<p>while we are speculating</p>
<p>what if he was trying to implement a major policy shift (crafting a legacy) and gave an ultimatum based around his leaving. His bluff was called, he left...</p>
<p>doh,
Percy's right. He'd been there 30 years. While the provost does have a reputation for firing easily, this wouldn't be something that small.</p>
<p>What would cause him to drop now instead of the original date? Surely they'd realize this abrupt shift would look fishy. Either he is telling the truth, or something negative in the works got worse unexpectedly soon and forced him to step down before it snowballed. It seems hard to believe he would simply step down like this without any further elaboration -- the explanation given so far has been arguably insufficient. If he were being truthful, he'd be more willing to divulge more information, especially after such a long run here at Penn.</p>
<p>You don't do policy shifts or give ultimatums in your last year, after your departure is announced - you take a victory lap and coast into the pits. Stetson didn't survive in the bureaucratic snake pit for 30 years only to have his bluffed called at the end when he knew that he had no cards left anyway - maybe you would make that kind of dumb mistake but he surely wouldn't.</p>
<p>OTOH, something involving the call of the hormones - even the most wily and powerful players have been known to have their brains addled by that - ask Bill Clinton.</p>
<p>Any news? It seems like Penn is on info lock-down.</p>
<p>Penn is on info lock down... but rumors are flying.</p>
<p>What rumors have you heard?</p>
<ol>
<li>Stetson had affair w. undergrad</li>
<li>Refuses to admit dulce.</li>
</ol>
<p>as much as we know:
<a href="http://www.ivygateblog.com/blog/2007/09/rumors_swirl_about_expenn_admissions_dean_admissions_office_hides.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.ivygateblog.com/blog/2007/09/rumors_swirl_about_expenn_admissions_dean_admissions_office_hides.html</a></p>
<p>This doesn't really advance the ball at all from what was swirling around 2 weeks ago. The health rumors can be dismissed by anyone with half a brain - if the man was sick/dying, people in the admissions office would be praising him to the skies instead of treating him as "he who should not be named". I don't buy the corruption in admissions rumors - admissions is a committee decision and Stetson couldn't get someone totally unqualified in even if he wanted to. Another theory that I don't buy is that they discovered resume fraud ala Marilee Jones - this late in the game they'd just let him serve out his few remaining months. So that leaves sex. On another forum, someone mentioned selling out "trade secrets" as another possibility - Stetson always said that he was going to do consulting, etc. after his retirement. If he started work a little early and Penn felt that he was betraying Penn confidential info in doing so, this could have led to him being shown the door early also. But I still prefer the sex theory - it's a lot more fun.</p>
<p>the Ivygate blog posting agrees that among possible scandals, a sexual one would be better than misuse of office. </p>
<p>There could be an upside to a sex scandal: if the admissions director had somehow been influencing the selection so as to yield a larger number of good-looking females on campus, that might actually boost the application numbers this year. If Vanderbilt tried to draw Jews as a way of improving the campus enviroment, why not attractive women as the group-du-jour at Penn?</p>
<p>Even in the most scandalous version of the rumors, Stetson had an undergrad girlfriend (singular) not a harem, and she was already admitted, not an applicant. So if you find this years crop of females better looking, don't blame Stetson. In general Ivy schools select for brains instead of beauty and they get what they select for. A lot of what we call beauty is really hair/clothes/makeup and most Ivy women don't put their energy in that direction.</p>
<p>"A lot of what we call beauty is really hair/clothes/makeup"</p>
<p>Well, that's not what I look for...</p>
<p>"most Ivy women don't put their energy in that direction."</p>
<p>Not judging by whenever I'm outside here.</p>
<p>Phat, I'm wit chu.</p>
<p>Any news on Stetson?</p>
<p>Still no news. No one is commenting.</p>
<p>Read the comments - a couple support the "having an affair w/ an undergrad" theory but offer no real proof.</p>
<p>^ And now some yutz is trying to spread a rumor about Amy Gutmann.</p>
<p>The "With dean gone, answer may change" article is the worst kind of speculative journalism - an article written on basically no facts and what few facts there are support the opposite conclusion. 400 words to say basically nothing. But I guess "With dean gone, nothing has changed" is not a story, even by DP standards. Kaplan is clearly an interim figure - he has no mandate to make any major (or even minor) policy changes and he won't. I'm sure once a new permanent dean is appointed, that person will eventually put his stamp on Penn admissions, but even then only after he/she has been around for a year or two - in order to improve something (especially something as successful as the Stetson admissions policy) you first have to understand how it works in the first place. So I wouldn't expect any real policy shifts until maybe the admissions cycle for the class of 2014 at the earliest, and even then there's a high likelihood that the conclusion will be "don't fix what isn't broken". Early decision especially has been a great boon to Penn and someone would have to come up with a really strong argument for getting rid of it and sell that at the highest levels of the U before the policy could change.</p>