All opinions expressed in this website are well-reasoned and insightful. Needless to say, they are not those of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona, nor necessarily those of its staff, faculty, students, and lackeys. Anyone who says otherwise is itchin' for a fight. (This disclaimer shamelessly stolen/adapted from the Whad'Ya Know Quiz.) To protect the innocent and guilty alike, robots like Google are instructed to ignore these pages.

Derelict of the Year Offense

Sometimes members of our department take offense or express concerns over our Derelict tradition. Messages to calm the waters are reproduced on this page.

Wed, 3 May 2000

On behalf of the Derelict Committee, David Ropp sent the following e-mail. Note that the message was sent from the computer nick.math.arizona.edu. Without our Derelict Award, and Nick Ercolani's stallion performance in winning it, Ropp's e-mail could simply not have been sent from that machine!

From ropp@nick.math.arizona.edu  Wed May  3 01:15:11 2000
Return-Path: <ropp@nick.math.arizona.edu>
Date: Wed, 3 May 2000 01:12:49 -0700
From: David Ropp <ropp@grad.math.arizona.edu>
Message-Id: <200005030812.BAA08117@nick.math.arizona.edu>
To: all@math.arizona.edu

I just received a note from a member of our department.  
Here is an excerpt.

>I have always felt that the derelict tradition is one of our 
>identifying traditions.  I have also, I'm afraid, been on the 
>edge in worrying about unwanted consequences for nominees.  

I agree, and I seriously regret that I allowed some nominations
that were not in the good-natured spirit of this tradition.  
It was inexcusable of me, and I sincerely apologize.  I have 
revoked those nominations.  

That still leaves several fine and well-intentioned nominees
(one of whom, Mr. Alvarez, is actively campaigning), so please
do not let my gross error dampen this great tradition.

Yours, 
David Ropp
http://math.arizona.edu
Last modified: Thu, 10 May 2007 12:50:43 -0600
© Copyright 1996–2005 by The Derelict Committee. All rights reserved, dammit!
Website crafting by Karl Bauer, David Ropp, Jeff Selden, Alexander Perlis.
Webmaster: doty at math dot arizona dot edu
Validate: XHTML, CSS, Links.