Anonymous website: third tier or bust

This morning’s Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) reports that an anonymous website critical of Missouri Valley College‘s administration — and the school’s fourth-tier ranking in U.S. News‘ annual listing of America’s Best Colleges — “has students and professors on the Marshall, Mo., campus buzzing.”

Like several similar Web pages that have popped up in recent years, Missouri Valley College: A Different View appears to be written, pseudonymously, by a frustrated professor or administrator. The site’s author — who goes by the nom de plume “W.H. Black,” the name of Missouri Valley’s first president — lambastes the college’s president and trustees, accusing them of corruption, lack of vision, and an unhealthy obsession with the institution’s athletics program.

Unfortunately for the campus, this news breaks the same day as the college’s “first-ever Senior Day Employment Symposium” (according to a PDF newsletter from MVC president Bonnie L. Humphrey). Funny how these things seem to happen at the worst of times.

Google makes a splash with TiSP

Just read the latest Google press release about the company’s newest venture: a free in-home wireless broadband service called Google TiSP.

TiSP stands for “Toilet Internet Service Provider,” a “self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.”

Hmmm. Something smells foul about this announcement. Could Google be pulling our leg again? What’s today’s date?

Related: The April Fool’s Day Defense Kit, advice about avoiding the tricks of old and new media, via Dan Gillmor’s Center for Citizen Media blog.