Young faculty members are worried about a springtime conundrum.
While many have often buckled to pressure and held class outdoors, those same faculty members have began converting their lectures directly to PowerPoint, in the hopes that the element of human error in teaching can be eliminated. Outdoor classes, however, do not present PowerPoint as a possibility.
To solve this, the humanities faculty decided to mount a workshop. (After protests by Professor Paul Cohen, it was renamed a “symposium.”) The symposium on Crises Of Instructional Technology Usage in Springtime convened professors in an attempt to weigh the pros and cons of classes on Main Hall Green.
“We feel the COITUS symposium was a rousing success,” said Tim Spurgin, English department chair. “While we all feel a powerless urge to rush outside and teach, I guess sometimes you just have to ‘keep it in the pants,’ so to speak,” he continued.
Professor Alexis Boylan of the art department, though, wondered at the symposium if a new solution could allow Feminist Theory classes to continue meeting outside while using projectors.
(Due to a somewhat strange condition of her tenure appointment, Boylan has been ordered by her superiors only to speak in rhetorical sentences when on campus. She is allowed to speak just one non-question per hour of speech.)
“Is this really the best we can do? Is this really the best we can do, in this age of ‘mobile technology’ and ‘portable digital media?’ Should we really just fly in the face of the implements of progress that our time and place offer us at the considerable cost of losing out on the awakening experience of learning in an environment unshackled by walls, unnatural lighting, or the patriarchal desk/podium, standing/sitting dichotomies? Or is there another way, a means of projection that can make it possible for us to at last overcome the drawbacks of nativity with the implements of responsible progression, if not advancement? […] These are the solutions we ought to seek, are they not?”
Dana Rose-Schmalz of Computer Services jumped on the idea and scheduled a series of “think-sessions” to be held in the library’s ITC computer lab during all daytime hours of this term’s weeks nine and ten.
Associate Dean of the Faculty Gerald Seaman, also chair of the Sexual Harassment and Assault Resource Board, interrupted COITUS, however, by suggesting that all of this talk may be premature. “We really aren’t deciding anything at this point. I mean, who’s to say President Beck won’t add a set of ‘well-equipped’ solariums and terrariums fit for instruction to the new Union?”
The hypothetically proposed solariums and terrariums would come in addition to the full sports arena, acoustically perfect recital hall and performance dance space, organic food center, refugee camp, free gold dispenser, totally safe and non-degrading virtual-reality brothel, cafeteria, science labs, biosphere, nicorette-chewing room, tea shop that will replace the VR, 1,400-computer lab, and petting zoo that is proposed for the Richard Warch Liberal Arts, Entertainment, and Zoological Sciences Center, which will be erected atop the grave of Greek life at Lawrence in the coming years.
Boylan wondered aloud about the emasculating statement the architecture would make, directing her laser-pointer to the front of the COITUS seminar room at a rendering of the center and asking “Do you see how, even with the biodome, it still looks like a deflated phallus? Do you think this was intended? *****Can***** we know if this was intended? Will we still teach outdoors? This and other questions will be answered in a future *****workshop******,” Boylan finally concluded, staring challengingly at Cohen on her final word.
Philosophy Professor John Dreher, however, remained throughout the symposium perpetually undecided about anything.
“Well, yeah, say Charlie Schmidlap says to me, he says ‘hey Dreher. Are we gonna have class outside today or what, eh? Eh?’ Of course, if I’ve got my druthers, you know, I’ll say, well, you know, you’re paying, what, $400 for this class, right? Or is it more? I don’t know, and I’ll tell him, in the time it takes to walk outside, I could have taught you all about Kant, you know? There’s really not that much to know… You there, yeah, Tom Ryckman, what do you know about Kant?”
Several German professors began to answer.
“***Tom Ryckman. Tom Ryckman.**** I’m talking to **Tom Ryckman.*** If you didn’t read the article, you shouldn’t have come to the symposium. Well, alright. Back to my point. If I have my druthers, you know, I’ll say that… but let’s say I just drank a six-pack of ***Dopplebock Beer***! And Charlie Schmidlap, you know what, he’s starting to make an awful lot of sense! Yeah! Outside! And when I was drunk, right before class, let’s say I got drunk and I made a PowerPoint about ******Hegel*****. Full of *****categories*****. So what do you do? Eh? You *****solve****** the problem. But how do you solve it? Yeah! That’s the tricky part.”
Upon hearing Dreher’s equivocations, which were to be followed by folksy stories about the University of Chicago in his thick New Jersey accent, it was decided among the faculty that COITUS could no longer continue.
The older faculty in attendance split after the event, half joining Goldgar in his office for a recitation of medications and procedures and the other half joining a cobbled assembly of smokers on the front porch.
The rest of the frustrated faculty members posted about COITUS and the frustrations of springtime on their respective Xanga and Tripod sites.
Faculty fails at COITUS -dlh
