Chronicle of Higher Education - daily update - Tuesday, March 23, 1999
Fictional Character Not Named to California Presidency, After All
By JULIANNE BASINGER
Despite what you may have read in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the head of the Dallas-based Church of the SubGenius, J.R. (Bob) Dobbs, has not been named president of the California Institute of Integral Studies. Mr. Dobbs, a smiling, pipe-smoking man who could pass as Ward Cleaver's twin brother, is a fictional character.
An item on his purported move to higher-education administration, faxed on the institute's letterhead by an unidentified prankster, appeared in the "Gazette" section of the March 19 issue of The Chronicle. The news release stated that John Robert Dobbs had been named the new president of the institute, an accredited institution in San Francisco that promotes a "nondual, multidimensional, holistic, and evolutionary" approach to learning. "John Robert Dobbs comes to the Institute with a background in sales," the release said.
The Church of the SubGenius has a World-Wide Web site that bills itself as "Pornological Dementertainment." The site, run by the SubGenius Foundation, of Dallas, also has a mail-order service, and customers can click on an icon labeled "Buy Bob" for "ordainment, supplies, sex. " The news release stated that in addition to his "background in sales" and work for the SubGenius Foundation, Mr. Dobbs had been a "marketing consultant" for the California Institute since 1992. Not so, says Donna Blakemore, the vice-president for advancement at the institute, which, unlike Mr. Dobbs, does exist. Ms. Blakemore notified The Chronicle late last week of its error in publishing the announcement.
The SubGenius site is fairly well known, she said, and some people at the institute "were really quite distressed" about the hoax, particularly since the institute was being visited this month by a team reviewing its accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The Church of the SubGenius predates the creation of the Web; before then, it was solely a mail-order service. "If Mad is for 15-year-olds, this is for 50-year-olds," Ms. Blakemore said.
The Chronicle plans to print a correction in its next issue. The announcement also appeared on line, but has already been removed from this Web site.
The undated news release, which offered no contact name, was printed on stationery bearing an outdated address. The institute moved to a new location in San Francisco in December, and it switched to a new letterhead at that time, Ms. Blakemore said. "We sent all the old stuff to recycling," she said. "There isn't any more around here, unless somebody has a personal supply squirreled away in their desk somewhere. The question is, was it somebody who used to work here, who works here now, a student?"
Whoever it was, he or she knew that the institute was searching for a new president, and that the current president, Robert McDermott, was stepping down to return to being a professor in the institute's Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program. The news release even had a brief description of the institute, noting its founding in 1968 by an Indian yogi, Haridas Chaudhuri.
Although the news release misspelled Mr. Chaudhuri's name, "it had enough factual information that it made it kind of scary," Ms. Blakemore said. The institute, however, has no plans to investigate the matter. "Unfortunately," Ms. Blakemore said, "there are no fingerprints on this."
The institute's Board of Trustees began the search for a new president in October and plans to announce its selection next week, Ms. Blakemore said. The board's choice is a dean from "traditional higher education," she added, who has no ties to the SubGenius Foundation nor a background in sales.