The Martin Report Report

You have to credit Holden Thorp for keeping staff on their best worst behavior. Since he started, every semester’s been like an entire season of “Mad Men.”

But while you were sledding, a lot happened back here. Over winter break former Gov. Jim Martin released his full report on academic and athletic misconduct here at the University.

Its objective wasn’t just to completely escape your attention by being released over the holiday, but to fully answer these most important questions regarding fraudulent, no-show and easy-A classes within the Department of African and Afro-American Studies: How did they happen, who knew about them, and why didn’t my adviser enroll me?

Last fall — even before the report and after one scandal too many — Thorp decided to take responsibility for academic misconduct under his nose, tender his resignation, and stay on through the school year because he thinks we’ve still got one more good scandal left in us.

But the truth is, the Board of Trustees requested he stay longer, so they could have enough time to find a candidate with Thorp’s leadership bona fides. They already have it narrowed down to Katt Williams, General Custer and a pack of lemmings.

And Gov. Martin’s report will be an invaluable resource to our next chancellor. Here are his most important conclusions:

This was an academic scandal, not an athletic one. This is a relief, because it’s one thing having future employers know your college has pretend classes, but it’s a whole other thing if they ever see our football team play defense.

This was an isolated scandal. This whole thing was limited to 216 suspect courses and only about 454 unauthorized grade changes. The numbers may seem high, but they were all in a totally secluded, out-in-the-sticks, completely secret, inaccessible part of campus you’ve never even heard of. Like, so isolated, I’m actually not even allowed to talk to you about it.

No evidence anyone profited from the no-show classes. I mean, unless you want to count the guy who got paid for classes he never taught. But why would you? I mean, cast some more stones, why don’t you? Geez, people!

Involvement in misconduct was limited to two individuals. None of the students could have known. Boy, if I had a nickel for every time I received an “A” here for a class I never went to and didn’t even realize it…

Now, some people may say that Thorp cherry-picked his own investigator. But others will argue it’s like bringing your own paternity results to a Maury taping.

You know what precarious times these are for our university. Our campus was only just starting to overcome the damage of having “Patch Adams” filmed here.

Now is not the time to question our leadership. No matter what, Thorp danced to “Thriller” that one time. He can’t be that bad, right?

Then again, so did Michael Jackson.