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University Life is on hiatus this week.  Our lead reporters are on assignment in Washington, DC, covering the unfolding Greek tragicomedy surrounding the Supreme Court.  For interested readers, here are links to the two stories they have published in the Washington Post:

https://humoroutcasts.com/2020/mcconnell-promises-to-torch-reputation-of-u-s-senate-once-and-for-all/

https://humoroutcasts.com/2020/mitt-reaches-quota-resets-for-2021/

We are so proud of Gretchen and Hector for their fine work.  University Life will be back next week, bringing you the trenchant analysis that has won awards for higher education reporting from the National Football League, the Vatican, and Sha’nelle’s Nail Salon and Shoe Repair Shop.

Thanks so much for your continued support.  Spread the word.  

 

 

 

 

 

The University of Chicago’s English Department is getting considerable heat on social media for its decision to accept “only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies” during the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle (see departmental homepage).  

Relax, everyone.  Doctoral programs across the country expand and narrow their foci all the time.  A few notable examples:

—  The English Department at Harvard has not allowed its students to write doctoral dissertations on Shakespeare since 1998.  According to a senior faculty member there, “we had to face the fact that there’s absolutely nothing new that can be said about this man’s work.  We knew it was time to flush the toilet and lower the lid on his oeuvre when one of our students proposed a thesis entitled ‘Sneezing as a Transgressive Discourse in Shakespeare’s Minor Comedies’.  For the love of God, enough is enough.”

—  At the University of Mississippi, dissertations on William Faulkner are now verboten.  As the English Department Chair put it, “we simply got tired of students misspelling ‘Yoknapatawpha County’, Faulkner’s fictional kingdom.  It’s a shame, because the final Faulkner dissertation we approved in 2018 was an excellent piece of scholarship: ‘Unacknowledged Influences of Wakanda on Faulkner’s Early Work: Oversight, Racism, or Both?’.”

—  Dissertations on Iraq and Iran are no longer permitted in the Political Science Department at Duke University.  “Students were constantly getting the two countries mixed up,” says a professor who wished to remain anonymous.  “Admittedly, part of the problem was the notoriously loose supervision provided by our doctoral faculty.  Students could proceed down the wrong path with their proposal drafts for months before being informed of their error.  But, ultimately, it’s the student who has to take ownership of such a mistake.  We have been unsuccessful in getting tenured professors to monitor their advisees more closely.” 

—  Finally, there is the Chemistry Department at UCLA, which in 1991 began to require that all doctoral theses focus on hydrogen, and no other element.  In the words of the Department Chair, “hydrogen is the workhorse of our universe.  It’s the most abundant chemical substance by a large margin.  Literally, it’s Element #1.  We need to find out everything there is to know about this baby!  A couple of years ago, a student came up to me and wanted to write her dissertation on terbium.  Seriously?  TERBIUM???  Terbium is the 90-pound weakling of the elements.  I threw her out of my office.  Someone told me later that she ended up transferring to the Art History master’s program.  I hope that worked out for her.”

Stay strong, Chicago.  The trolls will soon find another target to torment — probably Texas A&M University, which plans to offer Esports as its only undergraduate major beginning in Fall 2021. 

No joke:  According to a recent article in the Lexington Herald Leader (Sept. 3rd online), the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky “was asked to sign a pre-typed resignation letter in exchange for a ‘generous offer’ that would immediately expire if he didn’t sign.”  The Dean refused to sign, and without further ado UK’s Provost proceeded to relieve him of his duties.  

The University of Kentucky now joins a growing number of higher education institutions that have engaged in personnel actions over the past few years that are bizarre enough to inspire true-crime podcasts.  Here are a couple of others that have quickly attained legendary status:

• In 2019, Vern Pontchartrain, a professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana, was promised a toaster oven by the Provost if he would resign as Chair of the Chemistry Department.  He accepted the offer:  “I had recently gotten divorced and was living in a studio apartment that had no kitchen appliances, not even a microwave.  The Provost must have known that, since he was sleeping with my former wife at the time. 

“It turns out that the toaster oven was defective, and one day it triggered a fire that burned down my apartment building while I was at school teaching an honors seminar on what makes Mountain Dew so ‘dewy’.  Fortunately, the only party injured in the blaze was Squawky, Mrs. Dinsmore’s pet parrot on the 6th floor.  He lost a wing and has a singed beak.  Now he spends about 7 hours a day screeching, ‘FIRE!!  FIRE!!  IT’S A F**KING FIRE!’

“I’m suing the University on the grounds that they should have known that a toaster oven is likely to be deeply flawed if it’s purchased from a street vendor in Indianapolis whose entire inventory is housed in a baby carriage.”

• When University of Nebraska Psychology professor Everett Fingerling walked out the front door of his home to go to work on the morning of October 9, 2018, he had no idea that three campus police officers were crouching beside his car, out of sight.  They apprehended Fingerling, put a burlap sack over his head, and drove him to Osceola, a town 70 miles away.  Once there, they deposited him in a half-filled kale-chip silo on a cabbage farm.   

Nebraska’s Provost had ordered the abduction, claiming that conventional procedures for firing a poorly performing tenured professor were unduly cumbersome and consumed an excessive amount of his time in meetings with faculty committees, the HR department, and University counsel. 

It took Fingerling eight months, but he eventually ate his way out of the silo.  (“Now I’ve got the cleanest colon in Lancaster County, Nebraska!  Not a polyp anywhere.  Go ahead and take a look!”)  The Provost was arrested and convicted of “conspiring to assault a senior faculty member with trendy roughage.”  He was sentenced to three years of working the grill at a Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Omaha during the day, while confined to a halfway house for ex-offenders at night. 

Sometimes, justice does prevail.   

 

Like many scholarly groups during the pandemic, the American Historical Association (AHA) has cancelled its annual face-to-face convention, which had been scheduled for January 7-10, 2021 in Seattle. 

What is distinctive about the AHA decision is the seismic shift it has precipitated in the way historians view their discipline, a shift that will reshape future AHA meetings.  

According to AHA President-elect Jacqueline Jones of the University of Texas (Austin), “a ‘Eureka’ moment occurred as we deliberated the cancellation.  For the most part, our field focuses on the activities of people who are long dead.  Do we really need to come together in person every year to discuss the actions of individuals who can’t be present?  I don’t think so.  Consider the panel that was held at last year’s convention on the impact of the 1789 Women’s March on Versailles on the French Revolution.  None of the women who participated in the march are still alive, so we had no representatives from that group who could speak their truth in the session.  Not even a grandchild or great-grandchild was available.  It was embarrassing!

“And don’t get me started on sessions that address any aspect of the Roman Empire.  Let’s take a quick scan of some of the emperors from that era:

• Aurelian:   dead
• Constantine the Great:  deceased
• Romulus Augustulus:  like, TOTALLY dead
• Justinian I:   teaspoonful of dust
• Basil II:   half of one tooth (a molar) remains; otherwise, dust

“You get the picture?  There’s simply no justification for cheek-by-jowl gatherings of historians to pontificate about these guys when Instagram and TikTok are available.  

“We’re not political scientists.  They can go to a convention and at least talk about the living, and maybe even invite some of them to show up.  Who wouldn’t want to see Mitch McConnell and Yale superstar Robert Dahl debate the relevance of post-modernist gun-control legislation to American democracy in the 21st century?  Oops, scratch that.  Dahl died in 2014.  But you see what I’m sayin’, right?”

NOTE:  Beginning with its 2022 conference in New Orleans, the AHA annual meeting will include no academically oriented sessions — paper, panel, or otherwise.  Conference activities, all involving LIVE participants, will include bowling, hot tub karaoke, and beginners’ workshops in Cajun cooking and beignet dusting.  The Job Fair will be held from noon to 12:20 pm on the second day of the convention in the alcove housing the ice and soda machines on the 14th floor of the Ritz Carlton Hotel.  Please bring a hard copy of your CV, notarized summaries of student evaluations of your courses over the past three years, and a harmonica.  The New Books Exhibit, sponsored by Coursera, will occupy the counter space to the left of the cardboard divider at the Concierge Desk in the Main Lobby.       

In the event the host city is submerged at the end of 2021 due to aggressive glacial melting, the conference will take place at Henderson’s Petting Zoo in Enosburg Falls, Vermont.    

At New York University in Manhattan, many of the 2700 students who arrived on campus last week remain quarantined in their residence halls, pending results of their COVID-19 tests.  According to a Chronicle of Higher Education article, “quarantined students are only allowed to leave their rooms for medical reasons” (August 26, online).  

Before you start feeling sorry for these young people, consider the saga of Gabe Snafflin, a freshman who entered the College of the Ozarks (Point Lookout, Missouri) in the fall of 1964.  

Due to a housing shortage on campus, Gabe was temporarily assigned to a windowless, single-occupancy fallout shelter in a dormitory sub-basement.  In early October of that year, a chlamydia outbreak occurred at the school, and students were required to stay in their rooms until College officials notified them that it was safe to leave.   

Unfortunately, the residential life staff forgot that Gabe was living in the shelter.  As a result, they failed to inform him when the quarantine ended in mid-November. 

Long story short:  Gabe did not exit the shelter until June, 1984, when the building was about to be razed to make way for a new, upscale residence hall (Lookout Towers), and he was discovered by a member of the demolition crew who was positioning dynamite in the sub-basement.  Given that the shelter had been well-stocked with food and water, Gabe was in good health — but exceedingly pale.  (“He kinda looked like an over-sized albino mole rat,” according to the crew member.)

Exceedingly sheepish, Gabe later claimed that he had no idea that so much time had passed while he was quarantined:  “Without a window, it was hard to keep track of the days and nights.  I just figured that the chlamydia epidemic was lasting a lot longer than they initially thought it would.  Those photos they had showed us of what chlamydia does to your private parts were pretty scary, and I didn’t want to take any chances by leaving too soon.  I was all about keeping those parts in tip-top shape for that special someone who would become my wife.  

“I spent most of those 20 years reading and re-reading my Bible, along with the instruction manual for the shelter’s dehumidifier.  Believe me,  by the time I got out of that place I knew my way around a dehumidifier!”

Gabe’s parents were relieved that he had been found.  According to his dad, “we never doubted that our son would turn up some day.  We had no idea that he was living in a fallout shelter.  You know, he’s been an odd kid from the very beginning.  Bernice, tell the reporter about Gabe’s sock farm.”

Less than three months after departing the fallout shelter, at the age of 38, Gabe met and married Ginger, a local exotic dancer, and moved to the Australian outback, where he secured employment as a kangaroo pouch cleaner and dehumidifier repairman.  Now 74 years old and retired, he has no regrets about his college misadventure:  “Gosh, if I had come out of that shelter when I was supposed to, I probably never would have met Ginger.  She’s a good woman.  By the way, I’ve never had chlamydia.”

Note to NYU students:  Suck it up. 

 

Yep, it’s true:  for the first time since 1984, the Democratic Presidential ticket does not include a graduate of an Ivy League school. 

And the Vines are not pleased.  

At a press conference in Boston yesterday, all 8 Ivy League Presidents appeared in person to express their dismay.  Harvard President Lawrence Bacow claimed that the absence of Ivy League heritage in the Democratic candidates’ résumés was “outrageous.”  He continued:  “Couldn’t Mr. Biden or Ms. Harris have, at a minimum, picked up a master’s degree from our Kennedy School of Government at some point in their career?  I mean, we give those credentials away like lollipops at a county fair.  You can do the whole program in 3 weekends.”

The proceedings grew tense, however, when Yale President Peter Salovey said he would offer Biden an associate’s degree in psychology if he wrote a 10-page research paper (topic: invasions of personal space) that contained at least 3 references from scholarly journals.  “You wouldn’t even have to format the citations,” Salovey promised.  “We’ll have a graduate assistant do that for you.”

This proposal drew a sharp rebuke from Amy Gutmann, Penn’s President:  “We do ourselves no favors if we lower standards just to have our institution affiliated with the next President or Vice President.”  

Princeton’s Christopher Eisgruber immediately took Gutmann to task, telling her to “put a sock in it, Amy.  Have you forgotten that Penn gave Trump a bachelor’s degree back in 1968?  You guys should be ashamed of yourselves.”  

Her voice rising, an irritated Gutmann responded, “that fiasco did not occur on my watch, Eisgoober.  Take back what you said!”

Eisgruber:  “Will not!”

Guttman:  “Will so, if you know what’s good for you!”

“Whoa, there, boys and girls, let’s settle down.”  Dartmouth’s Philip Hanlon was trying to lower the temperature of the exchange.

“Are you really calling the President of the University of Pennsylvania a GIRL?” exclaimed Cornell’s Martha Pollack.  “You’re not even the President of a full-fledged university, you twit.  It’s Dartmouth College, remember?  Phil, you’ve always driven in the breakdown lane on the Highway of Big Ideas.  Why don’t you just buzz off and go back to carving phallic-shaped ice sculptures for next February’s Winter Carnival?”

Hanlon glared at Pollack and took an aggressive step toward her, hissing “Why, you little b……”

“Don’t go there,” Brown’s Christine Paxson exclaimed, as she jumped on Hanlon’s shoulders from behind and put him in a headlock, her right knee braced against his spine.  “I dated a Navy SEAL in college, and can snap your neck like a twig.”

Columbia’s Lee Bollinger suddenly gasped “Oh, my” and fainted, collapsing like a Jenga tower of COVID-19 nasal swabs swatted by a toddler’s hand.   

Bacow:  “We’re done here.”

NOTE:  Registration for the Fall semester at the Kennedy School closes on August 31st.  

 

 

 

To no one’s surprise, the recent decision by the Big Ten Conference to cancel its fall 2020 football season has been harshly criticized by many of the players affected.  The passionate, colorful reaction of Benwood “Big Ben” Thistle, a defensive tackle at Ohio State, reflects the deep hurt felt by these young men: “This is bulls**t, man!  Total bulls**t!  What am I supposed to do all fall — TAKE CLASSES?  No way that’s happenin’.  They can take away my scholarship if they want to, I don’t care, just as long as they shove all that money up the Big Ten Commissioner’s butthole.  F**k this s**t!!!”

Even worse, some players believe they have been misled.  When running back Craig Saffron was being recruited to play at the University of Nebraska, “nobody said a damn thing to me about going to college.  They never even used the word ‘college’.  Not once.  All they said was that the Big Ten was a semi-pro league that sent its best players to the NFL.  I swear to God, all they told me was that I would be signing a contract to play for the Nebraska Cornhuskers for at least two years.”

Davon Twinney, a sophomore who grew up in Tallahassee, Florida and plays free safety for the University of Minnesota, was livid.  “I never would have come to this lame-ass piece of permafrost tundra in the Arctic Circle if I had known they were going to yank the season right out from under me.   My whole body was nothing but chapped, raw skin all last winter.  My mom had to send me a giant bottle of Vaseline Intensive Care lotion every two weeks.  People’s idea of a good time here is carving a hole in the ice of a frozen lake and going fishing.  Are you freakin’ kidding me?  Don’t these dipwads know that grocery stores have seafood counters?”

Of course, not all players are upset that the fall season has been scratched.  Rutgers tight end Tyler Hone, a junior, notes that “our team was 2-10 in 2019 and 1-11 in 2018.  We suck.  We profoundly suck.  When Michigan crushed us 52-0 last year, their players didn’t even wears pads or helmets during the game — just street clothes.  They didn’t tackle us, they simply punched us in the face until we fell down.  It was humiliating.  I won’t miss playing this fall.”

Ditto from from Jason Bontine, a fourth-string, walk-on punter at Penn State:  “I’m a senior, and I’ve never been in a game, never had to have my uniform washed.  The only reason I’m on the team is that I’m the most reliable supplier of high-quality recreational weed at discount prices in central Pennsylvania.  The coach says that I’m the MVP of the Nittany Lions.  I’m proud of that accomplishment, but it’s time for me to move on and grow my business this fall.  Writing about the expansion will be the capstone project for my bachelor’s degree in Finance.  I’m excited to start!”

Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren says the decision to cancel the fall season was a tough one, but that it comes with an upside:  “We’re going to offer a 3-credit online course to all of our student-athletes in the coming term, in which we explore, from a post-modernist perspective, the reasons why a conference called the ‘Big Ten’ actually has 14 schools in it.  Our fall season may be over, but student learning is just beginning.”

For once, big-time college athletics is taking the high road. 

Although Harvard is going online this fall for all of its courses (true fact), it’s doing so in a style that befits a university whose smartphone contact list has both The Almighty and Queen Latifah on speed-dial.  

To ease the pain inflicted by an online, Zoom-based curriculum, Harvard is providing every one of its students with a deluxe Peloton exercise bike that can be pedaled in front of a computer screen that streams class sessions. 

According to Harvard President Lawrence Bacow, “Peloton is the Maserati of the fitness-cycling world.  Each student will receive, at no cost to him or her, a Peloton Mark IV, not the standard-issue Peloton purchased by the proletariat.  The Mark IV retails at $7495 and features handlebar streamers, custom detailing that includes the Harvard insignia, and TWO built-in Pez dispensers.  The Mark IV will remain the student’s property after the semester is over.  

“The Harvard Peloton Initiative (HPI) will enable our students to enhance their physical fitness while they are participating in class sessions.  Given the high-profile roles that our graduates play in world affairs, it’s crucial that they look ready for their responsibilities, and not resemble the current Tub-in-Chief occupying the White House.

“Our school motto may be ‘Veritas’, but the ultimate truth we seek is the Platonic ideal of a washboard abdomen.  Here, feel my stomach.  Go ahead, punch it.  Punch it hard.  Larry Bacow is a Mark IV man!”

It seems like every time Yale gets close, Harvard pulls away. 

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?”