Malaspina People in Brief
After spending a semester on Paxil, Mr. Ian Johnston is organizing a support group for all faculty using this new medicine. "Our aim," Johnston explained, "will be for machines to dispense the medication on demand on campus for no charge. This matter should be viewed as a top professional development priority." The quest will, however, have to compete with the move to have MFA's medical insurance cover all prescriptions for Viagra, an urgent concern for the rapidly ageing and predominantly male faculty.
Meanwhile, Dr. Jonah Goldstein's award-winning study of negative campaign strategies in the Republican primary (Bleating About the Bush) is slated for a video presentation on PBS sometime in early September. Dr. Goldstein, who attended the University of Chicago, is well known for his stockyard humour, a prominent feature of his recent work, although some colleagues are not enamoured of it. "More than a little of that punning style," murmured Dr. Jeremy Raynor, "is by much too much."
Fresh from the triumph of achieving AUCC certification for the college, Dr. David Thomas is taking a well-deserved rest. "This proves that enforced conformity rather than excellence or imaginative reform is the true Canadian way," the Vice-President remarked. Asked about how joining the club squares with Malaspina's official Mission and Goals statement endorsing innovation and alternatives in undergraduate education, Dr. Thomas wearily raised his head out from under the pile of papers on his desk (left by his predecessor, Mr. Glenn Johnston) and enquired with some surprise, "Malaspina has a Mission and Goals statement?"
Dr. Lisa MacLean's enormously rich collection of pornography slides, the result of the assiduous research required for her lecture for the IPP (Institute of Practical Philosophy) symposium on Censorship, has been extensively leer reviewed by her colleagues in Liberal Studies. "It quite changed my life," exclaimed Dr. Russell McNeil. "My laundry bills have soared, and I now have to schedule regular trips to the chiropractor. Some of those positions are taxing." The jewel of the collection, a newly discovered bas relief of Socrates giving Pericles a hand job during the Funeral Oration (widely attributed to Likias, fl. 405) has sent Dr. Anne Leavitt scrambling back to rewrite the final chapters of her thesis. "I was well on the way to converting the thesis into the maximum number of LPU's [least publishable units], but this changes everything," she pointed out. Unimpressed with the size of the Periclean member, Mr. Norm Cameron sniffed, "Why so much fuss over one more phallic thimble?"
As part of Malaspina's aggressive search for outside sources of research funding, the Science Area is delighted to announce its successful bid for a grant to conduct research into a more effective nerve gas as a means of controlling young insurgents against the police. The grant of $800,000 has been awarded by the Foundation for a United and Controlling Knowledge of Youthful Offenders Unleashed. A special ethics committee has been struck to screen all procedures used on animals in the project; meanwhile, student volunteers, exempt from such screening, are being actively solicited for the first round of experiments. Dr David Drakeford, Dean of Science, noted that this grant will be a great benefit to the university-college because "we will be able to link our senior research projects directly and exclusively into this important study for years to come." Special kudos to our entrepreneurial spirit and a big vote of thanks to FUCKYOU!
A combined hands-on study by the Education Department has produced a widely-hailed new monograph entitled "Why Today's Teachers Don't Need to Know Anything About Real Science." This work, according to a spokesperson for Dr. Mike Grant, Dean of Education, will help to shape a new curriculum for prospective teachers by eliminating what so many students find distasteful. "Our enrolment might plummet, if we required any significant attention to science in the curriculum. Besides, our students have to spend at least a class or two dealing with Vygotsky's Theory of Proximal Distance. And that's as much hard science as any teacher needs to know."
Meanwhile, plans for a Creationist Science Conference (at which attendance is obligatory for everyone in the education department) are well underway. "Students must be able to interact sympathetically with the general public," an organizer explains, "without antagonizing parents and students by taking an informed position in such a contentious dispute."
The news that Malaspina may be spending the better part of half a million dollars to improve and repair the ventilation in Building 200 (less than ten years old) has raised some questions about the continuing hard-on we have for the same architect. Residents of Menopausal Manor (aka Building 355), where testicles are always suffering severe shrinkage in the cold (the Constanza syndrome) or bathed in sweat, are not surprised. "But don't worry," one of them said, "we can take solace from the news stories telling us how innovative and high tech our ventilation systems are." Maybe the architect could have a chat with the Pueblo Amerindians. They sorted out this problem centuries ago. Alternatively, of course, we might consider dealing directly with another architect.