UT-Dallas Has Purged Alleged Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht from Its Website

Eric Nicholson at the Dallas Observer writes:

During his four years as an undergrad at UT-Dallas, Ross Ulbricht earned a handful of mentions on the school's website. His name appeared on a list of students at the NanoTech Institute, on a 2004 press release about students competing in an academic tournament, on a handful of research papers he co-authored while working in professor John Ferraris' physics lab.

Since last week, when federal authorities arrested the 29-year old for allegedly masterminding the online drug bazaar Silk Road, that's all disappeared. Google can still find traces of him on UTD's website, but the links are either dead or they lead to pages, like the list of NanoTech students, from which Ulbricht's name has been purged.

The UTD Mercury -- where, full disclosure, I worked as managing editor in 2009 -- sniffed out the administration's case of willful amnesia and penned an editorial lambasting the university's "scorched-earth approach to public relations" as "irresponsible and reactionary."