University Life

TRUE FACT:  Student applicants to Harvard University will soon be answering a new question as part of the admissions process:  “Reflect on a time when you strongly disagreed with someone about an idea or issue. How did you communicate or engage with this person?” (Harvard Crimson, August 4th online).  

Given Harvard’s influence in higher education, it’s not surprising that other schools are scrambling to add similar queries to their applications.  Here are five of the more provocative ones:

Mississippi State University:  “Imagine that your fraternity/sorority has just participated in a Civil War reenactment of the Battle of Vicksburg.  As you socialize in costume at a reception following the event, a student comments, ‘You know, I think slavery was wrong then and it’s wrong now’.

“What would you say in this awkward situation?”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology:  “Imagine that your boyfriend or girlfriend whispers to you immediately after having sex: ‘You never express any emotion or tenderness when we’re together.  It’s almost as if you view me as a machine whose sole purpose is to provide you with physical pleasure.  And you never blink’.

“Would you respond to this hostile remark as you proceed to put on your clothes, leave the room, and end the relationship?  If so, what would you say?”

Oral Roberts University:  “God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ walk into a bar, where they find the Virgin Mary totally hammered, performing a karaoke version of Donna Summer’s ‘Bad Girls’.

“What feedback should they give her when she finishes singing?”

Carnegie-Mellon University:  “Your History professor’s teaching assistant, in a desperate attempt to win your affection, reveals to you all of the questions on the upcoming final exam.  What would you do, and why?

“Use the information, then dump the TA after one date.

“Use the information, then claim you have a sexually transmitted disease right before you’re scheduled to go on a date with the TA.

“Blackmail the TA by threatening to ‘tell all’ to the professor if you’re not paid $500 every other week for the next six months.  Date the TA if he/she is attractive.”

Dartmouth College:  “You wake up in your luxury dorm earlier than usual one morning and realize that your family’s obscene level of wealth has provided you with opportunities and advantages that the vast majority of people on this planet do not have. What would you do, and why?

“Smile, go back to sleep, and write a thank-you note to your parents later in the day.

“Smile, get up, have a saffron smoothie, and go to the gym.

“Frown, experience guilt, and send a check for $100 to Doctors Without Borders.

“Frown, experience extreme guilt, and send a check for $125 to Doctors Without Borders.”

Moral of the Story:  Now is the time to come up with a probing question for your undergraduate applicants, before the federal government does it for you.  

The challenge of “How to Get Your Students to Read” is the subject of a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (August 2nd, p. 36).

Getting students to read is, to be sure, an admirable goal, but it ignores the painful truth that reading in college is….so….so….OVER.  Navigating a book page-by-page may have been a cool thing to do in the 19th and 20th centuries, but in the 21st there is no way it can compete with listening to Megan Thee Stallion on one’s earbuds.  

Fortunately, help is on the way.  McGraw Hill Publishing Company has partnered with Frito-Lay and the Department of Neuroscience at Purdue University to develop Edible Classics: notable books genetically embedded in popular snack items. 

Simon Allen, McGraw Hill’s CEO, poses the question: “Do you have any idea how many bags of Doritos are consumed by college students in a year?  Millions upon millions!  What if we could incorporate a book’s contents into the ingredients of a Doritos chip, or a Cheeto, or — in the case of elderly students — an extra-soft Pringle?  It would be incredible!  Students would be ‘reading’ every time they chewed.  Hell, instructors would WANT their students to smoke weed constantly, so they would always have the munchies. 

“The good news is that scientists at Purdue have found a way to link the tongue’s taste receptors to the part of the brain that processes language.  Need to have your students read ‘Moby Dick’ without complaining?  Three large bags of Ruffles Potato Chips (Whale Edition) should do the trick. 

“We plan to introduce our first series of Edible Classics in the fall of 2025.  It will include ‘Catcher in the Rye’, ‘Middlemarch’, ‘The Brothers Karamazov’, ‘Beloved’, and ‘Little Women’.

“Are we concerned about students gaining weight in reading-intensive courses?  Absolutely.  What’s the point of digesting all of ‘War and Peace’ if you drop dead of a heart attack while discussing it in class?  Moreover, books in some disciplines (e.g., Art History, Sociology) are much higher in saturated fat than the books in others (e.g., Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science).  As you can imagine, this is a very delicate issue to deal with. 

“The folks at Frito-Lay are working on these problems as we speak.  Until they come up with a solution, we recommend that instructors assign no more than 500 pages of edible reading per semester.

“The end of reading as we have traditionally known it need not represent the end of higher education.  It simply marks the beginning of a new, edible chapter in the history of the field.  Enjoy.”

 

A recent Chronicle of Higher Education essay explores the question, “Why Are There So Few Conservative Professors?” (July 1st online) 

Well, it’s not for lack of trying. 

Middlebury College, for example, held its first “Bring a Conservative Friend to Campus Day” this past April.  The goal was to demonstrate that a small liberal arts college could offer a welcoming environment to those on the political right.  

The event turned out to be less than a success when most of the Middlebury faculty realized that they had no conservative friends, and another subgroup discovered that they had no friends at all.   

“We had so much food left over at lunch, it was embarrassing,” says Middlebury President Laurie Patton.  “On that day, our town’s local barber, 67-year-old Marv Gaffney, was the most popular man in Vermont.  He had voted for Romney in 2012, and just about every male faculty member at Middlebury invited him to campus.  Marv had a wonderful time, but he has no intention of returning to school for a Ph.D. at this stage of his life.  You can find him back in his shop, Mondays through Saturdays from 10 to 5. 

“We’ll try something new next year.”

Not surprisingly, the California Institute of Technology took a different approach.  According to President Thomas Rosenbaum, “we sedated a random sample of our professors and surgically removed the portion of their brain that’s responsible for critical thinking, hoping it would make them conservative.  What a disaster!  The professors are still liberal, but now they are just stupidly liberal.  They’ve organized a group of feral cats on campus to protest the scarcity of tuna fish in dumpsters outside of our dining halls.  Hell, I’m being burned in effigy on the campus quad at this very moment.  Never again will I take advice from those dipwads in the Department of Neuroscience on how to solve personnel problems.”

Finally, there’s the cautionary tale of the College of William and Mary, which attempted to recruit conservative faculty directly from fundamentalist Bible colleges across the South.  

“What in the hell were we thinking?” laments President Katherine Rowe.  “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to recruit a world-class physicist from Burning Bush Divinity School in Biloxi, Mississippi?  The school offers one science course, in which the sole required text is the Classics Illustrated Book of Genesis.” 

Stop whining.  Nobody said this was going to be easy.  

 

TRUE FACT:  A gun storage room has been added to a student residence hall at West Virginia University in Morgantown.  This is in response to the state’s new “campus carry” law, which allows students on public college campuses to carry a concealed firearm (West Virginia Watch, June 27th online).  

But what if WVU runs out of space to store students’ guns?

“No way that’s going to happen,” says WVU’s Dean of Students.  “There’s all sorts of room to be had in our main library, where last week we torched a bunch of books on race, gender, homelessness, and other unpleasant topics in the Sociology section of the stacks.  As soon as the smoky smell is gone, we’ll be installing new gun lockers in that area.  

“There will be small cubbies available for the derringers and tiny pistols that girls love so much.  Other lockers will be larger, in order to accommodate the AR-15’s that our unstable male students generally prefer.  Finally, a few extra-roomy cages will be included for students who require nothing less than a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher to resolve disputes that can arise at a sports bar or concert venue.

“At West Virginia University, we strive to be inclusive.  We recognize that different students have different needs.” 

In a decision that is being hailed by academicians nationwide, the United States Fish & Wildlife Service has declared that undergraduate history majors are an Endangered Species. 

This means that it will be illegal for anyone — parent, guardian, well-meaning aunt or uncle, faculty advisor, etc. — to attempt to persuade a history major to switch to another field of study.  Violators will be subject to a fine of up to $10,000 and five years in prison.  While incarcerated, offenders will be required to read aloud all 11 volumes of The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. 

“We’re playing hardball here,” says FWS Director Martha Williams.  “In some parts of our country history majors are so scarce that they are at risk of not being able to reproduce in the wild.  In these ‘history deserts’ the supply of prime-age, fertile, female majors is rapidly approaching the vanishing point.  Try walking into a crowded Walmart in Fort Dodge, Iowa on a Saturday afternoon and asking, ‘Can anybody here tell me about the Peloponnesian War?’  You know what you’ll get?  SILENCE, that’s what.  Absolute silence.”

History Major Protection Order #172, issued by the FWS, will take effect on September 1st, 2024.  

Who would have guessed that the greatest leap forward in the history of higher education would take place in a small town in east central Indiana?

On September 1st, 2024, undergraduate classes will begin at Purdue University-Connersville (population 13,292), the first college in the nation to operate without faculty or students. 

Purdue University-Connersville will be a 100% AI campus.  All lectures in all subjects will be generated and delivered by ChatGPT; all assignments and examinations will be prepared by ChatGPT and then completed by ChatGPT; finally, all of these completed assignments and examinations will be evaluated and graded by ChatGPT. 

“Purdue University-Connersville represents the Holy Grail of higher education,” boasts Purdue President Mung Chiang.  “Every seasoned college administrator knows that the two major impediments to running an efficient university are students, who are a major pain in the ass, and faculty, who are an even bigger pain in the ass.  At PUC we will have neither.

“Without the labor costs associated with faculty, we can use our financial resources to recruit a basketball team we can be proud of, one that will be nationally ranked in Division I.  And then we’re going to sit back and watch the TV money roll in.  How sweet will that be?

“Of course, you may be wondering, ‘If there are no students, where will the players come from?’  Not to worry.  Where is it written that you have to be a student in order to play basketball in the U. S. of A?  We will NEVER discriminate against non-students at PUC.”

The Connersville Conestogas, led by LeBron James and Steph Curry, will open their 2024-25 season on November 12th with a home game against UCLA.

Swish.  

 

TRUE FACT: Louisiana is poised to become the first state in the nation to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public-school classrooms, including those in colleges and universities.  The proposal recently passed the Louisiana legislature and is awaiting the Governor’s signature (Associated Press, May 30th). 

Of course, both public and private institutions of higher learning display a stunning potpourri of curious stuff in their buildings.  Here’s a current sampling:

— An 1871 recipe for bread pudding appears on the wall of every classroom at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.  The recipe honors the mother of George Strong, the school’s first president.  Strong maintained that his mom made “the best damn bread pudding east or west of the Mississippi.”  

— An iconic photo of Farah Fawcett, the star of TV’s Charlie’s Angels, adorns all of the classrooms at the University of Florida.  President Ben Sasse notes with pride that “Ms. Fawcett embodies — and I do mean emBODIES — the hopes and dreams of every Gator on our campus, whether they be female or male.”

— At Williams College in Massachusetts, a flashing warning sign in every hallway indicates the actions that should be taken in the event a Republican is discovered in the building (“Break Glass, Remove Axe, Eliminate Threat”). 

— A pine-tree automobile air-freshener dangles from the inside doorknob of all classrooms at the University of Houston.  According to a University spokesperson, “it can get awfully hot and humid on our campus, and if the air conditioning shuts down, we need something to take the edge off.  There’s no sweat like Texas sweat.”

— A full-color, 8″ x 10″ photo of a deer tick is placed above every toilet and urinal at Connecticut College.  The New London school is located near the state’s coastline, where Lyme Disease was first identified.  The College’s Director of Health Services notes that “many of our students sleep naked in the woods in the spring, so we want them to know what to watch out for.”

— At Babson College, a business-focused school in Massachusetts, a replica of the first silver dollar earned by founder Roger Babson is encased in a shimmering glass snow globe suspended from the ceiling in every classroom.  As Stephen Spinelli, Babson’s President, puts it, “students should be reminded of our core values whenever they look to the heavens.”

— Rules for playing Uno, the classic card game, are posted in every dorm room at Abilene Christian University in Texas.  “Let’s face it, we’re known as THE party school of the Bible Belt,” says ACU’s Dean of Students.  “Why not own up to it?”

— Crude crayon drawings of dinosaurs can be found on at least one wall of every classroom at Rhode Island College.  The artwork is by six-year-old Timmy Galvenetti, grandson of Psychology Department secretary Bernice Galvenetti.  It is not clear if Ms. Galvenetti obtained permission to put up the drawings.  (“A grandmother doesn’t need permission to do these things,” she claims.)

— At DePaul University, the dust jacket from Presidential historian David McCullough’s final biography — Tony Danza: A Life — is affixed to every door on campus.  No one seems to know why.  

 

People frequently don’t say what they mean.  This is especially true in the case of final reports issued by accreditation bodies in higher education.  These team-authored documents are typically polite — and diplomatic — to a fault.  Therefore, as a service to college and university presidents everywhere, University Life offers this guide for decoding 10 common statements found in accreditation reports. 

REPORT SAYS: “The team has identified the following distinctive strengths of your institution.”

REPORT MEANS: “Your school pretty much sucks at everything it does, but here are a few areas where you don’t suck quite as much.”

REPORT SAYS: “The major concerns that emerged during the team’s site visit include the following…”

REPORT MEANS: “Get ready.  There are a ton of dumpster fires on your campus, and we’ll just be exploring the tip of the iceberg.  Indeed, the circumstances at your institution are so dire that they require two metaphors.  You’re simultaneously aflame and sinking.”

REPORT SAYS: “Strengthening consensus-oriented decision-making within the academic units of your school is essential.”

REPORT MEANS: “At a recent Sociology Department retreat, a subgroup of decolonization theorists took several of their colleagues hostage after a raucous disagreement over the use of the term ‘Latinx’.  Negotiations for the release of these hostages have reached an impasse, even though one of them is 9 months pregnant.  The optics are not good, to put it mildly.” 

REPORT SAYS: “Increased attention to gathering outcome data on the school’s graduates would be time well-spent.”

REPORT MEANS: “Based on the team’s luncheon meeting with 4th-year students, it appears that many of your undergraduates can’t read.”

REPORT SAYS: “There is a need for more effective succession planning within certain divisions of the university.”

REPORT MEANS: “The Director of the Library is agonizingly clueless, advocating retention of the card catalog system as the foundation for all library functions, including podcast listings.  A humane institution would put him out of his misery.  He is a blind squirrel wandering around in a falcon sanctuary in broad daylight.”

REPORT SAYS: “At this point in the university’s history, a re-examination of the school’s mission may be in order.”

REPORT MEANS: “The current mission statement, which begins with ‘We hope to still be in business next week’, is probably not the way to go.”

REPORT SAYS: “A review of roles and responsibilities within the Division of Student Affairs could result in services being more responsive to student needs.”

REPORT MEANS: “Your Dean of Students came to the university after being fired as Customer Services Manager at Jiffy Lube.  Have you no shame?”

REPORT SAYS: “Inspection of the institution’s organizational chart reveals that some reporting relationships may be less than optimal.”

REPORT MEANS: “For the love of God, why does the Dean of Arts & Sciences report to the Director of Buildings and Grounds?  And does it really make sense to have a joint Department of Entrepreneurship, Physics, and Nursing?”

REPORT SAYS: “It is unclear that all empirical claims made in the college’s promotional materials are evidence-based.”

REPORT MEANS: “Where in the hell do you get off saying that ‘our students have the best sex in the Southeastern Conference’?”

REPORT SAYS: “Strategic fundraising remains a challenge for the university.”

REPORT MEANS: “The school’s last three bake sales in support of repaving the faculty parking lot have netted less than $75.  It’s time to move on.”

Good luck with your next accreditation cycle. 

 

 

On May 10th the Chronicle of Higher Education observed that “a flurry of votes of no confidence in college leaders….has swept higher ed in the past month.”

In fairness, it should be noted that an increasing number of schools around the country are abandoning the blunt-edged sword of no-confidence votes in favor of more nuanced declarations of dissatisfaction with college presidents.  Here’s a sample:

— At Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution, faculty recently informed the President that “Almighty God is deeply disappointed in you and beseeches you to undergo a public exorcism at your earliest convenience.  Satan must be banished from your corroded soul.”  The President complied, thus averting a faculty strike. 

— Professors at Middlebury College in Vermont voted to avoid making eye contact with the President if they crossed her path on campus and not respond if she greeted them verbally during these encounters.  This shunning led the President to agree to demands that shrimp cocktail be returned to the luncheon menu in the faculty dining room. 

— Lehigh University conducted a “Vote of Intense Irritation with the President” on May 3rd, which passed 402-53.  Three days later, the President embarked on a Mea Culpa Tour of all academic departments, washing the feet of every chairperson. 

— On May 1st, faculty at Mount Holyoke College took a “We’re Not Feeling the Love” vote, which passed overwhelmingly.  Subsequently, the Provost announced that elimination of low-enrollment degree programs would always be accompanied by a bear hug and a Starbucks gift card delivered by the President to each laid-off faculty member. 

— Not all schools have chosen to pursue a kinder, gentler path. At the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, faculty voted on April 25th to formally notify the President via text message that “You Suck.”  The President responded with an email that said, “No, YOU suck.”

The Takeaway: If your President does indeed suck, you’ve got options. 

 

“What Counts as a Rural College?”  An interesting question, and the title of a video just released by the Chronicle of Higher Education (Academe, May 8th online).  

As a supplement to this valuable resource, University Life is pleased to offer its list of 11 surefire ways of identifying a rural institution of higher education:

1 — The Drama Department’s theatrical production of Cabaret is set on a 1930’s dairy farm in Buck Grove, Iowa.  In the adaptation, Sally Bowles is a Catholic nun who works for 4-H as an agricultural extension agent.  

2 — The shuttle-bus trip to the local shopping mall takes two-and-a-half days.

3 — During final exam periods, Therapy Hens are available in the library to provide support to stressed students. 

4 — On Saturday nights, undergraduates grab a handful of Cock-a-Doodle-Doo Condoms from Health Services and head over to the campus corn maze for some heavy smooching…and maybe more.

5 — At graduation, honorary degree recipients are given a pair of Dickies Classic Bib Overalls with golden shoulder tassels. 

6 — “O Pioneers!” by Willa Cather is required reading in every undergraduate course, including labs. 

7 — In the dining hall, cow’s milk is squeezed directly into cereal bowls by seniors majoring in Udder Studies. 

8 — The school’s most popular dating app is County Fairest, where female students on TikTok prepare a box lunch for that special fella they hope to attract. 

 9 — After every tornado, the folks in Buildings and Grounds spend the day “riding fences,” which involves retrieving students blown into the barbed-wire boundary that separates the campus from the grounds of the state penitentiary. 

10 — Students protest Israel’s occupation of Gaza by tossing loaves of Zingerman’s Jewish Rye into the cow-pie pit next to the adjunct faculty parking lot. 

11 — In Friday FanDuel, esports majors wager on the size of the next litter to be dropped by the feral cat living in the horse barn. 

It’s 5:00 am.  Do you know where your wheat thresher is?