It’s not often that a university president smiles broadly when sharing news of a major scandal at his or her institution. But that’s exactly what Mississippi Wesleyan President, Dr. Beauregard “Bo” Sternum, did when he announced on Monday that 30% of the school’s sophomore class had been expelled due to a cheating scandal.
In a hastily called press conference, Sternum began, “My friends, I’m proud to say that the misdeeds I describe to you today do not concern lecherous predators among our faculty, sexual assaults by frat boys, protests against controversial campus speakers, NCAA recruiting violations, trigger warnings, gender pronouns, trigger pronouns, gender warnings, censorship, or graffiti targeting racial minorities and LGBTQ members of the Mississippi Wesleyan community.
“Instead, what we’ve got here is a good, old-fashioned case of exams being stolen from faculty offices by one group of students and sold to another group of students. This is a damn fine tradition that has been around as long as there have been schools, and while the offenders must be punished, let’s keep in mind the goals of the individuals who were involved: the sellers were endeavoring to pay for their college education without taking out high-interest loans, and the buyers were striving to get good grades. I think these are ambitions that we can all identify with — and even praise. We hate to say goodbye to these young men and women, but I wish them well at the University of Mississippi and Mississippi State, and if any of them ever needs a letter of recommendation, they need look no further than Bo Sternum, a man who was not averse to writing an answer or two in the palm of his hand back in the day.”