College President Apologizes For Facebook Pictures

Janet Dudley-Eshbach, the president of Salisbury University in Maryland, spent yesterday apologizing for two photographs and captions she had on the social-networking Web site, Facebook.

One of the pictures showed her brandishing a stick before a Mexican man with a caption saying she had to "beat off the Mexicans because they were constantly flirting with my daughter." The other photo of a male tapir, a pig-like animal, commented on the animal's ample genitalia.

She removed her profile Monday after a news station, WBOC, began inquiring about the photos. The station published the photos on their website.

Ironically, Dudley-Eshbach is a specialist in Latin American studies who lists Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges among her favorite authors on the school's Web site. Serving as president since 2000, she said she has worked to make the school with 7,500 students more diverse.

She said she was with her daughter, then a senior at the University of Delaware, on a vacation to Mexico, Belize and Guatemala in January when the pictures were taken.

They photographed the tapir, an animal best known for its generous endowment, on a trip to the Belize Zoo. Toward the end of the vacation, they stayed on the island of Cozumel, Mexico, befriending a local man who took them on snorkeling tours. The president joked with him about his flirting with her daughter and asked a tourist to take the picture that wound up on the Web site.

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