This prompted another student, Jamie, to step forth and unburden himself, spouting some solipsistic drivel that should alarm the Registrar’s Office about whether its stated intellectual requirements for admission to the school are being enforced. Jamie said, “When I saw a chalking saying ‘Trump 2016,’ I thought nothing of it. But when I saw a chalking saying ‘Accept the Inevitable: Trump 2016,’ that was a bit alarming. What exactly is inevitable? Why does it have to be accepted?” Again, the ever-responsive president stepped in and promised extra tutoring sessions in vocabulary, with special emphasis on teaching the meaning of such words as inevitable. He also agreed to establish free refresher courses in civics and government to remind students that presidential candidates do not attain office through chalk markings.
The university will review footage of security cameras to identify those who made the chalkings, the president told the protesters. If the culprits are students, they will go through the conduct violation process and be subjected to intense sensitivity training. A review of the tapes was done, and unfortunately for Shufflebottom, he starred in the security film.
The president summoned Shufflebottom to his office and accused him of violating the campus chalking policy, which he enunciated for Shufflebottom’s benefit. “Chalking must be reserved and approved by Emory’s campus reservation service. Chalk cannot be on columns or walls; it must be done on horizontal, ground surfaces and areas where rain can easily wash it away. Chalking may only remain for forty-eight hours. After this time, another group can chalk, if they reserve their chalking with Emory’s reservation service.”
The president then delineated each of Shufflebottom’s violations of policy: failure to make a proper reservation; failure to write on horizontal surfaces only; failure to ensure that it rained within forty-eight hours to wash away his chalkings. In addition, the president noted that Shufflebottom, by supporting a candidate who is “a figurehead of hate, racism, xenophobia, and sexism” inflicted profound pain on hundreds of students and intimidated hundreds of others by displaying that support via his “Trump 2016” chalking. And to make matters worse, Shufflebottom used only white chalk instead of using chalks of color.
The president said he had no choice but to order two hundred hours of sensitivity training for Shufflebottom, beginning with watching fifty hours of The Honeymooners to observe that menacing sexist, Ralph Kramden, who regularly threatened his wife with a clenched fist and the threat, “Oh Alice, you’re gonna get yours!” This session would be followed by watching the movie, White Men Can’t Jump, for twenty-four hours straight, to be scheduled on election day to prevent Shufflebottom from voting for a candidate whose “platform and values undermine Emory’s values.”
Sensing that Shufflebottom’s punishment might not be enough to appease the student protestors, the president considered a modified form of waterboarding if agreed to by a majority of protesters. The students’ support was unanimous. Since meeting with the president, Shufflebottom’s whereabouts are unknown. Rumor has it he has quit Emory and opted for homeschooling
• • •
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Say what you want about former bus driver, now president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro’s economic program, but timidity will not be a term used in that conversation. His ingenuity and boldness in dealing with product shortages, raging inflation, and currency devaluation will require drastic revisions to economic theory and textbooks everywhere.
When word leaked that three-dozen 747 cargo planes, presumably loaded with scarce foodstuff and personal items, were on their way to product-deficient, inflation-ravaged Venezuela, thousands of people swarmed to the airport in anticipation. Authorities, fearful that unrest and violence might ensue when the cargo of newly printed 50 and 100 Bolivar notes were unloaded, were surprised by the appreciation expressed by the crowd that the toilet paper shortage was, at last, being addressed.
More recently, to save dwindling reserves of energy, President Maduro pronounced that, henceforth, Friday would be a holiday. “We’ll have long weekends,” Mr. Maduro excitedly declared, assuring everyone that the holiday applies only “to public workers who won’t adversely affect production with their absence.” This statement puzzled many because no one in Venezuela has produced much of anything for quite some time.
“Hotels and malls are being asked to use generators on Fridays,” Mr. Maduro said, but will, of course, fully recharge them using electricity on Saturday. As a result of this policy change, the president pointed out that the expression “Thank God it’s Friday” will be officially changed to “Thank God it’s Thursday.”
Many of President Maduro’s other energy-saving and product-shortage relief measures do not garner the headlines that Friday Fiesta did. Last month, the president banned the watching of TV on even-numbered days but learned that rampant cheating was taking place. His chief aide, Mr. Ubaldo C., who suggested that the ban would be far more effective if the state nationalized all TV stations and broadcast only Maduro’s speeches 24/7, has vanished. Eventually, the government did just that. Not only did the compliance rate rise to 100 percent on even-numbered days, but it hit 100 percent on odd-numbered days as well.
President Maduro encouraged people to grow food and raise chickens in their homes, even though 83 percent of Venezuelans live in cities. To help them, Mr. Maduro announced the formation of a Ministry of Urban Farming. The president claims that he and First Lady Cilia Flores have taken up the cause, and have sixty laying hens. “We produce everything we eat,” Maduro said in a speech. Unnamed sources close to the president say that Mr. Maduro knows absolutely nothing about farming (among many other things), and they have pointed out that Mr. Maduro’s statement is technically true, since the president and his wife haven’t eaten anything but eggs for two months.
The Venezuelan president also urged women to stop using hair dryers in a desperate bid to tackle the energy crisis. “I always think a woman looks better when she just runs her fingers through her hair and lets it dry naturally. It’s just an idea I have,” he said. This idea he had didn’t last very long. The president quietly and quickly dropped it after spending five restless nights sleeping on the couch in the servants’ quarters, having been banished from the presidential bedroom by the first lady.
Most people would take great comfort in knowing that the president and his vaunted team of fecund economic experts were hard at work devising additional energy-saving and shortage-relief measures to be rolled out if existing ideas such as longer weekends don’t produce satisfactory results. Among the most promising ideas are:
- Abolish Thursdays. Not only would this save energy, but it would improve the shortage situation. Instead of most food and personal items being available in the supermarkets only once a week, now they would be available once every six days.
- Institute Daylight Diminishing Time. Days would start at 11:00 a.m. and end at 3:00 p.m. Everyone must wear very dark sunglasses before 11:00 a.m. and after 3:00 p.m. in case the sun fails to cooperate with this new proclamation. Businesses may operate only during the new daytime, thereby leading to huge savings in electricity. All of the country’s roosters will be required to be sent to the newly created Ministry of Daylight Diminishing Time for retraining to learn to crow each morning around 11:00 a.m.
- In a Facebook post recently, Mr. Maduro hinted at disputes among his Ministers, one of whom, Mr. Ugueth M., argues that inflation does not exist. In another display of his ability to block out all aspects of reality, Mr. Ugueth unveiled a novel idea, strongly supported by the president: Shut off traffic lights throughout the country every two hours for thirty minutes. At such times, all cars and trucks must shut off their engines and remain in place. This measure would not only save electricity, but also gas, and as a byproduct, would improve the quality of the air.
- Ban the use of electric can openers. This proposal would yield significant energy savings if there were any cans of anything left on the supermarket shelves. The idea was suggest
ed by—you guessed it—Minister Ugueth, who, in addition to not believing that inflation exists, doesn’t believe that there are any shortages either.
- If the toilet paper shortage re-emerges after all of the new Bolivar notes have been used, then the government will issue two squares of toilet paper to each citizen on odd-numbered days. To add teeth to the measure, the government will also ban the use of the toilet on even-numbered days.
- To complement the new Ministry of Urban Farming, the president would create the Ministry of Ideas of Former Bus Drivers. The president, closely involved in the work of this ministry, has mandated its staff to develop a micro-hydropower device to be distributed to each household and attached to every toilet bowl in the country. These devices, in turn, will be connected to the country’s electricity grid. Once they are installed, the entire population will be required to flush their toilets twice a day (odd-numbered days only) at precisely 11:30 a.m. and 6:12 p.m. Mr. Ferdinand H., who holds the coveted directorship of this new agency, estimates that this project will replace 80 percent of the hydropower lost to El Niño weather conditions.
- The president and his advisers were baffled as to why the Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness, created by Mr. Maduro in 2013, had not produced better results for the country. After extensive analysis and discussion, they concluded that its performance would be substantially improved by elevating it from a Vice Ministry to a Full Ministry, and by changing its name to the Ministry of Sublime Intergalactic Jubilation. One additional measure, still being considered is authorizing the ministry to dispense marijuana and mind-altering mushrooms to any citizen who presents a doctor’s note documenting his or her unhappiness.
- The proximate cause of the energy crisis is the El Niño–induced drought that has crippled Venezuela’s energy production, 60 percent of which comes from hydroelectric power. Thinking logically, President Maduro gathered his uber intellectual cabinet ministers for a meeting and challenged them to develop ideas on how to alter the El Niño current. An uneasy silence followed, but none of the ministers dared confront Mr. Maduro.
- They recalled that shortly after formally taking office, he claimed to have seen the late Hugo Chavez in the form of a bird flitting around the presidential palace. Many Venezuelans, although they haven’t seen the Chavez bird personally, have seen many samples of the excrement which that bird has left behind. Most of the cabinet meeting was spent discussing the solution passionately put forward by the president: dispatch a flotilla of rowboats into El Niño waters with instructions to coordinate their paddling to rechannel the current into a direction more likely to stimulate precipitation. Unanimous agreement on the idea was achieved, with the only outstanding issue still to be settled being the number of rowboats to include in the flotilla.
Most of the citizens of Venezuela are cheered that Horatio Alger-type success opportunities exist in their country—that a bus driver can aspire to and attain the presidency. They wish, with equal fervency, that there are even greater opportunities for this journey to be taken in the opposite direction.
• • •
“HIGHER” EDUCATION
To me, a college education was no different from purchasing any other consumer asset like a throwaway camera or toothbrush, where one tries to obtain reasonable value for the lowest price. Fortunately, when I graduated from high school, socialism wasn’t yet a discredited practice. The college closest to my home, Aspiration College, adopted an admission policy, aptly named Open Admission, that offered free admission to anyone who wanted to enter. No essays were required, no SAT test scores needed, no high school transcripts demanded, no extensive applications submitted. In fact, the Admissions Office went out of its way to ignore how poorly one may have performed in high school or how intellectually challenged one might be—the educational equivalent of (and precursor to) the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy governing gays in the military. I am not particularly enamored of socialism’s principles, but they are okay with me when they produce a price with a dollar sign followed by a zero. How bad could the education be? I was certain that after four years at Aspiration College, I would be able to quote a few lines from Shakespeare and know that Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle hung out together.
Why spend tens of thousands of dollars at a high-priced institution, versus attending one for free, only to end up with the same thing, a diploma? Some will argue that the quality of the education at a top university surpasses that of the college I went to. But my school didn’t lose a debate to prisoners in the Eastern New York Correctional Facility, as Harvard did. The Harvard debaters, scrambling to defend their immoderate tuition costs, claimed the prisoners were “phenomenally intelligent and articulate.” I would have said the same thing.
While searching for a major field of study, I noted that one of the fastest-growing degrees in the country—park, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies—had increased by 92 percent over a recent ten-year period. My college did not want to miss out on this hot trend, nor did I. I applied myself diligently to the leisure part of this major. The town park I co-managed after graduation didn’t pay very well but made up for it in prestige. And despite the meager salary, I was able to buy, unlike many of my school-debt-laden friends who had graduated from high-tuition universities, a weekly Lotto ticket.
So how did my college do it? How did it cover the costs of providing a four-year education without receiving any money from tuition? Efficiency, mostly. Of course, New York City and New York State provided funding, after shaking down their taxpayers, but my school had to make tough choices to get the most out of the scarce funds it had. Smartly, they terminated the long-standing underwater basket-weaving course, breaking ranks with Reed College and Rutgers University, and replaced it with an above-water version, enabling them to cut down on the use and cost of chlorine tablets. They also cut back on student amenities such as the on-campus condom ambulance services, made popular by the College of New Jersey. This forced me and thousands of other students, during the permissive sixties, to walk a block off campus to the twenty-four-hour drugstore.
Not surprisingly, an open admissions policy successfully attracts high school graduates denied admission to every other college they have chosen. The scholars that Aspiration College had assembled as my freshman class fell considerably short on a National Geographic survey of high school seniors, 40 percent of whom could not name the ocean on the east coast of the United States. Before anyone in my American History 101 class could answer: Who was the first president of the United States?—a question which in an Oklahoma high school only one in four students could answer—my teacher had to first explain the definition of the term president, and for the students in the back, the meaning of the United States.
Professors at Aspiration taught their course material at a pace calibrated to accommodate the less-than-nimble students who are attracted by the forward-thinking policy of Open Admissions, a pace that made poured molasses seem like running water. But after a class or two, I noted that most of the teachers were intellectually indistinguishable from the students. It was painful to listen to either, both of whom spoke as if the word street included the letter h after the s. One day, to my surprise, I met a very interesting and intelligent professor, whom I didn’t see again. I learned later that he was at Aspiration that day because he had gotten off at the wrong subway stop.
If a classroom with bright, engaged students and a dynamic professor with an exciting, fast-paced teaching style accelerates the absorption of new knowledge, then my classes at Aspiration were equivalent to drilling small holes in the cranial membrane causing seepage of fluids and gray matter and the permanent loss of any knowledge that may have been attached to the discharge. At the end of my four years there, I had myself tested for IQ degeneration and, fearing a far worse outcome, was relieved to find that I had lost only fifteen IQ points.
My freshman class was as ethnically diverse as it was intellectually the same. A melting pot that hadn’t quite melted, the freshmen were i
mmigrants and first-generation young men and women from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, and South America. Broken English was the accepted language in the classroom.
The little things I remember about our college life have led me to develop a fondness for many of my classmates. On the first day of sociology class, when the professor said that we would be covering Mendel’s gene theory, Gene Sokolowski thinking he had been called on, snapped out of a daydream—more like a sound sleep—with a start and asked the professor to repeat the question. I recall the time our English Lit professor introduced The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, and Stavros Demothenous dropped the class, thinking he had mistakenly registered for an enology course. He told his friend Luigi Abatangelo, a Gallo and Thunderbird aficionado, who promptly dropped his astronomy course and was seated next to me in English Lit the following day, eager to learn about grapes. I also remember Kiernan O’Malley, upon hearing the Bill of Rights mentioned in American history, getting upset thinking that he would now be receiving a bill for tuition, which he had thought was free. And of course there was Anthony “Fat Tony” Carlucci whom I was certain was attending our biology class as part of an adult continuing education program. Anthony—nobody dared call him “Fat Tony”—never said much in class, but he perked up when we began covering cell theory. Responding to the professor’s question about the characteristics of cells, Anthony said that they were cramped, the beds were hard, and that you normally had to share it with another person. But my favorite by far was Vladimir Kalashnikov. Vlad, strong as an ox and almost as smart, aced advanced weightlifting but had trouble with geography. He insisted that the Indian Ocean was named after Chiefs Sitting Bull and Standing Bear.
Although college seemed to drag on for more than four years, and for many it did, graduation day eventually arrived. The air was warm, and the sun shone brightly, but only one hundred or so graduates, out of the total graduating class of twelve hundred, attended. Most people attributed that to a lack of interest and school spirit, but many of my fellow graduates insisted there had been a mix-up. They told me they had mistakenly received, and ignored, a commencement notice, which should have gone to the freshmen starting college, not to the seniors finishing it.
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