Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Chalk-Talk Challenged

An Old City business owner was more than mildly chagrined Monday morning to find two police cruisers, a mobile crime unit, and at least five uniformed KPD officers hovering over messages, written in chalk, on the sidewalks around the intersection of Jackson and Central. Such obviously criminal statements as "Make art, not war," "End racism!" and the peace symbol were the objects of the investigation, the businessman says. He says that later in the morning, a city water truck and maintenance crew showed up to wash away those blatant obscenities. "This is what the police have to do?" he asks.

Jocks and Jokers

Last week, the News Sentinel reported that the Colorado opinion- research company the University of Tennessee paid $80,000 to figure out how it can improve its image has sussed out the problem: UT is known more for athletics than academics. The day this news flash hit the paper, the men's and women's athletics departments held the Athletes' Senior Dinner at the posh new Wolf-Kaplan Center, located in the bowels of Stadium Hall. Graduating seniors invite their favorite professors, which can make for interesting interaction between the eggheads and the jocks. This year, the guest of honor was men's Athletics Director Doug Dickey, who is retiring at the end of the year. Dickey, obviously smarting from news stories about the opinion research company's findings, gave the athletes some pragmatic advice on the importance of cultivating contacts—"It's not what you know; it's who you know...," talked about graduation rates, and said that UT is "criticized because it is known more for athletics than academics." He startled the professorial side of his audience by saying that he was "willing to let the rest of the university catch up." Dickey said that when he was coaching 30 years ago, colleges had "twice the number of athletes, so half of them could flunk out, and you still had plenty." Now, he said, there are limits on the number of scholarships, and of course, "half the athletes have to be women." Particularly unnerving to the profs was Dickey's way of making athlete a three-syllable word.

On the Library Front

Knox County's human-resources department has made its recommendations of the seven most-qualified candidates for the next director of the Knox County Public Library System, a bitter point of contention for about a year now. As insiders expected, the list does not include the name of controversial applicant Charles Davenport, the current interim director and former director of the library's board, who many librarians suspected was using political connections to gain the position. Of the seven, the only local is Myretta Black, the branch-services manager who has 29 years of public-library experience. The other recommended applicants include librarians from Franklin, Tenn.; Orlando; Little Rock; Willow Springs, Ill.; La Cross, Wisc.; and Chandler, Ariz. The search committee, headed by Steve Roberts, will be interviewing the candidates over the next three weeks, with hopes of making a recommendation to the board before the summer.

Meanwhile, the state Senate voted unanimously to allow Knox County to turn over the system's reigns to the county executive. Though some librarians might have welcomed such a transfer last summer, several dread it today as a "power grab." Mike Ragsdale, the county executive inaugurated last fall, is currently experiencing a serious PR problem with the library staff, who are resentful of an irregular and unexplained hire, believe Ragsdale's office to be naive about information sciences in general, and suspect Ragsdale of orchestrating an anschluss. Gov. Bredesen has yet to sign the bill, sponsored by Ben Atchley, but is expected to; County Commission will have to approve it by a two-thirds majority. It will put county commissioners in a somewhat awkward position. Those who vote for it will be voting, effectively, to disallow themselves from screwing up the library administration by appointing incompetent board members.

Bye-bye Iraq, Hello Steve

Third District City Councilman Steve Hall is an ambitious guy. Media savvy, too. Hall has been itching to jump into the fray and take a whack at running for mayor, but he'd been biding his time while the war in Iraq gobbled up air time. On Monday, Bush administration spokespersons more or less declared the war over. On Tuesday, Hall called in to Frank Cagle's WNOX radio talk show and announced that he's ready to appoint a treasurer and start taking political contributions. He's still hedging a bit, and says he'll wait to see if the people who have been urging him to run are ready to put their money where their mouths are.