oklahoma Daily, the student newspaper, admitted in an otherwise uncritical editorial (September 9, 2002) that the athletic department was "in the red" for years. This is because fair-weather fans, demanding that OU always win at football, had deserted the team during the mediocre football years of the 90s. Because they won the championship in 2000 the dream of OU football glory forever has returned.

All my life we have been told that the athletic department is a "separate budget" and that it is self-supporting through ticket sales and donations. When the guy in charge is a politician who acts more like a monarch than a responsible public official, these rules can be bent.

Under Boren's leadership a huge stadium expansion project has been initiated. People have been kicked out of their homes east of campus, using the power of eminent domain, to make this happen. The remnants of a once-beautiful neighborhood have been bulldozed. Estimates of the project's cost are in the range of $70 to $75 million. Add the interest burden for the revenue bond obligation onto that, and the total cost will be somewhere around $120 million.

What happens if the Sooner Football Fairy Tale doesn't materialize and the team starts to lose again? Taxpayers and students, through tuition increases, will pay. During Boren years the tuition had already increased 25% through spring 2002. Then he was able to push through another 7% increase. In the fall of 2002 he began to demand more again.

I brought the information about the unusual loan to the Daily a few days before the editorial was published, but they ignored it. They chose instead to reinforce the official mythology by praising the "self-sufficiency of the athletic department."

IV. Boren Slaps Veterans; Renames Football Stadium for Publishing Tycoon

In 1986, before his mysterious resignation from the U.S. Senate, Boren did a big favor for Eddy Gaylord, publisher of The Daily Oklahoman. He wrote a special amendment to the tax law which gave a break to Gaylord and only seven other wealthy investers in the USA. The amendment affected Gaylord's mining interests in Colorado. This is mentioned by the Columbia Journalism Review, in an article which calls the Oklahoman "the worst daily newspaper in America."

Gaylord remembers these favors, and paid Boren back with a $22 million gift for OU's new journalism building. Boren paid his respects by naming the J-School and new building after Gaylord. This pleased Gaylord, whose wealth is in the hundreds of millions, so he tossed a little more change to grateful Boren for a new facade on the stadium.

The big question then became: would Boren be so bold, and so eager to please his boss, as to trample on the sacred memories of soldiers who died in the world wars by having the Oklahoma Memorial Stadium renamed for Gaylord? Surely not, thought The Norman Transcript. Not even Boren would be so disrespectful.

On 9/5/02 Transcript Sports Editor Justin Harper wrote that "it's a certainty that the majority of Oklahoma fans won't approve of a name change that is prompted by the almighty dollar." Addressing the rumor that the stadium would be renamed for Gaylord, he added that "time has shown that the majority of folks don't like tinkering with time-honored establishments and they like it less when money is involved." On the following Sunday the Transcript praised the Gaylord family for their gift of $12 million for the stadium. Then they added that "the names Owen Field and Memorial Stadium have a rich tradition behind them [and] are a lasting tribute to the memory of those who gave their lives...We trust that there is no truth to the rumor that "naming rights" to the stadium have been or ever will be sold."

Ah ! We could all breathe a sigh of relief ! The stadium would not be renamed for the avaricious tycoon Gaylord. It gave me such a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, to know that around here traditions are respected, and cannot be corrupted by wealth. Yessir, ah'm proud to be an Okie.

Then on September 12, the lead paragraph of an Oklahoma Daily article reported the unthinkable:

The OU Board of Regents honored the Gaylord family by renaming Oklahoma Memorial Stadium the Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium at its meeting Wednesday at the OU Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City.

Informal survey data indicated that most Oklahomans didn't like this move. Right before posting this I looked at the online Channel 5 poll and it was 91% against the name change. It was time for politician Boren to shift into the damage control mode.

A blundering writer for the Fountainhead , a conservative student newspaper, gave Boren just what he needed. In their first issue of the fall semester there was an article attacking the reparations-for-slavery idea. The writer made a sarcastic comment that all white men with incomes over $100,000 annually should be entitled to own a slave. It was nothing more than bad humor and wasn't worth a minute of anybody's time.

The politically correct identity politics crowd jumped on this and had a rally on September 12 to denounce the Fountainhead on the South Oval of the campus. Boren showed up and seized the moment to make a pious speech with the usual themes about "sensitivity" and made himself a PC hero -- the very day after he stomped all over the memories of dead soldiers by renaming the stadium after fatcat pal Gaylord. I was also appalled to see that Channel 9 was turned away when they tried to film the event. Since when can they tell the media they can't cover public events on a publicly-owned campus? Read about it in The Oklahoma Daily.

Boren has managed to turn the Daily into his personal propaganda rag. In the week of September 9 to 13 (2002), he managed to have his photo on the front page on three different days. For a man who has all the charisma of a rope burn, his construction of a cult of personality around himself in Oklahoma has been quite a feat. Only Boren, the master illusionist, could manage to make himself look courageous by taking a stand against slavery almost a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation.

V. Noise Pollution: OU the Party School

Under the leadership of its politician-president, David Boren, OU is deteriorating into an entertainment center and noise polluter. I frequently see students sleeping on couches in the Student Union and in the library. I suspect their noisy dormitories make it impossible for them to experience adequate sleep in their living quarters. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The cell phone ban in the library is never enforced, and students commonly converse out loud in the public areas of that facility with no respect for the fact that libraries are intended to be places for quiet study. Boom cars have their way on the OU campus while violating the local noise control law as well as campus regulations.

OU Boss Signals Approval for Defiance of City Noise Control Ordinance

In August 2002 childish OU boss David Boren was thumbing his nose at city cops. While making the stupid accusation that the city wants to enforce the noise control ordinance against his sacred football games, he has called this law "silly." See my memo to the City Council about Boren's reckless defiance.

Conflicts of Interest: Boren Makes Money from Noise Technology

Under the Boren administration, both boom cars on campus streets and cell phones in the library have been tolerated. This might be explained by the fact that Boren is on the Board of Directors of Texas Instruments, which is the leading marketer of semiconductors for cell phones. Texas Instruments is also in the car stereo business.

Sleeping Encouraged in OU Library

In August 2002 I endured another interruption by a tour guide at the OU library. As part of the public relations program, tour guides breaking the serenity of the library, along with cell phones, have become an all-too-frequent nuisance in the Boren years. Addressing the inevitable fact that viewers would be treated to scenes of students sleeping on library furniture, the guide stated, "We encourage that sort of thing around here." It was explained that if a student needed to catch a few winks between classes, "it's better to do it here than to have to walk back to the dorm." The guide also mentioned the Indian art which is in place around the library. "Boren is a great fan of Native American art," he said proudly. At OU, employees never miss a chance to praise Great Leader Boren.

While Boren's public relations guides proudly strut through the building disrupting its peace to proclaim their Leader's glory, a picture much closer to the reality of the OU library under Boren is given in a letter to the editor of The Oklahoma Daily (April 28, 2000). Senior Josh McAllister writes:

Something has to be done about the library.... I have never been able to find the book that I need in the library....rarely does the library work as it is supposed to. This week I was doing some research and I was looking for a book....After a bit of searching, the librarian told me that the book is lost.

Another book that I need -- lost. This happens every time I go to the Library.

During an August 2002 visit to the OU library I tried to find a recent issue of Le Figaro, the prominent French magazine. To my dismay I discovered that the library cancelled its subscription to it in 1994.

On August 21, 2002, I was using a public computer terminal in the lower level of the library when a supervisor arrived in the area lecturing a group of student employees. I happened to overhear what she was telling them and made a few notes. One of the things she emphasized was that "things are being filed in the wrong place," and that the staff does not know the difference between microfilm and microfiche. She said that she was "really concerned about the fact that shelving has been really erratic this year."

VI. The Flawed Character of OU's President

OU president David Boren is a politician, not an educator. In 1994, with two years remaining on the term, he resigned from one of the most powerful seats in the U.S. Senate to take the much lessor job of OU President. In 1993, Queer Nation activist Michael Petrelis had been accusing him of sexually harassing his male staff members. I invite you to read my investigation of the evidence related to Petrelis' charge.

VII. OU's Bloated Bureaucracy Stuffed with Boren Loyalists

In Boren's time, the number of Vice-Presidents has grown from ten to seventeen while the percent with doctor's degrees has fallen from 80% to 53%.

VIII. The False Claim That George Henderson Started the Oklahoma Civil Rights Movement

In February 2002, I was shocked to read an article in the Oklahoma Daily (OU newspaper) which gave human relations professor George Henderson credit for starting the civil rights movement in Oklahoma. The article does state correctly that Henderson arrived in Oklahoma in 1967. I was amazed at the ignorance of the Daily staff in believing that civil rights activity in Oklahoma had begun after Henderson's arrival in the late 60s. The 1958 sit-ins protesting segregation at downtown lunch counters were famous. A prominent personality in this regard was school teacher Clara Luper. I observed the Daily for the remainder of the month to see if Henderson would come forward to set the record straight. He never did. What next? Will OU soon be teaching that it was Henderson who refused to sit at the back of the Montgomery bus in 1955?

More insight into Henderson's character is provided by The Oklahoma Daily of August 19, 2002. The article reported that the Henderson-Tolson Cultural Center, home to the Black Student Association, is being moved to a new building. Henderson is quoted:

Dr. George Henderson, half the center's namesake and human relations professor, said the new center is a big deal.

"It would be an understatement to say it's not a big deal since it's named after me...", Henderson said.

Not missing an opportunity to praise Great Wise Leader Boren, Henderson added: "The university doing this renovation speaks well of President Boren and his administration."

Go here for more examples of incredible blunders, immaturity, and incompetence by The Oklahoma Daily.

IX. Computer Systems: "The Only Problem with OU Is That It Is Always Down"

The quote which forms the headline for this section was attributed to senior Joseph Butler by The Oklahoma Daily (August 1, 2002). He was talking about the OU email system. The computer terminals available for public use in the Library also leave much to be desired. Information Technology Vice-President Dennis Aebersold and his wife enjoy a combined annual salary of $240,000 from OU. The link will tell you about suspicions he raised at William & Mary College before his arrival at OU.

In a guest column in the student newspaper, management information systems sophomore Anthony Clay tells readers that OU officials in charge of the computer system have "been very busy lately reducing the amount and quality of the Internet services that we paying students receive here at OU." Check out the details..

X. PhD Dissertation Embraces Astrology

A 1999 PhD dissertation accepted by the OU anthropology department actually embraces the mystical notion that we are entering an astrological "New Age." In my eleventh-grade psychology class, I learned that astrology was nothing more than ancient pseudo-science. What next for OU? A graduate program in palm-reading?

XI. The Human Relations Department: An Academic Joke

The human relations department, founded by the very same George Henderson who falsely claims credit for having begun the civil rights movement in Oklahoma, is an easy degree mill. To support this charge I looked at archived OU commencement bulletins. For 1975 MA degrees, I counted 83 for human relations, out of a total of 176 (47%). At that time HR degrees were grouped in with the other MAs. In 1999, there was a separate list for Master of Human Relations graduates. For that spring, there were 215 MHRs accounting for 81% of the total (266) for MAs and MHRs combined.

According to the OU website, a thesis is not required for the master in human relations degree. The easy alternative is a 30-day take-home comprehensive exam. In my days as a student such a thing would have been inconceivable.

XII. The Fraudulent Rape Scare Campaign

This is not about ideology. It is about good scholarship. Throughout the 90s, rape scare campaigners annually frightened OU women with the unjustifiable claim that 25% of them were going to be raped or sexually assaulted. The "1-in-4" nonsense came to an end after I wrote a critical report about it and delivered it to the Chancellor of the State Regents for Higher Education. The report was later published in Clarion, a North Carolina higher education journal. My report assessed the women's studies department's degree of accountabilty for the "1-in-4" campaign.

XIII. Ninety Percent of Money Donated for Anita Hill Professorship Leaves Oklahoma

In her book, Speaking Truth to Power, sexual harassment poster girl Anita Hill reports having told Minnesota fund-raiser Gloria Segal that the money donated for the endowed professorship expected to be named for Hill would stay at OU, in the event of her departure. She wrote, "The funding would remain in Oklahoma, I advised her" (page 329).

This promise was forgotten. In a letter to Anita Hill's critic, Elmer Z. ("E.Z.") Million of Norman, OU Foundation president Ron Burton confirmed that almost 90% of the money donated to the Anita Hill fund was sent to Brandeis after she resigned from OU and took a job at that school. A total of $425,272.15 was in the fund, $41,226.30 was returned to donors, $3,977.98 stayed at OU, and $380,067.87 went to Brandeis. Burton's letter was dated August 20, 2002. Go here for more information from E.Z.'s interesting collection of documents about the strange Anita Hill affair as it developed at OU.

XIV. Boren Lies to Manipulate Legislature into Funding "Weather Center" Dream

One thing to understand about David Boren is that he wants to be President of the United States. Once this is understood, one may begin to make sense out of his construction campaign which has exceeded $700 million in scheduled or completed projects since he became OU President. Now he is in a position to hit up his pals in the construction business for donations when he decides it's time to make another run for elected office.

One of his ideas has been to build a new "weather center" on a tract of land south of the campus and near Highway 9. He and his henchmen in the Oklahoma Legislature lied to other legislators in order to persuade them to fund this measure. Go here for the details.

OU Is Becoming the International Online Degree Mill

The Fall 2002 class schedule of the OU College of Continuing Education and College of Liberal Studies tells the story. Proudly advertising "Weekend Graduate Degrees," this program offers a total of seventy-one online classes. I do not even use the word "teach" to describe this kind of system. I prefer to call it "processing." One online "professor" can process an infinite number of -- um, let's call them enrollees instead of students. They can be anywhere in the world. Multiple choice tests can be automated. Canned presentations can be videotaped, digitalized, and even used after the lecturer dies. As this trend continues, we can expect that OU will be doing away altogether with human professors and will be replacing them with synthespians -- automatons which will look human on screen but, much like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, will be entirely computer-generated.

Not long ago a student told me that her professor was incensed because the OU administration had circulated a memo telling faculty that they would get a bonus if they agreed to start teaching online.

OU Bribes National Merit Finalists to Come Here

Boren and OU public relations hacks are continually making the claim that this school "ranks at the top of the nation per capita among all comprehensive public universities in National Merit Scholars." This boast is published in The Oklahoma Daily of August 19, 2002 (p. 6A). Tbe same news article claims that there are 800 National Scholars currently enrolled at OU. The article, based upon a press release from the administration, does not tell us the retention rate of these students, nor does it tell us how many are from out of state and stay in Oklahoma after their graduation.

Ready for some truth? OU bribes these students into coming here from out of state with a scholarship and benefit package amounting to $65,000 over their undergraduate careers. The link is to the OU website. Then they use public relations hucksterism to try to create the impression that these scholars choose OU because of its "excellence."

OU's Number of Doctoral Degrees Is Disgracefully Low

The Chronicle of Higher Education (February 9, 2001) published an article about the number of PhDs granted by various institutions in 1999. Although fellow Big 12 schools Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and Iowa State were ranked, OU was not in the top 50. The University of Texas was number one with 752 doctorates. This was much greater than the number for the entire state of Oklahoma. That number was 383. The University of Colorado alone almost matched that with 302.

Oh, well. At least OU beat Texas in football last year. That's what counts in Borenland.

OU Profits by Hustling Students into Running Up Huge Credit Card Debts

In a moment of candor The Oklahoma Daily (August 19, 2002) published an article under the headline "Credit Card Companies Haunt College Students." Writer Joni Alexander reported the fact that OU is to be paid $13 million over ten years by First USA Bank for allowing that company to be the only marketer of credit cards on campus. First USA has 11,000 customers associated with OU as students or alumni. This means that the average individual interest burden -- just for paying OU's share of profit on the deal -- is expected to be $118.

The news article identifies OU junior Robbie Cockrell as a student who ran up $3500 in credit card debt. To pay this she had to work full-time during the summer and will continue to work full-time during the fall while reducing her enrollment to part-time. The Daily reported that she used her credit card for eating out and buying new clothes.

Oklahoma Economy Sinks after Boren Campaigns for Union-Busting "Right-to-Work" Law

In a wholesale compromise of the dignity of the office of OU President, in 2001 Boren joined his pals Governor Frank Keating and Daily Oklahoman publisher Eddy Gaylord in campaigning openly for the union-busting "right-to-work" referendum, which was approved. Boren and friends promised voters that this would bring jobs and prosperity to Oklahoma. Not long after the amendment was passed, Oklahoma City's Lucent plant announced a major lay-off of 600 workers. Then Conoco announced its merger with Phillips Petroleum, and the news came out that the Phillips jobs would be moving from Oklahoma to Houston. Boren is a board member at Phillips.

Boren also is a director for American Airlines, which has a big maintenance depot in Tulsa. In the summer of 2002, this Boren company announced that it would be laying off 7,000 workers.

This has produced an economic catastrophe for Oklahoma and reduced tax collections. The Daily Oklahaman (August 23, 2002) announced that state revenues in July 2002 were 13.5 percent below projections. The chancellor for higher education has asked state colleges and universities to prepare for a 3.85 percent budget cut. After convincing Regents to pass a tuition hike in 2002, Boren was complaining that he was "hindered" by only being able to raise it by seven percent. Boren promised to ask for another tuition increase next spring.

On September 14, 2002, the Oklahoman reported that the Lucent plant, now operated by Celestica, Inc., had only 945 employees compared to its peak of 4,000 in 2000. The workforce will be reduced by another 445 before the end of the year. The Oklahoman also reported that the State Regents are cutting $36 million from the higher education budget. This is the reality of the economic miracle Oklahomans were promised by Boren if they passed the "right-to-work" law.

Boren Promotes Officialized Vandalism

I was startled by a front-page article I read in The Oklahoma Daily of May 3, 2002. It reported that Boren initiated a tradition four years ago of having student leaders carve their names into tables in the new Anderson wing of the student union. These tables were not placed there originally for such ceremonial purposes but for practical uses such as eating and studying. Only students considered by Boren to be legitimate leaders are invited to engage in this bizarre ceremony of officialized vandalism. Later the tables are covered with glass to prevent students not recognized as members of this privileged elite from carving their names too.

When I read about this, I wondered if Boren's reported membership in the Yale Skull and Bones Society was the source of the idea. According to the Daily, Boren claims the idea came from an establishment called Mory's Place, near Yale, where students who belonged to a singing group were able to carve their names onto tables. According to Stephen Prothero, a Yale graduate who teaches at Boston University, the Skull and Bones included members of an a cappella group called the Whiffenpoofs. Could Boren have drawn his inspiration from the Whiffenpoofs for the idea that members of a designated elite should enjoy the privilege of defacing public property?

Looking around the Anderson room after seeing this news story, I observed fraternity letters, initials, and various symbols that students not authorized by Boren had carved on other tables. I spoke to an employee who has worked in the building throughout the Boren years. He said that at the time of the first Boren-sponsored carving all the other tables were intact. Now, due to students having taken their cues about respect for public property from Boren, carvings appear on most of the tables located in booths. One wonders when the beautiful antique bannisters in the old section of the library will fall victim to this trend.

OU Destroys Homes Which Could Have Been Saved

On the evening of July 21, 2002, I was walking by the big parking lot (built for football fans and their RVs) near the OU duck pond and saw this nice old house mounted on a moving rig. It used to be in the Fairie Queen Lane neighborhood, the remnants of which are being destroyed by Boren's stadium expansion project. I was curious about the house, so I wrote down the phone number of the moving company, in Choctaw, Oklahoma.

I called there the following day, and the woman who answered the phone soon began to express outrage at OU. She told me that OU had invited the company to bid on buying and moving three homes in June. On July 3 they submitted a bid to buy them all and move them away. OU told them that they had decided to bulldoze the homes but didn't give a reason. The construction workers in the area told the movers that the stadium project was behind schedule.

There's been a housing shortage here in central Oklahoma ever since the May '99 killer tornado. The houses OU destroyed could have been affordable homes for working people. At OU, Boren's ego and the glory of the football program come first.

Later I stood at the old rock bridge at the duck pond and watched the turtles for a while. I've been wondering what kind of damage has been done to the wildlife by the stadium project. In June there was quite a bit of rain, and walking on Brooks towards the campus I frequently observed nasty water being pumped out of the huge ditch, created by the construction crews, which was for several weeks at the intersection of Brooks and Jenkins. They dumped the water into the street and let it run down the side till it drained into the duck pond. I remember seeing an oil film on the pond's surface a couple of times during the rains.

Then I turned and looked just south of the bridge. It was sickening to see the layer of scum and garbage which had accumulated there. Someone needs to get there with a camera and photograph it for a website. It looks like a huge pool of dinosaur vomit.

Well, that's fitting. Another one of Boren's grandiose projects has been the dinosaur mueseum. Information yielded from an Open Records Act request indicates that the museum is losing at the rate of $4 million a year in 2002. That didn't stop the local Boren boot-lickers from naming a small dinosaur fossil discovered recently after him.

I'm not kidding. I wish I were. It's the Atokatheridium Boreni. Boren can corrupt anything -- even paleontology.

Boren's Loud Ugly Chime Disrupts Health Sciences Library

"Somebody's gonna shoot that chime out one of these days," a librarian at the OU Health Sciences Center told me during an August 2002 visit. The comment came after I asked her what the source of the noise was when my work at the library was suddenly disturbed by an ugly chime playing some ridiculous tune. I thought immediately of Boren. It had to be one of his grandstanding schemes.

The librarian pointed to a new tower out where the street in front of the library used to be, until Boren had a better idea and closed it off by having a park with a giant fountain built. Never mind if it inconveniences everyone -- the delivery people in particular. Like a tomcat marking his turf, Boren is bound and determined to announce his presence in every corner of the OU campuses.

"Somebody's gonna go postal on that thing one day," the librarian commented. She added that it was Molly Boren's idea, and said she was grateful that it only played a tune once an hour. She expressed dread at how many times she was going to have to hear "Boomer Sooner" during football season. At an earlier time I was also told it was Molly's idea to have the boom box (CD-player), which blasts loud thumps, installed in the once-dignified Will Rogers room of the Student Union.

This noise machine interrupting the work of librarians and HSC students who go there to study is the Borens' idea of "good taste." It is nothing more than ostentatious nouveau riche trash and an insult to the purposes of education.

Return to the article about Boren's blunders as he desperately schemes for unrestricted power to raise tuition without legislative consent.