University Board Chair Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what John Dewey once said about universities?
Department Chair Lionel Mandrake: No, I don't think I do, sir, no.
Jack D. Ripper: He said universities were too important to be left to the administrators. When he said that, 100 years ago, he might have been right. But today, universities are too important to be left to the faculty. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow faculty infiltration, faculty indoctrination, faculty subversion and the international faculty conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious capital accumulation and strategic synergistic disruptive innovation fluids....
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Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to allow faculty to give grades? Grades, Mandrake, students' grades.
Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.
Jack D. Ripper: You know when faculty grading first began?
Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war faculty conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious diploma purchasing system without the control of the individual student. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core faculty works.
Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen... tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?
Jack D. Ripper: [somewhat embarassed] Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of strike-breaking.
Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of grading control.
Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Faculty, uh... faculty sense my power and they seek grading control. I, uh... I do not avoid faculty, Mandrake.
Lionel Mandrake: No.
Jack D. Ripper: But I... I do deny them grading control.
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A strategic increase in the Air Consumption Fee ought to help alleviate the problem.
http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2010/10/uc-regents-to-add-air-consumption-fee.html
Posted by: Eric Schwitzgebel | December 07, 2014 at 12:22 PM