Month: July 2020

True Fact:  A black bear wandered onto the campus of Dartmouth College on July 9th and spent a couple of peaceful hours there before making its way back into the woods.

Inspired by this charming episode, the school plans to fence off a grazing area on its campus quad for use by retired faculty in the fall of 2020.  

According to Dartmouth President Philip Hanlon, “many of our professors emeriti don’t know what to do with themselves during the day.  They rattle around the house annoying their spouses, hunker down in front of the TV and yell at President Trump, or sit alone at Dunkin’ Donuts for hours nursing a single cup of Metamucil-laced coffee and a tofu/kelp cruller.  These folks should be outside, getting some exercise, and socializing with their peers.  That’s where Professors’ Meadow comes in.  

“We’re going to place coin-operated M&M dispensers around the perimeter of the quad, so that visitors can hand-feed these faculty if they wish.  Most of our retired professors are gentle, but a few can be feisty and disruptive, so a couple of campus police officers, equipped with tranquilizing darts, will be stationed at Professors’ Meadow from 7:00 am to 5:00 pm every day.  Ginger, our resident Border Collie, will shepherd the retirees into shuttle vans at the end of the day for the ride home.

“Very few of our students have ever seen a professor emeritus, so it will be a wonderful opportunity for them to encounter these individuals in a controlled environment.  They may even hear a snippet of a lecture now and then, as a retiree attempts to educate Ginger about the origins of the Boer Wars.   

“If all goes well, we will begin seeking national accreditation from AAUP as an Emeritus Petting Zoo in Spring 2021.  It’s a grueling, 3-year process, but we want only the best for those professors who have faithfully served Dartmouth College over the decades.”

Who says you can’t find a feel-good story in the midst of a pandemic?

According to The Columbus Post Dispatch, Capital University — the oldest university in central Ohio — plans to stop using the nickname “Crusaders” for its sports teams.  

The Crusades, of course, were a series of religious wars waged in the medieval era.  The conflicts generated an impressive amount of carnage, especially when you consider the fact that the world did not yet have easy access to rapid-fire weaponry or NRA lobbying support. 

The university will soon unveil a new, more acceptable nickname for its teams: the Inquisitors.  As the director of the school’s Media Relations office noted during a press conference on Wednesday, “to the modern ear, the term ‘Crusader’ sounds militaristic and is off-putting, evoking images of religious zealots engaging in wholesale slaughter.  ‘Inquisition’, on the other hand, has kinder, gentler connotations.  It speaks to a search for incontrovertible truth guided by disciplined questioning directed at individuals, such as Galileo or our students, who possess an incomplete understanding of the universe .  Isn’t that what higher education is all about?  Isn’t that what we DO in our classes?”

But weren’t people tortured during the Inquisition?

“A few, sure.  But what’s your point?  The path to genuine enlightenment has always been filled with briars, thorns, and prickly hedgerows. One endures them and keeps moving forward.  We feel really good about our choice of a nickname.  Our new logo will feature a large question mark tied to a wooden stake surrounded by duraflame logs that have been set ablaze. It symbolizes the fierce passion for knowledge that Capital U is known for in central Ohio.

“Next question?”

 

The University of North Carolina Wilmington recently paid a 55-year-old tenured professor $504,702.76 to retire early.  No joke.  The professor had a history of tweeting messages that were offensive, and embarrassing to the University, but not illegal. 

Higher education faculty around the nation, say hello to your new revenue stream!

This case reflects a new domain within American jurisprudence — Dipwad Law — that is poised to blossom in the United States like poppies in an Afghanistan meadow during the growing season.  

For the details, let’s turn to Sheldon “Skip” Loosflem, managing partner at Loosflem, Loosflem, & Sterm, a Houston law firm that has represented more than 75 dipwads over the past 3 years:

“Every college and university in the country has its share of obnoxious faculty members.  These are truly miserable human beings — arrogant, narcissistic, and often downright crazy.  In the south they’re called ‘dipwads’, in the north they’re ‘a**holes’, and in the west they are ‘pimples with lips’.  At Ivy League schools they’re simply known as ‘tenured professors’. 

“Our firm helps dipwads develop tweets that do not violate the law, but make the administrations of their schools VERY uncomfortable.  For example, we worked with a physics professor at the University of Tennessee on messages claiming that red Twizzlers contain fiber-optic cable that delivers subliminal commands from the CIA to children who consume this product.  Tennessee paid the guy $1.4 million to leave.  At the Rhode Island School of Design, we coached a faculty member who believes that Melania Trump should stop wearing underwear on Thursdays.  RISD settled with her — the professor, not the First Lady — for $760,000 plus a Prius.  

“Our largest settlement thus far has been with Louisiana State University, where a psychology professor waged a Twitter campaign to have the University erect a statue, on the quad, of Jefferson Davis and Harriet Tubman making love.  Getting that professor to skedaddle cost them $10.2 million.  Sweet.  We took the entire firm, including the paralegals, to Saint Lucia for a week’s vacation after that one. 

“The way I see it, practicing Dipwad Law provides a service to both the school AND the faculty member.  The school rids itself of a truly noxious presence, and the faculty member benefits financially.  It’s a win-win.”

Moral of the Story: If your colleagues roll their eyes and mutter “Crap!” under their breath every time you enter the faculty dining room, it may be time to start tweeting.  Think about it. 

Life is a bit turbulent at Washington and Lee University these days.  A group of faculty is urging the Lexington, Virginia school to drop “Lee” from its name, given that Robert E. Lee — in the role of general — played on the varsity squad of the Confederacy in the Civil War.  

But here’s the rub.  

The George Washington of “Washington and Lee” was no slouch in his own right when it came to slavery.  Let’s just say that our first President could have populated the starting lineup of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with the number of slaves he owned at Mount Vernon. 

Washington and Lee University, welcome to your rock and hard place!

Fear not, however.  William Dudley, the school’s President, has fashioned a solution to this problem that is stunning in its elegance, grace, and simplicity.  At a press conference yesterday Dudley made the following announcement:

“On September 1st, Washington and Lee will officially become Ampersand University.  The references to George Washington and Robert E. Lee will be removed, leaving only the word ‘and’.  An ampersand, of course, symbolizes that word, and it’s much classier than ‘and’.  So I’ve decided to go with it.   

“Not only does this new name drip prestige, it highlights our strategic focus on recruiting students who are not included in our current national conversation about intersectional identities.  While we are all familiar with the intersectional challenges faced by women of color, for example, or gay Catholics, the burdens shouldered by the more privileged are often overlooked.  Consider the rich teenage girl with a peanut allergy who has never ridden a polo pony, or the white male graduate of Phillips Exeter who blisters and burns rather than tans in the summer.  Who can they tell their stories to?  Who listens to them?  Who reads their anguished memoirs?

“I guarantee you: We’ll be listening at Ampersand University.  You are the students we are destined to serve.  You are our mission.”

It looks like there will be at least one college president in the country who’ll be getting a big raise this fall.