Dordt College Gets a Laugh Out Of My Sally Mason Joke

You may recall that I was having fun with the Sally Mason situation the other day at the University of Iowa when I inserted Dordt College of Sioux Center into the picture.

Mason [pictured at the left] is the lady who is obviously in over her head as the school president in Iowa City.

Others evidently feel the same way.

The State Board of Regents denied Mason a pay raise because of her role in the sexual assault mess at her school.

That, of course, is like the pot calling the kettle black. The Board of Regents is an idiotic group that should have been put to sleep the last time Mike Gartner was whacked with a no-confidence vote.

"With the heat on," I wrote, "don't be surprised if you hear that Mason has decided to move to New Hampshire or Estonia so she can write a book about higher education.

"Obviously, the quicker she's gone from Iowa City, the better...I suppose her friends will say she's the victim of bad advice, but she's the boss and the responsibility is hers."

I went on to jokingly say that Mason might be teaching classes at Dordt sometime in the future.

That immediately got the attention of a good guy named Mike Byker, the sports information director at Dordt, who is pictured at the right.

Byker got hold of Scott Pierce, Drake's football and women's basketball radio play-by-play announcer and a frequent contributor to my columns. Byker was trying to reach me, but didn't have my e-mail address.

The next day, I heard from Pierce, who was told by Byker: "I'm a longtime reader of Ron Maly's blog, and you are mentioned several times. In a recent blog he commented Sally Mason would end up teaching at Dordt College.

"I will say I got a laugh out of that. We're doing just fine without her, but she's welcome to apply if we have an opening."

Pierce relayed this comment to me in regard to what Byker said: "If you want to hear from all of Iowa's colleges, rewrite the piece and insert their names. I have a feeling they would say the same thing as Mike."

I even heard through the grapevine that somebody else made this comment about Mason: "Please, please don't send her to Dordt. Maybe an out-of-state college would be willing to take her off the Iowa taxpayers' hands. I wouldn't even wish her on Northwestern."

That's a good one.

Northwestern College in Orange City is Dordt's big rival.

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I got hold of Byker via e-mail yesterday, and asked him to give me some information about Dordt.

"We have an enrollment of about 1,400," he said. "We're affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church [CRC]. We have varsity sports in football, men's and women's cross-country, volleyball, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's basketball, men's and women's indoor and outdoor track, softball, baseball, men's and women's tennis, club hockey and lacrosse.

"Our women's cross-country team is ranked No. 22 in the NAIA, women's volleyball is ranked No. 15 nationally, women's soccer currently leads the Great Plains Athletic Conference with a 4-0 record.

"We just started our football program. We're taking some lumps right now, but we look at it as a building process. We're trying to remain patient."

Dordt's football team is 0-4 and has been shut out in three of the losses.

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[Photos at the top of this column [bottom to top] are of the B.J. Haan Auditorium, the chapel named after Dordt's first president, and DeWitt Gym, the home of the volleyball and basketball teams. Photos courtesy of Dordt College].