University Life

True Fact: The undergraduate population of the University of Montana at Missoula has decreased by more than 40% over the past 8 years.  It is, by far, the biggest drop in undergraduate enrollment experienced by a public flagship institution in the United States.  Appropriately, on September 26th a Chronicle of Higher Education headline asked, “What’s Going On?” at Missoula.

University Life has spent the past two months investigating this question, and the answer is clear:

Bears. 

Montana is home to black bears and grizzlies, both of which inhabit the woods on the edge of the Missoula campus.  According to Campus Police Chief Seth “Deer Tick” Crick, “global warming is diminishing the availability of the bears’ traditional food supply, so they’ve started to replace that supply with our students.  Undergraduates who walk back alone to their dorms from the cafeteria right after dinner are particularly vulnerable, especially in the winter months when it gets dark early.  As the bears see it, these kids are just calorie-laden snacks.  And let’s face it, most college students these days are pretty self-absorbed.  By the time they look up from their smartphones to identify the source of the heavy breathing behind them, it’s too late.  Often, the only thing we find left on the sidewalk is a smartphone, and occasionally a stray sneaker.  It’s a damn shame, but there’s only so much we can do.  We encourage students to walk in groups at night, and never to wear honey-scented cologne, perfume, or body spray.”

It’s the rare Missoula student who hasn’t lost a friend or classmate to a bear.  Says sophomore Nate Cleghorn: “My roommate Skip was a terrific guy.  At home football games he would dress up as Monte, the grizzly mascot of our school.  It’s really ironic that he was carried off by an actual bear.  Or maybe it’s really ‘paradoxical’; I always get those two terms confused.  I have the same problem with ‘affect’ and ‘effect’.  Regardless, I miss Skip a lot.”

As an anonymous staff member in the University Admissions office put it, “it’s hard to recruit students when they know there’s a good chance they’ll be eaten before they graduate.”

Addendum:  This installment of University Life is dedicated to Tyler Krill, a beloved UL reporter who doggedly pursued this story.  Tyler was a relentless investigator, and the last entry in his notebook — found on a nature trail near the campus — was, “I think I’ll check out those rustling sounds coming from the bushes next to that cave opening.”

With Tyler, it was always about getting the story.  

From the September 14th New York Times:  The University of Alabama “is rewarding students who attend [home football] games — and stay until the fourth quarter” with priority access to tickets for the post-season.  Wait, there’s more.  “Alabama is…using location-tracking technology from students’ phones to see who skips out and who stays.”

On September 21st, this new policy almost resulted in a world-class disaster at Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium, where the Crimson Tide was playing the University of Southern Mississippi.  Here’s what happened, according to University of Alabama Police Chief John Hooks:

“We had a full house at Saturday’s game: 101,821 to be exact.  The students in attendance were afraid that if they left their seats to go to the bathroom, the tracking system would report that they had exited the stadium.  So, virtually every student wore a ‘stadium buddy’ that day, a device that enables you to urinate while staying in your seat.

“Over the course of the game, the stadium buddies of tens of thousands of students were filling up.  Did you know that urine is really high in nitrogen?  I didn’t.  Well, by the time the fourth quarter rolled around, Bryant-Denny Stadium was basically Ground Zero, a massive reservoir of volatile nitrogen just waiting to be ignited.  All it would have taken was a tiny leak from one of the containers, trickling a line of pee that encountered a bit of salt from a discarded box of popcorn or random potato chip.  The resulting chemical reaction would have been BLAMMO!!!

“I checked with one of our Physics professors, and she said that the explosion would have been visible from Minneapolis, and that the force of the blast would have made the Hiroshima cataclysm look like a butterfly sneeze. 

“We dodged a bullet last Saturday,” says Hooks.  “Actually, we dodged a lot more than a bullet.  It would have been the worst catastrophe in Alabama football since we lost to Notre Dame 37-6 in 1987.  We’ve got to change this attendance policy!”

Crimson Tide students appeared to take the near-calamity in stride.  When Dwayne “Turnstyle” Willis, a sophomore, heard the news while skateboarding across campus wearing his 24/7 stadium buddy, he simply flashed a big grin and exclaimed, “AWESOME!”

 

Uh-oh.  According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, “faculty members at Miami University [in Ohio] are protesting a proposed policy that would require employees to report their own criminal activity or that of their colleagues to the university’s lawyers…..failure to do so could mean disciplinary action, up to dismissal.”

If this weren’t bad enough, the Miami administration plans to extend the policy in 2020 to a variety of non-criminal faculty offenses, including the following:

—  leaving pee dribbles on toilet seats in campus bathrooms

—  putting too much text into PowerPoint lecture slides

—  failing to clap when the applause sign is lit during Presidential addresses to the faculty

—  encouraging adjunct faculty to seek higher pay and better working conditions

—  pouring an excessive amount of Thousand Island dressing on your salad during lunch in the faculty dining room; taking a pat of butter but not using it

—  nodding off at department meetings in the midst of discussions of course re-numbering

—  delivering course lectures in bathrobe and slippers 

—  using the same multiple-choice questions on exams for three consecutive semesters

—  being “generally annoying” or “weird”

—  mouthing the words to the Star-Spangled Banner, rather than actually singing them, prior to campus sporting events

—  promising to bring cocktail shrimp, hot wings, and recreational marijuana to the department Christmas party, but not following through

—  putting chewing gum and French fries in the paper-only recycling bin outside of your office

—  frowning or scowling at colleagues who greet you as you walk across campus

—  not erasing the white board at the end of class

—  erasing the white board with your tongue at the end of class

—  stating or implying that Michel Foucault has had a positive influence on academic discourse

—  telling students that the “real Miami University” is in Florida, and that they’d be better off attending school there

—  taking the floor at a General Faculty Meeting under the pretense of asking a question, and then proceeding to give a speech about an administrative decision 15 years ago that you’re still angry about

According to Miami U. Police Chief Garrett “Buzz” Saffron, the list of non-criminal offenses will be updated every six months starting in June 2020.  As he put it, “people shouldn’t think of this as some ‘Big Brother’ type of policy.  What we’re aiming for here is a ‘We Are Family’ vibe — loving but watchful.”

Somewhere, Sister Sledge is smiling.

 

Yes, it’s true: For over a decade the University of Maryland at College Park has sent incoming freshmen a welcome box that includes a container of Old Bay seasoning and a crab mallet.

Overall, the program has been a success, but occasionally there have been missteps, according to Dining Services spokesperson Bart Hipple: “In 2016 we thought it would be a nice touch to put a steamed hard shell crab in the box.  Unfortunately, the boxes were assembled three weeks before they were mailed, so the students received crabs that were not, to put it mildly, ‘digestion friendly’.  The aroma the students encountered when they opened the box should have tipped them off, but not all of them were aware that a cooked hard shell crab shouldn’t smell like a pit latrine in Calcutta during cholera season.  We documented about 400 cases of food poisoning around the country that could be traced to the welcome boxes.  Trust me, it wasn’t a fun summer for Dining Services. 

“The following year, 2017, we tried to regroup by placing a sedated live crab in the box, along with instructions on how to steam it.  The problem was that we didn’t realize Maryland blue crabs become REALLY agitated when they’re confined in a small space for an extended period, regardless of how much you’ve drugged them.  When the boxes were opened, these feisty little crustaceans came out fighting!  Most of the injuries to students were minor — scratches and small puncture wounds — but at least five students lost one or more fingers to a particularly strong set of pincers. 

“Well, that ended the crab-inclusion experiment.  We’ve returned to just giving students the Old Bay and the mallet.  Of course, a few of the more adventurous kids can always be counted on to use their bong to smoke the seasoning after lacing it with oregano and powdered kale, but I can tell you from experience that it doesn’t produce much of a high, and it leaves your throat incredibly raw.  Now we include a sticker on the Old Bay container warning folks not to do this.”

Note to Mom and Dad: It’s probably a good idea to be in the room when your offspring open their welcome box from the University of Maryland.  It might be your last opportunity to offer parental guidance before your child heads to college.  

As the noted humorist Robert Benchley (1889 – 1945) once observed, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who get really upset when a colleague hits Reply All in response to a message from a university administrator to the faculty as a whole, and those who take the colleague’s mistake in stride. 

Okay, maybe it wasn’t Robert Benchley who observed this.  But you get the point. 

In any event, a typical episode of RRA (Reckless Reply All) goes something like this:

——————————————————————————————————

September 3, 2019, 8:45 am

FROM:  Fleming Helken, Dean of Arts & Sciences

TO:  Arts & Sciences Faculty

SUBJECT:  Dry-Erase Markers

Just a reminder that the deadline for submitting purchase orders for dry-erase markers for the Spring 2020 semester is today, September 3rd.  Please send your request electronically using Form DEM217.  You must submit a separate request for each color you would like to receive.  In addition to sending your request to the Purchasing Office, please copy the Provost and Campus Police in your email.  Thank you, and don’t forget that National Don’t-Sniff-Your-Marker Day is September 25th.  A rally will be held on the campus quadrangle at 11:00 am featuring a performance by TCU’s own Clear Nostril Jug Band.

Have a nice day, and best wishes for a productive Fall semester. 

——————————————————————————————————–

September 3, 9:02 am

FROM: Randall Yenz-Thompson, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages

TO:  Fleming Helken; Arts & Sciences Faculty

SUBJECT:  Re: Dry-Erase Markers

Is there any chance you could extend the marker deadline?  Last night our Bichon Frise, Stefan, developed a nasty abscess on his left hip.  It’s inflamed and quite painful, which you quickly discover if you press on it with your thumb.  I’m with him now at the animal hospital, and will probably be here until late in the evening.  The veterinarian says that she will need to lance the abscess to get all the pus out, and I want to stay by Stefan’s side until he wakes up in the recovery room.  As you can imagine, I’m in no shape, psychologically, to submit a dry-erase-marker purchase order today.  I promise to do it the first thing tomorrow morning.  Thanks so much, and please pray for Stefan.  

——————————————————————————————————–

In recognition of how annoying incidents like this can be, Texas Christian University has become the first school in the country to establish a “Progessive Discipline System” for RRA offenders. 

Here’s how it works:

1st offense:  A note is added to the faculty member’s annual performance review by the chair. 

2nd offense:  The Human Resources Department is notified and the offender is required to participate in a Saturday morning training session on Email Etiquette offered by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. 

3rd offense:  The faculty member must attend a Scared Straight session sponsored by Campus Police.  In the session, a rehabilitated RRA offender engages in some “attitude adjustment” with the professor in question: “You think this is a joke, punk?  Don’t look away from me!  What makes you think that anybody at this school gives a good goddamn about your lame-ass bee-shawn free-zay oozing pus from a bump on his butt?  Is that thing even a real dog, or just a big ol’ puff ball of cotton you use to shine your sports car? I told you, ‘DON’T LOOK AWAY FROM ME!’  And stop crying, or I’ll smack you upside your head like Aaron Judge hitting a fastball with a two-by-four!”

4th offense:  The faculty member will not be considered for a merit raise or cost-of-living salary increase for the coming academic year.

5th offense:  The offender’s email privileges at TCU will be suspended for 3 months. 

6th offense:  Public shaming on the TCU campus quad.  The faculty member is branded with a scarlet RRA on his or her forehead. 

7th offense:  Revocation of tenure and banishment to a local for-profit college specializing in cosmetology and long-distance trucking. 

Although these measures may seem harsh to some, a TCU spokesperson indicates that there is broad support for them among the faculty.  Indeed, the spokesperson asserts that “one professor even told me, ‘I can forgive a sexual innuendo or two directed at a good-looking undergraduate a lot more readily than I can condone the lack of attention to detail that leads to clicking on Reply All when you shouldn’t’.”

Will other schools follow TCU’s approach?  University Life will keep you posted.  

 

On August 8th, Ohio State University submitted an application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the word “The,”  as in “The Ohio State University.”  No joke.  According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, OSU “wants the exclusive right to sell T-shirts, baseball caps, hats, and more emblazoned with ‘THE’.”  Samantha Quimby, an attorney with the firm Frost Brown Todd, filed the application on behalf of Ohio State.  

When Ms. Quimby was asked by reporters at a press conference if her work on this request embodied the dreams, aspirations, and ideals that motivated her to pursue a career in the law, she responded, “Absolutely!  Words matter.  Even little words.  We all know that when language is employed recklessly, people can be hurt and lives tragically scarred.  What we’re trying to do here is……..”

Ms. Quimby hesitated, smiled slightly, and suppressed a soft chuckle.  Regaining her composure, she said, “What we’re trying to do here is…….”

She began to chuckle again, and then slapped herself hard in the face with her right hand while muttering, “Goddammit, woman, get a grip!”

It all quickly went downhill from there.  Ms. Quimby tried once more to explain the rationale behind OSU’s application, but dissolved into giggles that became increasingly hysterical.  Anxious reporters exchanged nervous glances. 

Suddenly, Ms. Quimby’s visage became haunted, and her eyes darted around the room.  She started yelling: “ARE YOU F**KING KIDDING ME?  WE’RE ACTUALLY GOING TO TRADEMARK THE WORD ‘THE’?  THIS IS TOTAL BULLSHIT!  WHAT HAVE I DONE?  OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?”

She stared down at her hands and began violently massaging her fingers, repeatedly asking in a maniacal fashion, “Will these hands ne’er be clean?”

Security guards escorted Ms. Quimby from the building.  She is currently an inpatient, resting comfortably, at THE Ohio Hospital for Psychiatry in Columbus.  

 

 

True Story:  The Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts is in danger of losing its accreditation this fall.  The public reason for this possibility, given by the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE), is the school’s declining enrollment, financial insecurity, and lack of effective planning. 

Well, that’s what NECHE would like you to believe.

According to an anonymous source at Hellenic, “what’s really going on here is a celestial power play.”

Here’s the full story, as uncovered by University Life:

For the past three years Hellenic has offered an elective course entitled Trinity Plus One, which claims that the Holy Trinity is, in fact, a quartet: Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and Darlene.  Darlene is not mentioned in the Bible due to the patriarchal hegemony that pervades the document.  When God the Father learned of the existence of this course in 2018 (from a Hellenic graduate student interning in Purgatory), he began lobbying NECHE vigorously to revoke the school’s accreditation.  

God the Father and Darlene had been married for nearly 7.6 million years when they divorced in 8 B.C. due to irreconcilable differences (e.g., “No matter how much I beg, the man absolutely refuses to shave.  And how about changing your robe once in a while?”)  Darlene agreed to move to another universe.  But she never did, citing transportation costs.  So, she’s still in West Heaven, occupying a spacious two-bedroom apartment in the planned community of Rapture Meadows. 

It’s an awkward situation, to be sure.  As our anonymous source put it, “it’s too bad that Hellenic College might pay the price for what amounts to a domestic dispute among the divine.  I hate to say it, but I’m afraid that God the Father is on the wrong side of history here.  Darlene is as much a Supreme Being as he is.”

Stay tuned.  The New York Times is expected to break the story within the next week.  

True Story: The President of LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, Tennessee will leave office when her contract expires on September 1st.  Among other things, she has been criticized by students for “failing to deal with mold in dormitories.” 

A similar saga is unfolding at Sebaceous-Hamilton College in Blakely, Georgia, where the President, Sterling Bagby, has come under fire for failing to deal with mold on faculty members.  

According to Melanie Torpz, a junior majoring in Communications, the average age of a tenured professor at Sebaceous-Hamilton is 102.  “It’s ridiculous,” complains Torpz.  “Many of my professors just stand at the front of the classroom and lean on the lectern; their eyes are closed and they’re totally silent except for an occasional weird gurgling sound.  The other day, my Biology prof’s hand seized up during her PowerPoint presentation on evolution in the Galápagos Islands.  She clicked through 430 slides in about 90 seconds.  I learned nothing that day….just one big blur on the screen, and then the clicker started to smoke.  Shouldn’t there be a mandatory retirement age or something?

“And my History professor wears his gray Confederate army uniform to class every day.  When I asked him where he goes to participate in re-enactments of Civil War battles, he snarled at me and yelled, ‘What do you mean, RE-ENACTMENTS?’  I got really scared.”

President Bagby vigorously defends his senior faculty, claiming that they are “well-seasoned, like a good pulled-pork sandwich.”  He notes that students often think professors are asleep when they are simply using that “quiet space” as a vehicle for stimulating class participation.

But what about reports that some older faculty are literally moldy, triggering allergic reactions in vulnerable students?  

“We hose down those professors immediately,” says Bagby.  “Every classroom is equipped with a functioning fire hydrant and a teaching assistant.  And we are just as quick to handle incidents where forgetful faculty, regardless of age, show up at class with old peanuts or live scorpions in their pockets.  We hustle them out of there tout suite.

“As we like to say at Sebaceous-Hamilton, it’s not how old you are, it’s whether or not you’re carrying predatory arachnids.”  

Amen to that. 

 

True Story:  According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “scholars across the country have signed an open letter to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum asking that it retract its June 24 statement condemning all analogies to the Holocaust.”

Sorry, scholars.  Too little, too late. 

The Museum’s condemnation of analogies has prompted a flurry of similar actions by other organizations around the nation.  Here are the most recent ones:

—  On July 3rd Major League Baseball sued the President of Colby College for his claim that the school had “hit a big league home run” in hiring a new Provost with credentials from the prestigious University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. 

According to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, “there is no evidence that Colby’s President, or any member of its Board of Trustees, has ever played professional baseball, much less hit a home run in a game.  His assertion demeans the achievements of every Major League player in history who has launched a four-bagger.  For the love of God, stop using such language, especially in praising someone who comes from a country that believes cricket is actually a sport.”

—  Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Richard V. Spencer called out the Chancellor of the University of Tennessee on July 10th for her comment that the school “was waging an all-out war against budget cuts to higher education by the state legislature.” 

Speaking at a hastily called press conference, Spencer maintained that “the draft-dodging faculty at this ivory-tower cupcake of a university wouldn’t know how to mount a strategic military initiative if the Pentagon gave them an instruction manual using nothing but one-syllable words.  In war, Dear Chancellor, people get shot, they bleed, and they die.  They live in trenches and foxholes for weeks at a time, stink to high heaven, and eat beef jerky for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  When’s the last time you did anything like that?  The day you’re prepared to drop the Big One on the state capitol building while the legislature is in session, you can talk to me about waging war.  Until then, stand down and shut up!”

—  Finally, there is the beyond-embarrassing episode at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where the UNLV President characterized a recent 3-hour meeting of the Faculty Senate as a “clusterf**k in which absolutely nothing worthwhile was accomplished.” 

In a July 15th letter to the President, the Executive Director of the Nevada Association of Brothel Owners (NABO) indicated that “we are deeply offended  by your use of the term in question to describe a dysfunctional faculty gathering.  NABO takes pride in furnishing its customers with reasonably priced activities bearing the name that you trashed.  Indeed, these services at our facilities consistently receive yelp ratings that average 4.85 or higher on a 5-point scale.  You have taken a perfectly good word and smeared it.  If you want to criticize the way your faculty run their meetings, by all means do so, but not at our expense.  Thank you.”

A point well taken. 

Things got a bit embarrassing for Naomi Wolf a couple of months ago when an interviewer informed her, during a live radio broadcast, of a substantive error in Outrages, her most recent book.  

As distressing as this episode was for Ms. Wolf, it pales in comparison with what a number of other authors have experienced when confronted with mistakes in their research.  A sampling:

— Duncan Fife-Prell, a professor at Middlebury College, claimed that Liechtenstein, not Germany, was the primary aggressor during World War II in his two-volume work, Tiny Terror: Liechtenstein and the Quest for World Domination.  Fife-Prell learned of his blunder when he attended a book signing at VFW Post No. 782 in Burlington, Vermont and was punched in the face by a veteran whose parents had emigrated to the United States from the small principality in 1910.  The author later acknowledged that he had been doing “serious amounts of cocaine” while working on the book. 

—  In Munch, his 2018 history of snack foods, Rutgers University Culinary Science professor Seth Halogen asserted that Slim Jims pre-dated Twizzlers.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Twizzlers were first produced in 1845, while Slim Jims did not appear until 1929, over 80 years later.

Halogen’s mistake was revealed on the PBS Newshour by anchor Judy Woodruff during a segment on “Chewing and Identity Politics.”  Dr. Halogen has not been seen since the show aired on June 26th, but his car was discovered three days later.  It was parked next to a Häagen-Dazs production facility in Bayonne, New Jersey that contained industrial vats of molten dark chocolate.  A sneaker was found floating in Vat No. 7.  There was no note. 

—  Finally, there is the case of Millicent Frittata, unauthorized biographer of the rich and famous.  In her 2019 book, You Don’t Know Jack!, she maintains that movie star Jack Lemmon was transgender.  As it turns out, Ms. Frittata had seen the raucous 1959 comedy “Some Like It Hot,” where Mr. Lemmon is often dressed as a woman, and thought the film was a documentary.  When questioned by a Washington Post reporter, she offered a half-hearted apology: “Okay, okay, but I still think there may be something going on there.”

Authors, take note: Fact-checking never goes out of style.