Just not shaping up to be a great week for CU

First, the Board of Regents votes to accept oil-industry exec Bruce Benson as President of the University of Colorado. Here in Boulder, this move is somewhat unpopular -- from anywhere in town, you can feel a kind of menacing rumbling coming from campus. I assume plans for protests are already underway.

UPDATE: This just in, in a memo from the CU Board of Regents:

The Board of Regents recognizes that this decision is unpopular among some important groups. We believe Mr. Benson will reach out to constituents in the first months of his presidency to build bridges and create partnerships, both inside and outside the university.

That Benson had better be one smooth-talkin' sonnuva gun, I say.

Meanwhile, Max Karson is back again -- locals will remember his name from last year when, as a junior at CU-Boulder, he was arrested, suspended and banned from campus after making 'threatening' remarks about the Virginia Tech shootings. (Wikipedia entry describing several other incidents resulting from Karson's enthusiastic exercising of his First Amendment rights.) The latest news is his 'satirical' anti-Asian column in the Campus Press, which has CU officials stepping all over themselves trying to apologize.

UPDATE: Here is a 2006 article in which Karson explains why he works so hard at being inflammatory.

MEANWHILE, the last surviving faculty member who was fired during CU's McCarthy-era Communist witch-hunt died this week.

Ugh.