Warch postpones tour to ‘get on those paysheets’

Rik Warch
obviously self-obsessed to be writing a story about himself

President Warch cancelled his Farewell Tour last week to fill out 23 years of back paysheets.”I was pretty good for the first couple of years, but that shit’s hard. And now it’s even worse-how the hell am I supposed to remember how many hours I worked in April of 1983?” Warch said, adding, “That’s not to say that arithmetic is a dispensable feature of the liberal arts education. We must always remember: the quadrivium is that giants’ shoulder on which our future towers to fruition.”

Anonymous administrative sources revealed that Warch had always intended to log his hours and itemize them, but the business of teaching and learning so occupied his time that the log “steadily receded into what Jung ably, but not entirely correctly, labeled our collective unconscious.”

Dana Rose-Schmalz, of Computer Services, dismissed Warch’s excuse, saying “We offer payroll database training in a simple one-hour session every other week and have offered it since 1989” in an email to The Lawrenthian.

Last year, Warch downloaded a W-2-faking program from Kazaa, but it turned out to be loaded with viruses and consequently erased Warch’s entire playlist of Skynyrd live bootlegs. Apparently, he was particularly perturbed by the legendary 50-minute Milwaukee County Fair 1996 version of ‘bird.

But Skynyrd wasn’t the only consequence of Warch’s apathy.

Since his Farewell Tour began, according Rick Peterson, most of Warch’s airborne hours were occupied with satellite telephone calls to former secretaries, Deans of the Faculty, fellow members of the Annapolis Group, student leaders (just kidding!), and trustee chairmen in an attempt to account for as many hours as possible.

“Volk’s being a real hardass about this. Can’t I fire him? No, I guess not. Jillie needs her hatchet man, I suppose. Jillie. That’s what I call her,” he smiled, adding that his nickname is “indicative only of familiarity, not a paternalistic put-down. Clarity in public discourse must be the first step towards resolving the irresolvable, those battles-of-the-sexes that have, for so long, pulled into quagmire these fine institutions of discourse from what we ought to have become and ought to be becoming,” Warch said, adding, “Don’t even get me started on Hoopes.”

Speaking from a beach in Costa Rica, former VP for Business William Hodgkiss defended his ex-boss: “Hey, it was the eighties. The tax code changed. I figured, ‘what the hell, let’s just print W-2s.’ So what if we get audited? That bastard can talk his way out of anything,”

In years when the endowment dipped, Warch would often defer his salary until the market rose again, one of Hodgkiss’s more effective accounting practices.

The payroll office has been calling Warch so frequently that he has taken to disguising his voice mail message in a way that might make them think they have the wrong number.

Volk’s demands, though, put the Warches in dire straights, forcing them to attend the PAC via student rush, sneak into artists’ series concerts, and siphon gas from faculty cars parked alongside N. Park Ave. Several reports of Margot skipping out on a check at Peggy’s Caf and bouncing a check at Erb’s in the same week are, as of yet, unconfirmed.

To make ends meet, Rik was forced to put a lean up on the President’s residence. The internet start-up loan firm he sent the title to, though, soon folded, and exact legal ownership of the house remains a nebulous matter under uncertain interstate jurisdiction. The state of the residence was so precarious that it was a deciding factor in former Dean of the Faculty Brian Rosenberg’s decision to leave for Macalester.

“That shit’s too f-cked up for me,” Rosenberg reportedly told associates. “Doesn’t that asshole know I can only handle one lawsuit at a time?”

Warch cut the interview short after he realized that he had filled out hours from 1986-1992 on orange paper instead of the teal sheets that were used during those years. Before taking a call from student leaders (just kidding!), he asked reporters “Do you guys know if I can just check the ‘work-study’ box and avoid federal taxes for some of this? I mean, I’m not too worried…I can talk my way out of anything.”

He quickly added, “which is not to say that ethical considerations ought to be completely a matter of willy-nilly social constructions. We must always remember that there is a line, and, hopefully and eventually, a prudent balance to all of the tough decisions we must face candidly and bravely.”