More unrest at the University of Biondi

[AlumniFan]

The beautiful campus has come at an expensive price for a student. A SLU education is not as affordable as it used to be. It has way out paced inflation and wages. The buildings are being paid for by SLU students that are going to be mired in federal and private student loans for a lifetime. $75,000 to $100,000 in student loans is not unusual for a SLU grad.

A guy like me who went through SLU and has been fairly fortunate. It took me 12-13 years to pay off my loans. I know several who had double what I had. During this time, I have not been able to save as much as I should for my kids college because I was still paying my own. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that I will send my kids to SLU (or similar Catholic university) without them having to bear huge loans. If they do, the cycle will continue with their kids.

as it stands today, I will likely send my kids to state schools and would not consider SLU. This is from someone whose family has 5-6 different alumni in it.

To be both accurate and fair, a significant portion of the funding for buildings (e.g. The arena, b-school, new law school, etc.) comes not from tuition but from donations. That seems like obvious knowledge to me, but maybe others are not aware.

Tuition pays for operating costs and historically the operating cost were subsidized by endowment spend, typically 5% per annum.

Because of the building boom across US campuses, some of the endowment spend has been redirected and thus tuitions have begun to rise more rapidly.

To suggest that tuitions are funding campus improvements is really not accurate. Moreover, no one is forced to attend SLU - it's a choice. If a family thinks the tuition is too high for the value offered there are plenty of other choices.

[RB2.0]

The beautiful campus has come at an expensive price for a student. A SLU education is not as affordable as it used to be. It has way out paced inflation and wages. The buildings are being paid for by SLU students that are going to be mired in federal and private student loans for a lifetime. $75,000 to $100,000 in student loans is not unusual for a SLU grad.

A guy like me who went through SLU and has been fairly fortunate. It took me 12-13 years to pay off my loans. I know several who had double what I had. During this time, I have not been able to save as much as I should for my kids college because I was still paying my own. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that I will send my kids to SLU (or similar Catholic university) without them having to bear huge loans. If they do, the cycle will continue with their kids.

as it stands today, I will likely send my kids to state schools and would not consider SLU. This is from someone whose family has 5-6 different alumni in it.

SLU offers tremendous financial aid packages (especially higher % grants than loans) that often make a SLU education more affordable than a state school. I still fail to see your point.

If your point is college is expensive, then yes, you are correct. College is very expensive.

[RiseAndGrind]

Yeah, there are usually a few profs like that at most schools, but they generally are still licensed attorneys, even if they've never actually practiced. The DJ guy I'm talking about has never been licensed anywhere. He also happens to be a convicted felon, with the teardrop tattoo from his prison stay to prove it, so he might not even have been allowed to sit for the bar anyway. But he also hasn't even published any articles in any reputable journals. If the whole dean situation wasn't a ripe enough target for ridicule, the fact that this guy is on board would fit the bill.

And DJ JD would've been awesome...

Wow. You're way off base. Why don't you just link to his bio? His name is Spearit, he taught in a prison, and he didn't adopt the name while acting as a DJ.

http://slu.edu/colleges/law/slulaw/faculty/spearit

Education:

B.A., University of Houston, 1998

M.T.S., Harvard University, 2000

Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006

J.D., University of California, Berkeley School of Law, 2009

[brianstl]

Wow. You're way off base. Why don't you just link to his bio? His name is Spearit, he taught in a prison, and he didn't adopt the name while acting as a DJ. http://slu.edu/colleges/law/slulaw/faculty/spearit Education: B.A., University of Houston, 1998M.T.S., Harvard University, 2000Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006J.D., University of California, Berkeley School of Law, 2009

He did serve time in prison.

[JMM28]

[Bobby Metzinger]

[RiseAndGrind]

He did serve time in prison.

Source?

[brianstl]

Source?

He mentoned it in one of the Huffington Post columns he wrote.

[sludevil]

It seems to me that if you want to complain about the law school, there's much better material than a very eccentric (and apparently very interesting) professor. How about the dean situation? Absolutely brutal job prospects? Rising tuition costs? Poor (and worsening) ranking? General lack of support from the administration? I mean, the list is pretty lengthy, people.

[TheA_Bomb]

Getting put in the slammer gives him a unique perspective on criminal law. Not many professors have that perspective.

[DD3]

To be both accurate and fair, a significant portion of the funding for buildings (e.g. The arena, b-school, new law school, etc.) comes not from tuition but from donations. That seems like obvious knowledge to me, but maybe others are not aware.

Tuition pays for operating costs and historically the operating cost were subsidized by endowment spend, typically 5% per annum.

Because of the building boom across US campuses, some of the endowment spend has been redirected and thus tuitions have begun to rise more rapidly.

To suggest that tuitions are funding campus improvements is really not accurate. Moreover, no one is forced to attend SLU - it's a choice. If a family thinks the tuition is too high for the value offered there are plenty of other choices.

This^

If we assume tuition has in fact increased 5x, as alleged above, we should also take into account increase in available financial aid. SLU is not cheap. I have tons of debt from undergrad and law school. But let's not fall into the easy, too obvious, fallacy that tuition dollars fund green space and fountains. Just isn't true--at least not anywhere close to the extent folks might believe.

[SLU_PT_2k11]

Did anybody else get their copy of Universitas this week? I found it to be Propaganda-like in justifying how amazeballs Biondi has been. Also, on the back cover, is an invitation to a "Gala to celebrate 25 years of Biondi's leadership". Hilarious.

[Pistol]

Did anybody else get their copy of Universitas this week? I found it to be Propaganda-like in justifying how amazeballs Biondi has been. Also, on the back cover, is an invitation to a "Gala to celebrate 25 years of Biondi's leadership". Hilarious.

Let's be honest. Biondi's trip to Asia was not purely for fundraising from some donors based over there. It was to trade management tips with his head-of-state equivalent:

[JMM28]

It probably isn't coincidence that North Korea is rattling their 19th century sabers at the same time Biondi is in Asia. Everyone wants to blame Dennis Rodman, but we know what really happened...

[TheA_Bomb]

I make a few snide comments about Fr. Biondi sj in a public forum. Fr. Biondi goes on a trip to "Asia". News flash North Korea has targetted Austin, TX for nuclear attack! Coincidence, I think not.

Let's be honest. Biondi's trip to Asia was not purely for fundraising from some donors based over there. It was to trade management tips with his head-of-state equivalent:

[Pistol]

I make a few snide comments about Fr. Biondi sj in a public forum. Fr. Biondi goes on a trip to "Asia". News flash North Korea has targetted Austin, TX for nuclear attack! Coincidence, I think not.

The only surprising part is that no one has realized it yet. Well done, sir.

[hsmith19]

Wow. You're way off base. Why don't you just link to his bio? His name is Spearit, he taught in a prison, and he didn't adopt the name while acting as a DJ.

http://slu.edu/colleges/law/slulaw/faculty/spearit

Education:

B.A., University of Houston, 1998

M.T.S., Harvard University, 2000

Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006

J.D., University of California, Berkeley School of Law, 2009

You are the one who is off base. He routinely discusses both his incarceration and his DJ/MC career in his classes and on his blogs, which can be found here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/spearit/growing-faith-prisons-hip-hop-and-islam_b_2829013.html

http://www.saltlaw.org/blog/author/spearitmaldonado/

In fact, the subject of hip-hop music comprises the majority of his "academic" writing.

[hsmith19]

It seems to me that if you want to complain about the law school, there's much better material than a very eccentric (and apparently very interesting) professor. How about the dean situation? Absolutely brutal job prospects? Rising tuition costs? Poor (and worsening) ranking? General lack of support from the administration? I mean, the list is pretty lengthy, people.

Exactly. And I specifically cited the administration's mishandling of the ongoing dean soap opera as an even greater source of embarrassment than having SpearIt on the faculty, on the very same page you posted on. See below:

Yeah, there are usually a few profs like that at most schools, but they generally are still licensed attorneys, even if they've never actually practiced. The DJ guy I'm talking about has never been licensed anywhere. He also happens to be a convicted felon, with the teardrop tattoo from his prison stay to prove it, so he might not even have been allowed to sit for the bar anyway. But he also hasn't even published any articles in any reputable journals. If the whole dean situation wasn't a ripe enough target for ridicule, the fact that this guy is on board would fit the bill.

And DJ JD would've been awesome...

However, if you think people aren't ALSO laughing at us for having a professor like SpearIt, you're simply mistaken. In fact, his HuffPo blog has gone viral more than once as another excuse to ridicule the law school. Here are a couple of the more recent examples:

http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=35139

http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=36652

[hsmith19]

Getting put in the slammer gives him a unique perspective on criminal law. Not many professors have that perspective.

Sure, it's unique. I have no doubt he could be a very "interesting" and "eccentric" undergrad prof. But unfortunately for his students, being in the slammer is no substitute for actually having practiced criminal law when it comes to teaching the practice of criminal law.

[RiseAndGrind]

You are the one who is off base. He routinely discusses both his incarceration and his DJ/MC career in his classes and on his blogs, which can be found here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/spearit/growing-faith-prisons-hip-hop-and-islam_b_2829013.html

http://www.saltlaw.org/blog/author/spearitmaldonado/

In fact, the subject of hip-hop music comprises the majority of his "academic" writing.

I've had him for class, read the Huffington Post & Saltlaw blogs, and still can't find where he talks about his actual incarceration. Am I missing something? Perhaps.

[TheA_Bomb]

Well according to his CV he was a panelist on this:

Panelist, "Prison Penile-Colon(ies) and Hyper-Masculinity in the Hood," Sixteenth Annual LatCrit Conference, San Diego, California, (October 7, 2011).

So yeah he probably did serve some hard time.

SpearIt, now that's just stupId.

[hsmith19]

I've had him for class, read the Huffington Post & Saltlaw blogs, and still can't find where he talks about his actual incarceration. Am I missing something? Perhaps.

Likely you are. If you really doubt those of us telling you he went to prison and was a hip-hop DJ, you could ask him. He doesn't tend to shy away from discussing either subject.

And my purpose here is certainly not to slime him as being an uninteresting, uneccentric, or unintelligent individual. I do think, however, that he has been woefully miscast in his present position at the law school, and that miscastings such as his hurt the image and reputation of the school.

[sludevil]

Likely you are. If you really doubt those of us telling you he went to prison and was a hip-hop DJ, you could ask him. He doesn't tend to shy away from discussing either subject.

And my purpose here is certainly not to slime him as being an uninteresting, uneccentric, or unintelligent individual. I do think, however, that he has been woefully miscast in his present position at the law school, and that miscastings such as his hurt the image and reputation of the school.

Maybe. I guess I take a fairly utilitarian view to law school. That is, law school doesn't really teach you anything or benefit you in any discernible way, other than as a credentialing device. You go to law school to become a lawyer. So the quality of a law school can be judged almost exclusively on its ability to achieve desirable outcomes for its graduates. SLU doesn't do that very well. And I sincerely doubt that SpearIt alone has anything to do with the troubles of SLU grads; SpearIt, at worst, might be more symptomatic of an administration that just doesn't really seem to care. But my point is that, if looking at this in the context of the administration, there are much bigger issues to discuss. I guess it sucks that SpearIt is just one more thing to add to the pile, but I doubt he moves the needle one way or the other.

[Box and Won]

Spearlt is leaving SLU Law.