Survey USA: Darcy Burner Up 50-46 Over Reichert

by: Matt Stoller

Wed Oct 22, 2008 at 21:08

He has $725k of TV on the air right now just this week, in all likelihood thanks to an illegal corporate contribution from Republican media buying firm Media Plus.  

Meanwhile, a former Harvard faculty member responded to the Seattle Times article in the comments of the article:

As someone who has been on faculty at Harvard, I can attest that this is simply twisting words for political opportunism. Harvard doesn't have "majors". They only have concentrations. And they don't have "minors" -- so to gain other credentialed experience, someone gathers coursework in joint, or dual concentrations. However only one department can appear on any transcript. Period. Even if you had major coursework across three departments (say your joint major area was "Molecular Biochemistry", you would Biology, Chemistry and Molecular Biology courses) but you would have to designate ONLY one of those as the primary department and thus folks might think you had only biology OR chemistry OR molecular biology work.

Ms. Burner's description is accurate if you understand the Harvard system (which also until recently had a 14 pt GPA scale -- I don't hear folks calling Ms. Burner a 'liar' about any 12.76 GPA average that she likely had). You just need to understand the Harvard system and its terminology which is quite different from most University systems.

This person is writing under the pseudonym 'JK465', but if they are willing to speak out under your own name, contact me at stoller at gmail.com.