University Life

TRUE FACT:  “The University of Virginia will ban food and drink from sports events and other school and student activities to keep people in attendance from removing their masks” (The Daily Progress, January 14th online).  The policy will be in effect until February 4th. 

While some might view this prohibition as a serious inconvenience, the UVA chapter of the Zen-Foucault Society does not.  As chapter President Willow Ravenshire put it, “what we call ‘food’ and ‘drink’ are simply mental images that reflect a failed attempt on our part to fill the gaping hole in our soul generated by the meaninglessness of life in the dystopian patriarchy of 21st-century American society.”

Ravenshire, a junior majoring in semiotics, notes that “a hamburger or bottle of Bud Lite is not something ‘real’, in the sense that it exists independently of our conceptualization of it.  We may think that we eat or drink physical substances, but we don’t — not really.  Those ‘substances’ are just thought balloons.  They don’t satisfy our deep hunger for an authentic existence, one in which we would feel free to fully express our animosity toward our zombified extended family at holiday gatherings.  In fact, the University has probably done all of the UVA community a favor by hastening the day — February 4th, to be exact — when Michel Foucault and Bodhidharma will return in human form to Charlottesville to preside over the world’s first Post-Modernist Ideational Food Rapture, catered by Popeyes Imaginary Chicken.”

Mark your calendars now. 

Dear Bob –

As your home-health-care aide has informed you, you are the only surviving member of the Class of 1922.  Accordingly, our Alumni Affairs Office has prepared a very special program of activities for your June 17^th to 19^th reunion visit to campus.  We’ll be devoting all of our attention that weekend to you, and just you!

Here’s the schedule:

FRIDAY, JUNE 17

4:00 pm          Check in at Cabot House, followed by a power nap in your room

5:30 pm          Wine and cheese reception, substituting “Easy Digest” apple juice and unbuttered toast (no crust) for wine and cheese. You’ll be the sole attendee, but feel free to chat with The Ellingtons, Harvard’s student jazz combo, during their break.

7:00 pm          “Dinner with a Dean” (You will be dining with Dr. Gwen Freckly-Hoster, Dean of the Henry Kissinger School of Gerontology and Senior Studies; Menu: Broiled Chicken Breast à la Crimson, aged baby peas and carrot snips in raisin sauce, dinner roll, Charles River Sparkling Water)

8:30 pm          Cataract surgery on your left eye, courtesy of Harvard Health Services

10:00 pm        Lights out

SATURDAY, JUNE 18

6:30 am           Morning Fun Run with the Harvard Cross Country team.  Make sure to spray the wheels of your walker with a liberal dose of WD-40 so you can keep up!  Course length: 100 feet 

7:30 am           More unbuttered toast, accompanied by an H₂O sucking sponge

8:30 am           2022 Welcome Back Lecture – “Managing Your Prostate When It’s Larger Than a Throw Pillow: Lessons from Clinical Practice” 

10:00 am         Medication break (BYOPills), hosted by the Harvard Cannabis Dispensary

10:45 am         Flash Card Jeopardy; win cash prizes and cryptocurrency by distinguishing historical events that did happen from those that didn’t (e.g., World War II [did]; release of a gangsta rap album by Michael Feinstein in 1993 [didn’t])

11:30 am         Meeting with Harvard’s Director of Estate Bequests (no need to bring your paperwork; we’ll have it)

12:30 pm        Mini-Buffet Lunch: Lima Bean Surprise with unbuttered toast

1:30 pm          Bench-sitting in Harvard Yard; random staring

4:00 pm           Advances in Science lecture jointly sponsored by the Physics and Biology Departments: “I Can’t Feel My Feet, But That’s a Good Thing, Right?: New Developments in Incremental Cryonics” (will be held in the basement meat locker of Widener Library)

5:30 pm           On Your Own: Free time for humming and picking lint from your sweater

7:00 pm           Dinner: Soft-serve energy bar (pineapple or refried bean)

8:00 pm           Lights out

SUNDAY, JUNE 19

9:00 am           Non-denominational liturgical service at Memorial Church (Sermon – “Sex Outside of Marriage When You’re Over 120: Physically Possible but Morally Hazardous?”)

11:00 am         Workshop on advanced muttering, sponsored by the Division of Continuing Education

1:00 pm           Special performance by the Harvard Lived Experience Student Collective: “White Privilege Doesn’t Go Away Just Because You’re Old” (Note: This musical revue will include starter-pistol gunshots and real tear gas)

2:30 pm          “What the Hell Is That Thing Growing on My Neck?”  Lecture sponsored by the Harvard Medical School Bedside Manner Clinic

3:30 pm          Closing ceremonies; Golden Walker Award presented to all reunion attendees (that would be you, Bob); signing of legal documents finalizing estate bequest agreement (once again, that would be you)   

SAFE TRAVELS!

SAVE THE DATES FOR YOUR 125^TH REUNION:  JUNE 18 TO 20, 2027

The cover story of the January 7th issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education claims that “academic burnout is real — but difficult to diagnose” (p. 13).

Fortunately, this difficulty has been overcome.  On February 1st, a research team at Northwestern University will publish a 10-item survey instrument, validated in multiple pilot studies, that measures Faculty Emotional Exhaustion and Disengagement (FEED).  University Life has obtained a copy of the inventory, and we are pleased to share it now as a service to our readers.

FEED Inventory

Instructions:  Using a 5-point scale, indicate how likely it is that you would display each of the following behaviors (1 = not likely at all, 5 = extremely likely).

— In a department meeting, a discussion of whether to change the prefix for all History courses from “HIS” to “HST” is now entering its fourth hour.  Some of your colleagues maintain that “HIS” is sexist.  You take a live grenade out of your briefcase, pull the pin, and place it in the middle of the conference table.  You calmly announce that a decision must be made in the next 30 seconds. 

—  At the beginning of your lecture to a Zoom-based class right after lunch, you notice that there is a conspicuous piece of mustard-covered pastrami dangling from your chin.  You choose to leave it there.

—  During an in-person session of your Political Institutions course, a puzzled student remarks that she’s having a hard time distinguishing between oligarchy, autocracy, and totalitarianism.  You respond that “it doesn’t matter.  Death claims us all in the end.”

—  In a faculty workshop on how to deal with cheating, you defend plagiarism as a legitimate strategy for students to employ when they’re facing multiple pressing deadlines. 

—  When the Provost makes a surprise announcement at a campus-wide meeting that all faculty and staff will receive a full cost-of-living salary increase for the coming year, you stand up and scream, “you call this ‘LIVING’?”

—  In a faculty symposium devoted to the late bell hooks, you are asked to comment on the cultural and ideological implications of her decision not to capitalize her first or last name.  You respond “whatever” and walk off the stage.  

—  You propose an undergraduate Honors Seminar (Closeted Comics) devoted to overlooked humor in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, and Max Weber.

—  You notice that a student has repeatedly confused “it’s” and “its” in her term paper.  You circle the incorrect words in red and indicate that the correct spelling is ‘itz’.

— Your son, a high school junior, approaches you after dinner to ask for advice on choosing a college.  You hand him a recruiting brochure for the U. S. Army and leave the house to take the dog for a walk.  

—  You instruct your doctoral-student advisee to cite only Wikipedia references in her dissertation. 

A total score of 11 or above indicates clinical depression.  Self-medication is recommended.    

 

 

 

In a decision yesterday that stunned everyone except those familiar with the organization, the NCAA announced that “nothing, not even COVID carnage, will stop the College Football Playoff from being held on December 31st and January 10th.”

According to NCAA President Mark Emmert, “there is simply too much TV money tied up in the Playoff to allow our fear of COVID to cancel it.  We’ve made a commitment to ESPN, and we’re going to honor it. 

“In World War II, we knew that our nation’s young men would be at risk when we sent them overseas to do battle.  But we did it anyway, because the future of the free world was at stake.  The same goes for the College Football Playoff.  I think all Americans would agree that a world without a National Champion that is determined on the gridiron is not a world worth living in.  The ‘Greatest Generation’ in the United States stepped up to the plate 70 years ago, and now a new generation — this time, of student-athlete gladiators — is being asked to take their place. 

“Some of them may fall to the virus as they serve our country, but they will fall in glory.  I’m proud to announce that any player who succumbs to COVID during the Playoff — or within two weeks following the National Championship game — will be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, as a result of an agreement reached last night between the NCAA, ESPN, and the U. S. Department of the Army.

“When high-revenue college sports and a pandemic collide, they bring out the best in all of us.”

It’s been a tough year for the Board of Trustees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  First there was the Nikole Hannah-Jones affair, and now controversy is swirling around the sketchy process the Board used in recently voting to approve a self-described “outspoken conservative” as UNC’s new Provost (NC Policy Watch, December 14th online).

One might ask:  How did the UNC Board become such a dumpster fire?   Well, genetics researcher Duncan Squesker believes he has the answer:  10 of the Board’s 13 members are direct descendants of either the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges. 

Squesker, a Biology Professor at Duke University, obtained saliva samples from coffee mugs left on the conference table after a meeting of the Board in early December.  He sent the samples to Ancestry.com, which linked 6 of the Board members to the Marx family, and 4 to the Stooges (2 to Moe, 1 to Shemp, and 1 to Larry).  

“What we’ve got here is a Board of Trustees that is basically a clown car,” says Squesker.  “No one should be surprised if their decision making resembles that of a mob of meerkats on crack.”

For his part, Board Chair David Boliek has vehemently denied that any Marx or Stooge blood runs through his veins, and noted, “just for the record, please be informed that I am also not related to Sally Hemings.”  He proceeded to cackle “soitenly NOT, nyuk-nyuk” as he poked a reporter in both eyes with his fingers.    

Perhaps it’s just the endorphin high they’re experiencing from qualifying for the NCAA College Football Playoff this year, but yesterday the Board of Regents at the University of Michigan took one of the boldest moves to increase institutional productivity that higher education has seen in over a generation. 

Beginning on January 15, 2022, every dean at the University will be authorized to summarily fire up to five tenured faculty members in their school, with no justification required.  “In essence,” says Michigan President Mark Schlissel, “we’re implementing a version of the peremptory challenge process that is employed in jury selection, where an attorney can remove a prospective juror without having to give a reason.  We strongly believe that contemporary public universities desperately need such a policy if they are to survive.”

For their part, Michigan deans are beside themselves with eager anticipation.  As one dean put it, “The amount of time I spend dealing with a few annoying faculty members is soul-killing.  I usually dread returning to work after the holiday break, but this year I can’t wait to get back.  I haven’t been this excited since Pamela Turnstile agreed to have sex with me in 9th grade.  Oops, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned her name.”  

Experts predict that over 90% of all terminated faculty will fall into one of five categories:

Scribes:  Professors who send emails of interminable length to campus administrators, protesting anything and everything, and demanding that corrective action be taken.  No issue is too large, too small, or too inane.  (“Once again, I have been assigned a classroom for my Fractals Seminar that does not have moveable desks.  [See attached course schedule from the Registrar, along with a photograph of the desks.]  This makes it impossible for me to explore in depth the Mandelbrot Set with my students, and will result in disastrous learning consequences.  If you refer to my email of April 8, 2017, you will find that….”)

Annual Report Blowfish:  Faculty who document in writing, and in maddening detail, every conceivable activity they have engaged in that, in their fevered little brain, strengthens their case for a merit raise.  (“Please note, in the ‘Service to the University’ category, that I attended 5 men’s basketball games this fall.  I stayed to the end of every game, even though 3 of the games were lopsided and 2 went into double-overtime on nights that I had papers to grade.  Attached are photocopies of my ticket stubs.”)

RBFs:  Despite the sexist label (“Resting B***h Face”), this category can represent any gender.  At department and committee meetings, as well as town-hall sessions, these individuals constantly display the pained, disgusted facial expression of someone who’s had a small cactus permanently shoved up their rectum.  Their sour demeanor depresses everyone in the immediate vicinity.  Even colleagues who are typically happy and optimistic start to cry.  RBFs can say “that plan will never work” in 12 languages.  

The Passionately Confused:  At public meetings on campus, when the time comes for brief questions from the audience, the Passionately Confused introduce their query with a full-blown speech that is unrelated to the topic at hand.  They ignore polite requests (“sit down, Harold”) to wrap things up.  Indeed, such requests only solidify their resolve to continue.  (“I will NOT be silenced.  The failure to provide a vegan dessert option in the faculty dining room only serves to underscore the Administration’s indifference to the sanctity of all life.  This is not a University; it’s a cesspool of animal carcasses and saturated fat ruled by a tyrant!”)

The Profsplainers:  Relentlessly defending the abysmal student evaluations they receive year after year, these faculty claim that students will not recognize the value and brilliance of the pedagogy they have experienced until after they graduate.  (“I only publicly humiliate students now so they won’t make the same mistakes later on the job.  The bitter tears they shed today are a down payment on a successful tomorrow.”)  

The University of Michigan Faculty Senate has threatened to sue the school’s President and Board of Regents on the day the new policy goes into effect.

“Go ahead,” says Schlissel, glancing at the Clint Eastwood poster on his office wall.

“Make my day.”

 

 

Much useful advice is contained in Dr. Maria Wisdom’s recent Chronicle of Higher Education essay, “5 Factors to Consider Before You Leave Faculty Life” (November 17th online), but a few critical topics are left unaddressed.  For readers who are thinking about departing academia for a new career, here are 5 additional issues to keep in mind:

Normal people don’t talk like college professors.  For example, you will encounter very few accountants, bartenders, or X-ray technicians who use the phrase “lived experience.”  If you employ that phrase in their presence, they will tilt their head and gaze at you like a puzzled Cocker Spaniel.  They’ll do this because they’ll regard the phrase as stupidly redundant.  The reason they will believe this is because the phrase is stupidly redundant.  Suggestion:  During your first few months out of academia, don’t speak.  At all.  Take some time to reacquaint yourself with the English language.  

If you must talk, refrain from bragging that you seldom watch television, or — even worse — that you don’t even own a television.  Most people watch a LOT of television.  In fact, many families who can barely afford a bag of Cheetos and a toilet brush own a flat-screen TV that is larger than your garage door.  If these folks find out that you don’t watch TV, they’ll think you’re weird.  And they’ll be right.  What is WRONG with you?  

Expect to feel uncomfortable and have awkward interactions when you inform your academic friends that you are now making a living selling houseboat insurance.  You will see sadness in their eyes — sadness for you, not for themselves.  Don’t make a pathetic attempt to overcompensate by telling them that you have discovered a level of satisfaction in insuring houseboats that you never experienced as a faculty member.  They won’t believe you.  Because you won’t believe you.  Embrace your pain.  It’s okay to cry in public.  

When meeting people who don’t know your background in academia, decide how you’re going to react if they start telling cruel, hurtful jokes about college professors.  Will you inform them of what you used to do and then chastise them?  Will you be silent?  Will you join in and participate in the trashing of your former profession?  In race-relations terminology, choosing the second or third option is known as “passing.”  Consult the relevant literature for recommendations on how to pass successfully.  You might need to abandon your family of origin. 

If selling houseboat insurance works out well for you, make sure to purchase a high-end sports car and pay a visit to your old campus.  Ask your colleagues how their Zoom and hybrid classes are going, and inquire about the progress of the committee they’re on that’s responsible for redoing all the worksheets for community college transfers.  Show them your personalized “EX-PROF” license plate.  Casually smoke an expensive cigar in front of them, regardless of your gender.  Tell your friends in the English Department that it doesn’t matter if references to bacon and chutney in the novels of Edith Wharton foreshadow major themes in the mature work of Philip Roth.  It really doesn’t.

And for God’s sake, please go out and buy a big-ass TV.  You’ve earned it. 

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education essay, University of Pennsylvania Professor Jonathan Zimmerman states that “I’ll retire when my institution pledges to hire a full-time, tenure-track professor in my place” (November 8th online).  

Dr. Zimmerman is the latest in a long line of college faculty who have offered to “go emeritus” in exchange for a specific concession from the administration.  Here’s a sampling of some of the more notable episodes, and how they turned out:

Gerald McTillis, College of William and Mary, 1807:  Said he would retire if given the opportunity to engage in a single-shot duel with the chairman of his department.  McTillis had accused the chair of assigning him 7:00 am classes, 5 days a week, for over 35 years. Outcome:  Professor McTillis passed away suddenly, but not unexpectedly, on May 27, 1807.

Spencer Woburn, Cornell University, 1891:  Would not retire unless the names of the four members of the Tenure & Promotion Committee whose negative votes prevented him from being promoted to full professor in 1880 were made public.  Outcome:  Request denied.  Curiously, between 1892 and 1894, all seven members of the 1880 T & P Committee disappeared without a trace.  For the next several years visitors often claimed that the barn on Professor Woburn’s farm “smelled funny.”

Celeste Wiggins-Talbot, Gettysburg College, 1937:  Demanded that Professor Navin Teasdale be blindfolded whenever he was on campus.  Wiggins-Talbot claimed that Teasdale stared at her breasts incessantly during department meetings, refusing to make eye contact.  “I don’t want the next generation of female professors at Gettysburg to encounter the same boorish behavior that I did,” she said.  Outcome:  A compromise was reached, which stipulated that Teasdale would never be permitted to have cataract surgery, even if he needed it. 

Maynard Nesbitt, University of Mississippi, 1952:  Promised to forgo his school-funded pension if the University agreed to show the film “Birth of a Nation” at freshman orientation every year, with Nesbitt coming out of retirement to give a post-screening lecture entitled, “D. W. Griffith: The Persecuted Prophet.”  Outcome:  Proposal rejected, by a 14-11 vote of the Board of Trustees. 

Gretchen Harvesta, Smith College, 2016:  Refused to retire until the school’s Business Office reimbursed her for a 2009 lunch she had at Chick-fil-A in the Charlotte International Airport, where she had a layover on the way back from a research conference in Puerto Rico.  A valid receipt for the meal had been submitted by Harvesta.  Outcome:  Request denied, due to Chick-fil-A’s public opposition to same-sex marriage.  The denial noted that the airport’s food court had an easily accessible McDonald’s, which also served a chicken sandwich.   

Percy Oddson, Emory University, 2018:  Oddson attempted to take a University-owned, window-mounted air conditioner out of his office when he vacated the premises upon retirement.  “Toby and I share a lot of memories, and even more secrets,” he asserted when apprehended by Campus Police in the parking lot.  “We should be together.”  Outcome:  Professor Oddson was admitted to DeKalb County Mental Hospital, where he currently resides.

NOTE:  You can visit Dr. Oddson at DeKalb from 2 to 4 pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.  He enjoys doing crossword and jigsaw puzzles with family and friends, and collecting photographs of vintage air conditioners. 

 

TRUE FACT:  A consulting architect recently resigned from the Design Review Committee at the University of California at Santa Barbara after the school announced plans to erect a 1.68-million-square-foot dormitory in which 94% of its single-occupancy rooms would have no windows.  According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the building “would be one of the densest residential-housing units on the planet” (November 12th, p. 8).

An early hint that something might be amiss with the proposed facility was the fact that the architectural firm hired for the project, NanoSpace, also designs poultry enclosures for Perdue Farms, one of the largest chicken-processing companies in North America.

NanoSpace Managing Partner, Van Von Vindervun, acknowledges that this is the firm’s first venture into student housing: “The way we see it, the only real difference between a chicken and a college student is that one has feathers and the other doesn’t.  They both happen to be bipeds and hopelessly stupid, and neither is bothered all that much by standing around in its own excrement, especially when drugged.  

“All we really have to do is figure out how to give students enough space in their living quarters to hunch over smartphones.  That’s not exactly an intimidating architectural challenge.

“And just for the record, exit interviews indicate that OSHA only received five complaints in 2020 from chickens residing in Perdue facilities designed by NanoSpace. We’re proud of that.”

As you should be.  

TO:  All Faculty, Students, and Staff

RE:  I’m Sorry

I’m not sure what possessed me last week to show a 1952 episode of Amos ‘n’ Andy to students in my course on “Black Americans on Network TV in the Early 1950s.”  Perhaps it was because I was teaching a course on “Black Americans on Network TV in the Early 1950s.”

In any event, it is now clear that my decision has ignited a firestorm of controversy on campus.  Accordingly, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the following groups:

—  The American Gem Society, which is not pleased that Sapphire, the wife of Kingfish, is portrayed in the episode as being somewhat strident and shrewish.  This has depressed sales of sapphire jewelry across the country.  

—  The National Mackerel Association, which objects to the episode’s depiction of Kingfish (aka George Stevens) as someone who is constantly hatching get-rich-quick schemes.  In reality, king mackerels (aka kingfish) are famous in the marine community for their integrity and honesty, second only to blue marlin.    

— Uber and Lyft Drivers, who correctly note that Amos’s occupation in the series is that of taxicab driver, with no mention ever being made of Uber or Lyft transportation services.   Although it is true that neither Uber nor Lyft existed in 1952, that’s a poor excuse for the writers not anticipating that they would exist in the future. 

—  The American Bar Association, which is upset that the only lawyer featured in the episode — Algonquin J. Calhoun — is black.  As ABA President Reginald Turner informed me in a registered letter, “the great majority of attorneys in the United States in 1952 were white.  An impressionable white child who watches this episode might wonder, ‘are there any lawyers out there who look like me?  I don’t want to be a lawyer anymore.  I’d rather sell car insurance for a living, or just kill my parents and live on what I inherit’.”

— The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE), which is appalled at the failure of the Mystic Knights of the Sea, the fraternal group Amos and Andy belong to, to faithfully observe Robert’s Rules of Order during their meetings.  “Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t,” observes BPOE Board Chairman James McQuillan.  “It makes all of us look bad.”

— The Mothers-in-Law Congress of North America, which maintains that Americans’ negative view of mothers-in-law can be traced back to the character of Mama, Kingfish’s nemesis on the show.  As Congress President Edna Yentsin put it, “Mama was totally justified in being highly critical of her son-in-law, given those get-rich-quick schemes he was always hatching.”

—  The American Kennel Club, which claims that canines rarely appear on Amos ‘n’ Andy.  As AKC President Dennis Sprung yelled at me over the phone, “it’s one thing to have a TV show with no cats.  Cats suck.  But to have no dogs, not even strays?  That’s downright un-American.  Shame on Amos ‘n’ Andy, and shame on you for exposing students to this anti-pooch propaganda.  Somewhere, a bichon is crying alone in its crate, you bastard.”

If I have failed to apologize to anyone I should have, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Dr. Terrance Nasely-Smythe 

Professor of Cultural Anthropology