Christopa P. Manfredo, Dean of Farts, has told The Twice-a-Weekly that he believes McGall University administrators are not “lying enough.”
Speaking in the wake of McGall’s announcement that it plans to cut 100 Arts courses “to enhance the connection between research and undergraduate teaching by increasing the proportion of courses taught by professors who devote their careers to advancing their disciplines, as well as increasing the availability of teaching assistant support to professors and students,” Manfredo said the response of the student body, faculty, and various small rodents showed that “this administration is not lying enough, or with enough skill.”
“This isn’t a new problem,” said Manfredo. “[The objective] of lying more, and with increased tactical nous, has been part of this University’s strategic plans going back to the Provost’s 2006 White Paper titled ‘How can we get away with it this time?’”
The paper outlined the McGall administration’s commitment to “deception and untruth” at every opportunity, and even opened the possibility of McGall “creating opportunities for increased bold-faced lying.”
At the time, campus reaction to the White Paper was muted, with many students saying they were impressed with the administration’s discovery of gold reserves beneath McTavish street.
Now, however, many students are raising questions about the administration’s stories, claiming that they make “zero sense.”
“These stories do not add up,” said Mattyias R. Queen, a U4 Brewing and Fermenting student. “I pay very little, if any, attention to the stories put out by this administration, but let me tell you one thing: the total b-s they are spouting now makes abso-fucking-lutely no sense whatsoever.”
“Cutting Arts courses and then claiming this will provide ‘more time for professors to have substantive interactions with students’? I’m sorry. What? I’m two pitchers deep at Gert’s and I can tell that’s a piss poor lie. Do they even get anyone to do their PR? I’m actually offended – straight up offended – by this attempt at lying: Lance Armstrong did a better job when he said he had ‘no idea how all them needles ended up in his sleeping bag.’ Seriously.”
Queen’s sentiments are believed to be widely shared by the student body. In a recent poll conducted by the Bison and Bulldog, students were asked to pick “the thing they would most improve about McGall’s administration.”
Out of four possible responses – “lying,” “comprehension of basic moral and ethical duties,” “resemblance to other land-based mammals,” and “ability to do things after thinking about them” – McGall students unanimously chose “lying.”
“It’s not that I don’t think they could improve in any of the other categories,” said Queen. “It’s just that they’re so bad at lying it makes the Parti Québécois look like a cross between Lisa Simpson and Mahatma Ghandi. They are just not good at making things which are not true look like they are true.”
It was these criticisms which led Manfredo to call for a “drastic improvement” to all McGill administrators’ lying ability.
“Some of the reactions to these polls have tended toward the apocalyptic. But we do need to make some changes to our lying procedures: the old system was just not working.”
Under the old system, administrators were expected to cross their fingers behind their backs and then quickly recite their lie with their eyes closed to McGall’s PR Mascot Sweetie Boy-Sweet, who was then charged with embellishing the lie and “making it look it came from carbon-based life.”
Manfredo told The Twice-a-Weekly that plans for a new system are “ongoing” but that he hopes they will be ready “before we need to make major changes to the University that no one asked for” again.
“Discussions about these objectives go back to 2008,” said Manfredo. “In 2010-2011, the faculty held important consultations with students, including a Town Hall – in which the issue of the diminishing lying/getting away with it relationship came up frequently – and a Dean’s Working Group on How To Fool Effectively, that included students [no one] and consulted widely [we just heard about this].”
“I suggested [at that time] it would be valuable to pretend to hold an AUS Town Hall on the topic,” said Manfredo. “I again pretended to update the Faculty Council on the proposal on January 15 – which seems to be when people began to realize nothing I said was true. Rather than a sudden announcement of something new, my discussion on January 15 was a last-ditch attempt to persuade everyone that I am interested in discussion and consultation: we have been trying to lie better for quite a while.”
The Twice-a-Weekly understands that McGall’s new proposals for “How to lie better” include a series of numbers described by one McGall Mathematics professor as “increasingly baffling and less like real numbers the more one looks at them,” and a list of “promises” that appear to be nothing other than various portmanteaus made up of the words “thou,” “believe,” “destiny,” “Daniel Radcliffe,” “barn owl,” and “demand.”
“Many have asked about the message the faculty is sending to potential students,” said Manfredo. “I think the message is this: that when the Faculty of Farts promises prospective students that they will be taught by some of the world’s leading experts in their fields, we are able to honour that promise by having those experts in undergraduate classrooms. Demandthoubelieve.”