Why We Hate The University of Washington, by GoCougsBaby
Virtually every major sports team has a rival. Most of the time, the basis for these rivalries are mere geometric proximity or a particular historical event. For some fans on both sides of the Apple Cup line, the rivalry starts and ends there: it’s just a game between cross-state rivals with a long history.
But for some WSU fans it goes a little deeper than that. They hate the University of Washington. They hate their coaches. They hate their administrators. They hate their fight song. They hate their colors. They hate their admissions department. They hate their budget office. They even hate their museum if you can believe it. They loathe the basic premise, philosophy, and modus operandi of the institution.
In a different situation, such disdain might be misplaced. But in the case of the University of Washington, the school seems to do everything possible to earn this ire.
THE HISTORY
The origins of the diametric differences between WSU and UW can be traced the to the shear bipolar makeup of the State of Washington itself. Whether you are talking political, economic, ecological, or geological composition; eastern and western Washington could not be more contrary. In that light, it was surely inevitable that the two halves would go on to house rival academic institutions.
But the differences have grown well beyond that original framework.
Washington State University, a landgrant institution built in the middle of nowhere (even by Eastern Washington standards) was charged with educating the masses. It has functioned ever since out of an emphasis on necessity.
The University of Washington, which exists today on one of the most expensive pieces of property in the state, was founded in order to boost the prestige of the city of Seattle and educate the sons of the local elite. It has functioned from the very beginning on an emphasis of prestige.
The UW bears no geographic relationship to the original grammar school campus that founded in 1861, which closed its doors three times without graduating a single student through 1876, and had only grade school aged students. But the university still clings to this older date for the sole purpose boosting its legacy as being “the oldest public institution of higher learning west of the Mississippi.” The original school which had students a young as seven years old, issued its first official “bachelor's degree” to a seventeen year old girl who promptly went on to attend actual college at the University of California at Berkley which was founded decades earlier.
THE ARISTOCRACY
Few public institutions encompass a greater air of aristocracy than the UW. In that light, it is no accident that in 1892, when the students faced with the choice of its school colors being red, white and blue (the colors of George Washington's flag); or purple and gold (the colors of royalty), they overwhelmingly voted in favor of the latter, citing a poem by Lord Byron as their inspiration. Likewise it is entirely appropriate that the school song would later become, "Bow Down to Washington." From the earliest days, the UW clung to a blue-blood mentality and little has changed.
THE GREED
Today University of Washington is the largest recipient of federal subsidy for its research of any public university, a distinction it has held since 1974. The school wears this distinction with pride as a symbol of the quality of researchers it has, but the academic community grumbles that it is more sign of a school who has learned how to exploit the system and is more concerned with the grant writing potential of its professors than their teaching ability.
THE FRAUD
The UW’s tendency towards entitlement and greed has been on display more clearly over the past few years.
In 2004, the UW medical school spent $25 million in legal fees to defend hundreds of members of its staff in the largest Medicare fraud case in U.S. history. It paid the federal government a settlement of $35 million for running a “criminal enterprise,” of overbilling, with a “conscious and deliberate decision to ignore the facts before them.”
One medical school professor, who was previously been brought on sanctions for allowing his students to see tightly guarded test booklets for national medical exams, was found guilty of obstruction of justice during the investigation, and for creating an “atmosphere of fear and intimidation” within his department. Rather than terminating this professor with ample cause, the university paid him $3.7 million before he was sent to prison.
THE THEFT
In 2005, a peer-conducted investigation of prestigious paleontology collections at the UW’s Burke Museum of Natural History, concluded nearly all of the fossil specimens had been collected illegally from federal lands without permits. Of greater concern was the fact that no field research notes were kept by UW professors or students, with the exception of a few “torn pieces of brown paper bags.” The only maps kept were little more than pencil dots on road maps, of “unusable scale, outdated, or unrelated to any known collecting areas,“ and unusable for any research purposes. What data was collected was found to have “errors not within a reasonable margin of error.” With suggested recorded collection points were many miles off from any probable locations. One particular fossil, which “if its presumed stratigraphic occurrence is correct,” is the “last fossil primate known in North America, placed the locality on a highway in Oregon.” The study concluded that “fossil collection in the Burke Museum cannot be relied upon for its accuracy or its precision,” was collected and recorded with “a disregard for completeness and accuracy, either though carelessness or deliberate falsification,” and that “their significance to modern paleontology may have been drastically and perhaps irretrievably reduced.” In other words, the UW has an ill-gotten multi-million dollar dinosaur trophy room, and destroyed it academic value in the acquisition of it.
THE DISLOYALTY
In 2012 the UW announced that in order to boost revenues, it will be admitting fewer in-state students. The UW desires the higher out-of-state tuition rates (even at reduced academic admittance requirements) over educating the more qualified Washington residents. WSU announced it would admit more in-state freshmen to help cover the gap.
In Olympia, UW student lobbyists argued with legislators to raise their tuition rates to boost revenues for their school. WSU student lobbyists (along with the other 4 public universities) argued strenuously for lower tuition rates to help financially struggling students.
In 1917 the UW got a law passed outlawing any other medical schools from being opened in the State of Washington. Faced with criticism for the tremendous shortage of physicians in Washington, particularly in rural areas, UW argues it only has the resources to train the 140 students they currently admit. WSU under the leadership of Elson Floyd, convinced the legislature to revoke UW's monopoly, and with heavy opposition from the UW Medical, won approval to pursue funding for its own medical school in Spokane. The school will open in 2017 and projects to be able to accommodate 120 students by 2021.
THE DISHONESTY
Top leaders at UW Medicine appeared to use the tragic shooting at Pilchuck high school for a PR stunt, when it issued sharply worded criticisms of the competence of Providence Regional Medical Center and their use of local ambulance services and EMTs for the shooting victims. UW Medicine, which owns and operates Airlift Northwest, claimed that they had helicopters hovering over the high school and local paramedics waived them off. These helicopters did not exist, and when local firefighters and medical personnel wrote UW Medical and begged them to set the record straight, they were responded with ridicule. UW committed to this fallacy for for five months until freedom of information act requests acquired the flight logs which proved no helicopters were anywhere near the high school, and any trips to Harborview Medical Center would have involved a full 30 minute trip, rather than the 12 minute ambulance ride to Providence. UW Medicine issued an apology for the error, but no explanation why they released misleading information about helicopters being turned away, nor failed to correct it when Providence was under heavy criticism from families and the media. The letter of apology states that UW Medicine had been trying set the record straight for months, but email chains from administrators directly contradict this claim, and show administrators were very pleased with the level of criticism Providence was receiving in the media.
THE CHEATING AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR
Then there is the athletic department, who’s ethical track record is almost beyond belief. Issues revolving cheating, recruiting violations, and protecting felonious behavior of players goes back generations. For the purposes of maintaining some degree of brevity, we will focus primarily on the last 30 years.
October 1985: Former UW player Michael Kay Green is arrested after a two-month spree in which he attacked nine women and children. He is convicted of several robbery charges, rape at knife point, abduction, and murder charges. He blames addiction to steroids from his time at UW for his violence.
May 1987: UW runningback Trevin Moore is arrested in connection with the knifing and robbery of a Seattle woman, and is also convicted in three other attacks on Seattle women. He is given an “exceptionally light sentence of one year,” according to the Seattle Times.
December 1987: UW linebacker Jay Roberts is one of three men participating in a rape at a Seattle apartment. One of the men is convicted but Roberts is released after a retrial when the victim refused to testify.
May 1987: UW star Reggie Rogers is charged with a gross misdemeanor assault on his former girlfriend. The following year he would kill three people in Michigan while drunk driving.
February 1993: UW football player Michael Darrow receives a deferred sentence for sexual assault on a 13 year old girl.
August 1993: The Pac-10 penalizes UW football for a scheme involving paying players for summer jobs they do not attend. Don James resigns in protest.
October 1993: UW wide receiver Jason Shelley is expelled after being arrested in Eugene, Oregon for breaking into an UO dorm and raping an 18 year old. UW football player Doug Barnes and basketball player Prentiss Perkins are also charged. The charges are later reduced to third degree sexual abuse, a misdemeanor.
1996: Police respond on five separate occasions to calls of domestic violence at the home of UW football player Curtis Williams. One of those times Williams is charged with misdemeanor assault. The final time he is arrested again for misdemeanor assault the police note a puddle of blood in the bedroom and his wife was badly beaten. The wife had previously suffered a broken arm while she was pregnant and later acknowledges Williams was responsible. Charges were dropped in lieu of counseling, which he never attends. Four days later the wife calls the police again saying he had choked her and cut her face.
September 1997: Williams is convicted of 3rd degree assault and sentenced to time served.
December 1997: Williams is breaks a no contact order and arrested for a fifth time for domestic violence. His wife says he threatened to kill her if she left him.
1998: King County prosecutor Norm Maleng refuses to pursue charges against 3 UW players who were witnessed beating a UW student as a crowd gathered around.
April 1998: UW recruit Jerramy Stevens assaults and hospitalizes an already unconscious classmate. A UW lawyer negotiates of misdemeanor plea and he is sentenced to time already served.
1999: King County prosecutors drop charges against three UW football players for trashing a fraternity and assaulting several members. One player receives a ten day sentence.
1999: A witness sees Jerramy Stevens raping a semi-conscious woman in an alley behind a fraternity.
January 1999: New head football coach Rick Neuheisal makes improper phone calls to former Colorado players, numerous illegal phone calls to recruits during the quiet period, and athletic assessment of a recruit on a visitation.
October 1999: UW linebacker Jeremiah Pharms’ wife calls police to say he assaulted her. He is arrested and released.
January 2000: Police investigate a shooting victim who says Jeremiah Pharms broke into his apartment, shot him, and stole his drugs.
July 2000: Jerramy Stevens is arrested and charged with rape. He is one of at least 14 different players who will be represented by UW booster Mike Huntsman during the 2000 season.
October 2000: Multiple witnesses identify Jerramy Stevens, his truck, and its license plate in at hit and run on a vehicle with multiple children inside.
October 2000: King County prosecutor Maleng drops rape charges against Jerramy Stevens despite victim testimony, eyewitness testimony, and DNA match to semen in her anus and vagina. The victim was determined not to be a credible witness because she was either drugged or drunk at the time.
October 2000: Stevens is cited for speeding in the hit and run case and receives a $119 ticket.
December 2000: Jeremiah Pharms’ neighbor contacts police about concerns over the pitbulls he is raising in his back yard, the bloody rags everywhere, and the lack of food and water for them. Police take some of the dogs to a shelter where they are described as “all bony” and with heavy chains and padlocks around their necks and having been drinking from a gutter drain. He is written up for having unlicensed dogs and more dogs than allowed. Pharms never returns for the dogs after the Rose Bowl.
April 2001: His football eligibility now gone, UW linebacker Jeremiah Pharms is finally arrested for shooting and robbing his drug dealer 14 months earlier (now 3 months after UW’s trip to the Rose Bowl). 14 months prior, UW police collect Pharms bloody fingerprint and football glove from the crime scene and take interviews from the victim who personally knows Pharms and identifies him as the shooter. Pharms is convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.
May 2001: Jerramy Stevens’ pickup drives through the side of a nursing home and knocks a dresser onto a bed where a 92 year old woman is sleeping. His vehicle is stuck and he gets out and uses his textbooks for traction where a witness sees him and gets his license plate number before he drives away. After lying to police he eventually pleads guilty and receives a suspended 90-day sentence.
2002: Stevens receives multiple citations for reckless driving and one DUI arrest.
October 2002: Assistant basketball coach Cameron Dollar and Lorenzo Romar admit to 26 different recruiting violations, most involving illegal early contact with recruits.
January 2003: Rick Neuheisal is censured by the American Football Coaches Association for recruiting violations.
June 2003: NCAA launches an investigation into Rick Neuheisal betting on college basketball.
2003: Unable to make any progress with criminal charges in Norm Maleng’s office despite police recommendations, three different women file civil suits against UW football players Roc Alexander and Eric Shyne accusing them of rape. The lawsuits were settled and all records are sealed.
October 2003: Dr. William Scheyer, aka Dr. Feelgood, UW Softball’s team doctor, admits to state medical investigators that he had improperly passed out and failed to track “thousands of doses of narcotic pain pills, muscle relaxants, and testosterone steroid gels,” to players.
May 2003: Zach Tuiasosopo is arrested for breaking the windows, windshields, doors and interiors of four vehicles by the wharf in Seattle. He is convicted and sentenced to community service and alcohol treatment.
March 2004: Defensive End Manase Hopoi is arrested for punching a security guard.
May 2007: UW basketball player Artem Wallace is arrested for hit and run after his car hit a motorcyclist. Police described him as extremely intoxicated.
January 2009: Football coach Steve Sarkisian and Nick Holt violate recruiting rules over James Boyd.
January 2009: Football coach Steve Sarkisian admits to recruiting violation over Desmond Trufant.
March 2010: Defensive End Andru Pulu is arrested for assault. The victim suffered a fractured skull when he tried to break up another fight, and police noted a bootprint on his temple. No charges were ever filed.
January 2011: UW basketball player Venoy Overton is arrested and charged with raping two 16 year old girls. The charges are later reduced to contributing alcohol to a minor.
March 2011: Venoy Overton starts for coach Lorenzo Romar in the NCAA tournament.
May 2011: UW basketball player Venoy Overton is arrested and pleads guilty to promoting prostitution (pimping) of an 18 year old girl. According to court documents. Overton provided detailed instructions on how to work as a prostitute. Driving her to particular locations, teaching her how to walk, what prices to charge, and how many tricks to turn before calling him to pick her up.
November 2012: Jerramy Stevens is arrested for assaulting Hope Solo, but no charges are pressed.
July 2012: Shots were fired in the direction of police from Venoy Overton's car. An associate of Overton is charged with felony weapons charges.
2013: Head Football coach Steve Sarkisian is reimbursed for $1023 for alcohol tabs for two staff outings. The bills involved mostly shots of tequila, an athletic department spokesmen classified them as legitimate business expenses.
August 2012: Former UW Soccer star Hope Solo is cited for use of banned substances by the US Anti-Doping Agency. She will be involved with multiple domestic violence disputes with husband Jeremy Stevens during their marriage.
January 2013: UW football player Zacchery Fogerson arrested for robbing an 18 year old woman at gunpoint.
March 2013: Starting Tight End Austin Seferian-Jenkins arrested for Drunk Driving. He is suspended for one game.
July 2013: Starting Wide Receiver Kasen Williams pleads guilty to drunk driving and driving under the influence of marijuana. He misses no playing time for coach Sarkisian.
December 2013: UW Defensive Line Coach Tosh Lupoi was discovered to have made cash payments hidden in coffee cups totally $4500 to Mike Davis, coach of UW recruit Andrew Basham for private tutoring. Basham fails to qualify academically. Lupoi is paid $300,000 in a mutual separation agreement.
June 2014: Hope Solo is indicted for assaulting her half-sister and 17 year old nephew with a broomstick. Police found the victims to have visible injuries. Courts ordered her to stop drinking alcohol.
June 2014: Former UW football coach Jim Lambright is arrested for assaulting his 23 year old granddaughter. Lambright's wife and two granddaughters requested a no-contact order, saying they feel threatened by his “escalating level of aggression.” Lambright works as a consultant for Turner Construction, who received the contract to renovate Husky Stadium two years ago.
February 2014: Following Seattle's first ever Super Bowl win over Denver, Quarterback Cyler Miles and wide receiver Demore'ea Stringfellow were identified by multiple Seahawk fans who were assaulted during post game celebrations. One man was punched repeatedly and a woman who was seen taking pictures was knocked unconscious and her camera was thrown into a bonfire. An hour later another man was punched twice and chased for several blocks. Stringfellow was eventually charged with two counts of assault and one count of malicious mischief. Miles, a native of Denver, Colorado who grew up Bronco fan received a one game suspension.
January 2015: Jerramy Stevens is arrested (and later convicted) for DUI while driving the US Women's National Soccer team van with the headlights off. Hope Solo who was also drunk and in the van, became belligerent with police and was suspended by US Soccer.
THE CONCLUSION
This is not just another rivalry. Washington State University, its alumni, its administrators, and athletic fans have legitimate beefs with the University of Washington that go beyond the traditional rivalry metrics. They don’t like their philosophy, and they don’t like the way they do business. To the degree that our rivalry is lopsided is that regard is of little concern to them.
This is not another example of the poor school envying the rich school. It’s a loathing of a rich school’s refusal to live within its rather ample means, and furthermore, often seeking out supplemental ill-gotten loot from the public.
This is not another example of the remedial school resenting the smart kid school. It’s a loathing of an academic institution who values its prestige over its duty to educate its own citizens.
This is not another small football program bitter at getting beat by the bigger one. It’s a loathing of an athletic department endowed with every single economic, numerical, and regulatory advantage still opting to cheat to get an edge.
This is not an alumni admonishing the warts and troublemakers of its rival, while blatantly ignoring their own. It’s a loathing of an institution which has repeatedly breached serious ethical boundaries; and beyond merely covering them up, has excused and even encouraged major federal crimes of its teachers, players, and students while keeping themselves above the law.
This is why, if our small, slow, weak, under-trained, and under-equipped army of courageous young football players manages to kick the snot out of the University of Washington this Saturday, it will be with a personal level of satisfaction the likes of which Husky fans will never know.
For we bow down to Washington....but only so we can spit on their shoes.
11-25-2015, 08:28 AM
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