Month: December 2017

It’s not often that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) injects itself into political controversies relevant to college campuses, but 2017 has not been an ordinary year.  So perhaps it is not surprising that the agency has announced that it is reclaiming the word “snowflake” for its exclusive use.

In a December 21st press conference held at NOAA’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, Chief Administrator Timothy Gallaudet noted that in the past few years the term “snowflake” has been “hijacked by conservative activists and re-purposed in a derogatory fashion to describe an overly sensitive or easily offended college student.  This is an abuse of a word that depicts one of nature’s most stunning creations, an intricate, wondrous, symmetrical ice crystal that gently descends through the Earth’s atmosphere.  Dragging ‘snowflake’ into the polarizing discourse of our nation’s current political battles is simply unacceptable.  STOP IT.”

Doctor Gallaudet suggested that the term “whine-puppy” be used instead of “snowflake” to refer to the population in question, a recommendation that was immediately objected to by representatives of DUPE: Dogs United to Pee Everywhere.

Happy Holidays to All from University Life!

The University of Maryland made headlines recently when it decided to hire a full-time “Hate-Bias Response Coordinator” (no joke).  According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the coordinator “will manage a new bias-response team, as well as meet with students affected by hate incidents and help design training and education on diversity and inclusion issues.”

Sounds pretty good in theory, but it looks like the details are revealing a devil or two.

For example, consider Sage Grouse College in Casper, Wyoming.  In early November it hired its first HBR Coordinator.  Just in time, it seemed, because less than two weeks later a flood of vile, hostile graffiti targeting natives of Liechtenstein began appearing throughout the campus (e.g., “Likdenstein is the 4th smallest country in Europe, and it SUCKS.”)  The country’s flag (see above) was found stuffed in a toilet in The Bird’s Nest, Sage Grouse’s main student cafeteria, causing the facility to flood. 

Shockingly, campus police traced the crimes to Quentin Skoof, the school’s HBR Coordinator.  According to a statement released by the college, “Mr. Skoof was deeply concerned that there would too few hate incidents on Sage Grouse’s demographically homogeneous campus to justify his continued employment in the Coordinator position, so he decided to manufacture incidents on his own.  Given that no students from Liechtenstein attend Sage Grouse, Mr. Skoof thought that no one would be harmed by focusing on this group.  As it turns out, the grandparents of the custodian who discovered the flag in the toilet were raised in Liechtenstein.  The custodian is now being treated by a therapist from our Flag Abuse Crisis Team (FACT).”

Mr. Skoof has been formally reprimanded for his actions, and will be required to attend a remedial vocabulary class where the proper spelling of “Liechtenstein” will be addressed. 

On a more positive note, the percentage of Sage Grouse students who correctly identify Liechtenstein as a country in Europe, not a sex position, has increased from 15% to 43% since the graffiti incident.

 

Campus Reform, a politically conservative website devoted to higher education, has ignited a firestorm of controversy with its recent claim that chair desks for left-handed students are significantly over-represented in college classrooms around the country.  According to Sterling Beard, Campus Reform’s editor, left-handers constitute only about 10% of the student population, but nearly 17% of all college chair desks are designed for this subgroup.  “What we have here is discrimination, pure and simple,” Beard asserts.  “Many right-handed students are being not-so-subtly encouraged to take notes with their left hand, which subconsciously facilitates the sort of socialist thinking that supports abortion-on-demand and Michael Moore documentaries.”

Not surprisingly, skewed chair-desk ratios are most likely to be found in small liberal-arts colleges in New England such as Amherst, Middlebury, and Bowdoin, where even the math classes typically begin with an inspirational reading from Trotsky.

“This array of furniture represents a daily ergonomic micro-aggression against conservative students, and it must stop,” Beard demands.  “We are now hearing reports of outbreaks of ‘trans-handedness’ on campuses throughout the United States.  Many young people who were born biologically right-handed now actually prefer to take notes with their left hand.  Some have ceased using their right hand when typing on their laptop, and are insisting that Obamacare pay for the surgical removal of that hand.  At Colby College they’re even lobbying for ‘hand-neutral’ bathrooms.  This is insane!”

Campus Reform will sponsor Burn, Baby, Burn, a classroom furniture bonfire, on the quadrangle at Williams College in February 2018.    

“Should Laptops Be Banned in Class?”  That’s the incendiary question posed in a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  With a ferocity that evokes images of battlefield carnage at Antietam and Gettysburg, faculty and students on campuses around the country are engaged in a steel-cage death match to determine who controls the classroom in 2017.  Professors want students’ undivided attention, while students relish their constitutionally protected freedom to roam the Internet and monitor friends’ breakfast choices, explore the influence of Heidegger and Kierkegaard on Taylor Swift song lyrics, watch SportsCenter updates on the arrest records of bowl-eligible college football teams, and keep tabs on the daily breastfeeding schedule of Beyoncé’s twins. 

Neither side wants to give ground.  Some faculty attempt to ban laptops in their classrooms, but resourceful students respond by hiding smartphones between their thighs, staring at their crotches during class in a fashion that brings to mind Louis C. K. fiddling with his Sears Craftsman Tool Box while auditioning potential cast members in his office.

Is there a way out of these killing fields?  Absolutely, according to officials at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  University spokeswoman Samantha Yertz-Pez proclaims that “we have taken hold of this Rubik’s Cube of a problem, broken it down, and then combined it with another problem to fashion an elegant solution.”

Here’s how they did it, according to Yertz-Pez:

“First, it’s important to recognize that most students don’t pay attention in class, regardless of whether they are using a laptop or not.

“Second, the Internet information these students currently scan on their laptops is pretty much pure crap.  The challenge we face is to give them something meaningful to do in class with those machines.

“Third, due to state budget cuts, we no longer have sufficient staff to carry out much of the computer-based work of the University.  For example, we desperately need people to enter grade changes into our data base for students who are unhappy with their GPAs and want their transcripts altered.  And Health Services must update students’ medical records on a weekly basis to show the status of the sexually transmitted diseases they are being treated for.  The University’s annual Chlamydia Festival is only two months away!  We just don’t have the personnel required to do the work.

“Here is where students and their laptops come in.  Beginning in January, we are going to give students the option of doing computer-based clerical work while they are in class.  These tasks can be substituted for note-taking and conventional course assignments, and will be graded.  If a student performs at a high level, he or she will also be given a voucher for use at the University’s Medical Marijuana Dispensary.

“This is a win-win situation for everyone.  The University gets essential tasks accomplished, the students get good grades and high-quality weed, and professors no longer have to spend hours preparing content-stuffed lectures that students ignore.  These same faculty can now devote their energies to composing essays for The Nation and The New Republic while using class time to show documentaries that deconstruct the intersectional identities of zoo animals (‘A Cheetah is More than Its Spots’).”

Can undergraduates be trusted to handle the sensitive information about their fellow students contained in administrative records?  “Not a problem,” says Brad Sneft, the University’s legal counsel.  “We have clearly communicated to students that all violations of confidentiality will be severely punished except when we choose not to do so.  There’s no ambiguity about what our position is.”