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Earlier this year, we discussed how UC Davis detailed in a report that it spent $175k with a reputation management firm to try bury the 2011 pepper-spraying incident that has become so infamous, as well as to bolster the positive reputation and search results of its former Chancellor, Linda Katehi.
[...] A new report has been issued that makes it clear that the $175k with the one reputation management vendor was just the tip of the iceberg, and that Katehi's obsession with her own online reputation was far more serious than anyone had known. Indeed, her attempts to meddle in her own online search results started long before the 2011 pepper-spraying incident.
[...] While the initial reporting indicated a single vendor had been paid $175k on Katehi's request to try to control messaging about the school and herself through a barrage of good, but trumped up, press, UC Davis actually hired three different reputation management firms to do this, all to the tune of over $400k. And she appears to have been more concerned with her own reputation than that of the school she was to be stewarding.
[...] It goes without saying that as we, the link above, and several other online media outlets are discussing these revelations, and placing them alongside the original 2011 incident for context, the work of the three vendors and the nearly half a million dollars paid to them has failed.
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University of California in Davis Spent $175k on SEO and "Reputation Management"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @05:32AM
..I've seen too many women in high positions treated with kid's gloves when they fuck-up.
I've worked in a University where a certain female member of the academic staff only got the job (with tenure) because she was such a fuck-up at her previous academic gig...the sneaky swine at the previous institute gave her such glowing references no-one thought to question them.
The truth only came out when a post-doc from her previous place of employ started working with us, saw her in the corridor and uttered the immortal phrase 'what the fuck is that disaster doing here?' he then catalogued her disasters at the previous place of employ (verified later via 'side channels').
Nothing was done (she remained there for at least a decade after I left my job there, and about a decade and a half after after the revelations about her past)
Why was she still employed?
1. Tenure - hard to get rid of someone once you've foolishly given them it.
2. Gender - Females in Engineering, got to keep the numbers up irrespective of quality
3. Ethnicity - She ticked this box as well, being non-white.
I have to add, on point 3, over the years I've seen quite a number of staff of both genders who have managed to keep their jobs despite being obvious fuck-ups because of that card..again, a numbers game.