In which everyone's time is wasted.

The Committee on Divine Retribution meets for one of only two reasons.

1) A student with borderline personality disorder who has cheated at nearly everything she has ever attempted believes she can slime her way through an academic misconduct hearing with some obviously concocted "evidence" that proves her innocence.

2) The course instructor is a dick who believes a student's failure to follow (or creative interpretation of) course instructions warrants dismissal from the university.

I estimate that the last several hearings, all of Type 2, resulted in monetary loss on the order of $10,000, considering the number of deans, department heads, faculty, students and full-time staff required to convene a hearing. I would like to be able to support my fellow faculty, but they have to give me something -- anything! -- to work with.

Rest in peace, William.

Today I learned a friend has gone.

How brief the distance between life and death! In fact there is none. Life is but death's vestibule, and our pilgrimage on earth is but a journey to the grave. The pulse that preserves our being beats our death march, and the blood which circulates our life is floating it onward to the deeps of death. To-day we see our friends in health, to-morrow we hear of their decease. We clasped the hand of the strong man but yesterday, and to-day we close his eyes. We rode in the chariot of comfort but an hour ago, and in a few more hours the last black chariot must convey us to the home of all living. Oh, how closely allied is death to life!

From the Reverend C. H. Spurgeon's "The Good Man's Life and Death."