Former Chancellor Biddy Martin learned the hard way about the perils of drinking and dialing Thursday evening after leaving several embarrassing voicemails on Chancellor David Ward’s inbox.
“It’s a quarter after one, I’m all alone and I need UW,” Martin sang to Ward’s answering machine just before midnight.
Martin, the current President of Amherst College, left her post at UW-Madison last spring after her controversial proposal to split the university from the UW-System failed to gain traction.
Ward, the current interim chancellor and previous UW chancellor from 1993 to 2001, was sympathetic to Martin’s faux pas.
“Look, she’s in a very fragile state,” Ward said. “It must be incredibly difficult to go from one of the most venerated research universities in the world to a gilded mountain camp for rich kids with coke habits.”
“Still,” Ward noted, “it was totally weird.”
Although Ward had hoped to keep the incident private, Martin’s transgression went viral after an unknown source auto-tuned all of the messages and put them to a YouTube video of Bucky Badger destroying campus property.
UW System spokesperson David Giroux, a staunch opponent of the New Badger Partnership and perpetual foe of Martin, was amused.
“This is too fucking great,” Giroux said through bouts of maniacal laughter.
According to UW-Madison Dean of Students Lori Berquam, this incident will make things “totally awkward” at her notoriously raucous non-denominational holiday rave.
“Seriously, though. I’ll just have to keep Biddy away from my sensational home-brewed Fourb Loko,” Berquam said.
The voicemails also caused a minor scandal at Amherst, due to one of Martin’s messages describing Amherst students as “spoiled, bourgie asshats.” Martin asserts the quote was taken out of context.
Martin issued a video apology to both Ward and to all of Amherst College.
“We all get a little emotional sometimes, you know?” Martin said in her apology. “But we pick up ourselves up, face the day and learn to lay off the Franzia.”
No Amherst students were available for comment as they were at a mandatory assembly titled, “The plebian problem: Kill it with fire.”
UPDATED Dec. 2: While this article ran in the "Fake News Friday" section of the Dec. 2 print edition of The Daily Cardinal, it was not properly marked as a satirical piece on DailyCardinal.com. The Cardinal takes full responsibility for any confusion this may have caused readers, and for any problems that may have arisen from the article not being clearly marked as fake news.
