Month: October 2020

In a dramatic move that has stunned the higher education community, Harvard and Yale will spend ALL of their endowment on campaign ads over the next 72 hours in an attempt to ensure President Trump’s defeat on Election Day.  

Just for the record, that’s $41.9 billion for Harvard, and $31.2 billion for Yale.

The schools will purchase every minute of broadcast time on every TV network and cable channel in the nation, starting at 12:01 am on Saturday and continuing until 11:59 Monday night.  All regular programming will be suspended.  

Each 30-second ad will consist of a different U. S. citizen staring directly into the camera and calmly saying, “Seriously, we REALLY can’t go through four more years of this.  Joe Biden may be as exciting as a lukewarm bowl of Cream of Rice, but at least he won’t contribute to the U-turn that human evolution is currently taking in the United States.”  The ads will be directed by Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and Ava DuVernay, with background humming provided by the Vienna Boys’ Choir. 

According to Harvard President Lawrence Bacow, “this is a financial risk we have to take.  What’s the point of being an elite university if you live in a country where the next Secretary of Education might be a graduate of QAnon Community College, a school whose only major is Batshit Crazy?“

Harvard and Yale will NOT be joined by Princeton University in this last-minute endeavor.  As Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber put it, “our magnolia-scented institution has historically taken pride in its Confederate ambience.  In my view, the jury is still out on Donald Trump’s presidency, so I think it’s only fair to give him these last few days of the campaign to turn things around in our nation.  As a professional courtesy, however, I’ll be sending Larry Bacow a check for $100 tomorrow, to use as he sees fit.”

Undergraduates at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor have been ordered by the Washtenaw County Health Department to “stay in place” due to a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases on campus (Chronicle of Higher Education online, October 20).

Behind the scenes, however, University Life has uncovered a more complicated story, both tragic and bittersweet.  

According to an anonymous University of Michigan administrator, three weeks ago the school initiated a new policy for dealing with students who tested positive for the coronavirus after violating safety protocols:  the students were required to perform community service by volunteering at local nursing homes and assisted living facilities. 

As the administrator put it, “our intentions were noble, but in retrospect it’s clear that we didn’t think through the potential consequences of this policy.  For example, the population of the Happy Wrinkles Nursing Home in nearby Barton Hills quickly shrunk from 350 to 22.” 

“Residents were dropping like flies in a horse barn sprayed with Raid,” lamented Happy Wrinkles Executive Director Clyde Gansling III.  “It was a damn shame.  And we only had three ventilators from Family Dollar on hand for the entire facility, which didn’t help matters.”

Amidst all this catastrophic misery and shortness of breath at Happy Wrinkles there were some joyous encounters.  Here is 97-year-old Minnie Cohenstein:  “My late husband Sol was a wonderful man, but for most of our 70-year marriage he was a no-show in the romance department.  And then, at ceramics class one afternoon in the Sun Room, I met Thad, a sophomore poetry major from the University.  Never have I felt more fulfilled as a woman than during the two weeks we spent together.  I’ll just stop there.  I’m a lady, you know.” 

When asked for his comments, Thad simply smiled and said, “Minnie taught me so much.  About life.  About love.  About how a small trampoline and some clam dip can be used to enhance a relationship.  I had no idea that community service could be so meaningful.  I wish her well.”

Well, it’s come to this:  Brigham Young University-Idaho has warned its students not to intentionally expose themselves to COVID-19 in order to get more money for their plasma from local blood centers (East Idaho News online, October 12). 

In response, students at the Mormon school in Rexburg, Idaho are poised to do battle with the administration.   Here is Jason Husker-Du, a junior Political Science major and chair of the undergraduate student government’s Che Guevara Revolutionary Task Force:  “Show me where it says in the Book of Mormon, the Golden Plates, or the United States Constitution that voluntarily contracting an illness in the name of financial profit is forbidden.  You can’t show me, because there’s no mention of that topic, and certainly no mention of COVID-19, in any of those sources.  Ergo, you can’t stop us.  I’m pretty sure that Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett would agree with me on this, strict constructionist that she is.  

“Simply put, BYU has no right to tell us what we can do with our immune system or our plasma.  It’s bad enough that they require us to remain virginal until marriage.  Have you seen Willow Taffeta-Newsom, my girlfriend who plays on the volleyball team?  Oh.  My.  God.”

Yesterday, the University administration blinked.   School officials announced that they would allow students to embrace the coronavirus, as long as they tithed their plasma earnings to BYU, with the funds being used to buy iPads for the school’s new Esports concentration in its Bachelor’s Pre-Med program. 

Husker-Du’s reply:  “Sure, we’ll consider their offer, as long as they’re also willing to discuss our proposal for premarital-sex vouchers for all undergraduates.  The voucher topic has to be on the table, and really, really soon.  Like, before this Saturday night.  I’m not kidding.” 

 

 

 

In a press release yesterday, God Almighty (yes, that God Almighty) took full responsibility for the failure of Reverend John L. Jenkins, President of the University of Notre Dame, to wear a mask at the White House Rose Garden ceremony where Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was introduced. 

“MY BAD!” said God.  “Notre Dame is a major Catholic university, and I should have provided John with the sort of guidance I routinely give to John DeGioia and William Leahy, my bros at Georgetown and Boston College.

“Here’s the deal:  I was distracted at the time of the Rose Garden event, but that’s no excuse.  I was immersed in planning Hurricane Delta, and the Celestial Council was urging me to have Delta slam Haiti and Puerto Rico instead of Louisiana.  I resisted.  Those poor bastards in Haiti never catch a break.  If it’s not a hurricane, it’s an earthquake.  And if it’s not an earthquake, then it’s decades of incredibly inept and corrupt political leadership.  The Council thought it would be hilarious to wallop Haiti again, but I just couldn’t do it.  For Pete’s sake, let’s give them time to at least buy a few hundred portable toilets before we blow away what remains of their infrastructure!  God is supposed to be merciful, right?  I realize that I got out of the social justice business a long time ago, but a little mercy never hurt anybody.

“In any event, I totally forgot about President Jenkins.  One day he’s in South Bend overseeing the Fighting Irish football team, and the next thing I know he’s sitting in a crowd of unmasked cretins in the Rose Garden.  I’m sure he just got caught up in the moment.  It’s not his fault!

“Just for the record, when I unleashed COVID-19 I had NO idea that you folks in the United States were going to f**k up your response so badly.  I just wanted to give the world a fun public health challenge to grapple with for a couple of months, and then move on.  I fully expected that ALL countries would handle the pandemic in the swift, decisive fashion that New Zealand did.  I must admit, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, really stepped up to the plate and showed me something.  She’s the real deal.  

“Her leadership has got me thinking.  I may have to revisit the Catholic Church’s policy of not allowing women to be priests.  Joan of Arc and the Virgin Mary have been squawking about this issue on their Fire and Ice podcast for centuries.

“Stay tuned…..and wear your mask.”