On May 15th, the trustees of Cornell University declared their unanimous support for Michael Kotlikoff, the school’s President, whose car had bumped into a student activist during a May 1st campus protest (Chronicle of Higher Education Daily Briefing, May 18th online).
Historians of higher education were quick to point out that the narrative doesn’t always end this well for high-level university administrators involved in vehicular incidents. Perhaps the most famous episode occurred on November 26, 1936, when Oklahoma State University’s football team lost 35-13 to its archrival, the University of Oklahoma.
In the final seconds of the game, OSU’s enraged President, Casper Buttonfield, commandeered a giant combine harvester and drove it the full length of the field, mowing down both teams, their coaches, game officials, cheerleaders, and Pistol Pete, OSU’s cowboy mascot. The grim toll: 28 dead, 43 seriously injured.
OSU’s trustees took action quickly, suspending Butterfield without pay for a full semester and requiring him to fund the resodding of the field with his personal resources.
The unrepentant President told reporters, “I’m at peace with what I did, and I’d do it all over again. When your team plays that poorly, there must be consequences. This is Oklahoma, folks, not Long Island.”