A She-Chancellor From Freakin’ Dartmouth !!

BobLee
April12/ 2013

The smoke emerged from the chimney around 9 PM Thursday night – UNC-CH Has A New Chancellor. The “official” announcement is scheduled for early afternoon on Friday. The ever-mysterious “they” who make such historical decisions have tapped Carol Folt from Dartmouth to succeed Holden Thorp as UNC-CH Grand Poobah. Early public reactions are “interesting”……

What does it say that among the first dozen panicky emails we received Thursday night, not ONE made any mention of the new Chancellor’s gender. That she is indeed a “she” and therefore the FIRST “she” to captain the self-described Flagship of the UNC fleet is, apparently, of little / no consequence.

The installation of a bidet in the Chancellor’s private loo is irrelevant. One might see that as “progress” I suppose.

Madame Doctor Chancellor-to-be Folt has yet to utter her first effusive syrupy admiration for her new employer…. or lay out her grand design for cleaning up the mountain of administrative detritus she immediately inherits. First impressions therefore are only based on her curriculum vitae-to-date and what that might reveal about what we might expect.

Madame Dr Chancellor-to-be Folt may well be Solomon Incarnate – the world’s only right-wing academician – a diplomat of amazing persuasion – possessor of executive management acumen par excellence – and, of course – the world’s most avid college football / basketball fan….. or maybe not! If she be all of the above (or any of the above), it will surprise the bejebbers out of a lot of folks as of Friday morning.

The announcement of a new chancellor for a major university is not unlike that elephant examined by those blind men in Kipling’s poem. Each “sees” what relates to what they happen to consider important relative to their personal interest in the institution. Knees jerk immediately because what’s the point of having knees if one can’t jerk them at the slightest provocation. Knees be ajerking over Chanc2Be Folt.

We’re going to go pretty far out on a limb here and assume Chanc2Be Folt did NOT vote for Ronald Reagan nor is she an admirer of Sarah Palin nor a Rush Babe. Since outgoing Chanc Thorp is doing backflips over her selection, we feel pretty safe in assuming she, like Holden, is likely very hard-core Obamic in her ideological persuasion – a washed-in-the-blood pentacostal uber-liberal. That she is “an environmental scientist” by academic category we might assume she be a disciple of Krazy Ol’AlGore too. So much for the likelihood of fracking in Polk Place.

Everyone who “gave up on UNC a long time ago as being anything other than a uber-liberal septic tank” can probably maintain that POV until further notice.

Dartmouth is a quaint, remote little elite Ivy in Hanover, NH. How quaint and remote is Dartmouth? Even the people at Yale, Princeton and Harvard need GPSs to find it. Chan2Be Carol has lived there for over 20 years. Rip Van Winkle “slept” for 20 years. Ya think she knows about cellphones and The Kardashians?

Might “size & complexity” be an issue? UNC has more Vice Chancellors than Dartmouth has sophomores. Ouch!

Needless to say no NCAA investigators (aka “goons) have ever visited Dartmouth. That could be in Ms Folt’s favor. Of course Dartmouth has never danced in March either nor ever played in “a bowl”. Ya think Ms Folt can spell BCS… or has ever filled out a Final Four bracket ??? Should that matter?

Athletically lets just say….. Dartmouth is sooooo low-key in athletics that it is one of only three schools on the Eastern Seaboard that Little Johnny Swofford has NOT considered for ACC Expansion. The other two being Mount Holyoke and Tufts.

It’s a REALLY safe bet that UNC’s notorious board monkeys are foamin’ at the mouth and lookin’ for someone to cuss out over the selection of Ms Folt. They were hoping for Nick Saban.

Holden once noted “I never sat thru a football game in Kenan Stadium until I became Chancellor.” Carol may note “what’s a deep-snapper?…. what’s a double bonus?” YIKES!

One panicked emailer last night says Larry Fedora will be gone by Wednesday and Roy might never come back from wherever he hides every April. That might be a bit of premature over-reaction…. or not. That Roy has never heard of Dartmouth could be a good thing…… Andrew Wiggins has yet to issue a formal statement via his communications staff.

When Unthinkable Molly Broad ran the UNC System for ten loooong years it was said “in ten years she never ate a hushpuppy or visited Mayberry”. Getting to know the territory wasn’t a priority with Madame Broad. Will it be for Madame Folt?

Nothing in her CV says she has ever been within two border state of Tar Heelia in her entire life. If that’s so, the first time she tries to have a conversation with Gov PatMc, Art Pope, Thom Tillis et al should be hoot-erific. Her first sit-down chat with goofy ol’ Roy should be on Pay-For-View…. Whooo Hoooo.

It woulda been nice if ”they” had looked out of the purely hard-line stereotype academic box for someone with a more diverse management skill set….. but they didn’t. …… sigh, sob, sniff. Maybe they DID look and no such superstar would return their call? ….. more sigh, sob, sniff.

If it helps…. she probably comes pretty “cheap”. I mean “an environmental scientist from Dartmouth” ain’t exactly The Florida Gulf Coast Univ basketball coach w/ the hottie wife or Shaka Smart. Best bet is they got this gal for the price of a fair to middlin’ Special Teams Coach.

I’m going to give this gal a longer leash than most of you will only because I happen to trust ONE member of the “they” who selected her. My confidence in him will buy her about two weeks before I ask BobLee to make up a demeaning nickname for her. He’s the best nicknamer on earth.

IF Ms Folt does turn out to be a lump of coal in UNC’s stocking it still won’t be as bad a selection as Joe Biden as VPOTUS. Nothing will ever be THAT bad.

Stay tuned…….

BobLee aso UNLOADS on this over at www.bobleesays.com
Better check him out.

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