Good evening, welcome back, and, most importantly, good evening. I address you as the University’s Dean of Treasury to inform you regarding the recent regrettable but necessary budget cuts. Since when have we had a Dean of the Treasury, and what happened to the Bursar, you ask? Why hasn’t he reported in, after the break? Why are the accounts information documents missing? I assure you, the investigation is ongoing.
Meanwhile, a few cutbacks will have to be instituted to preserve our reputation and maintain what’s truly important here: the football team. They’ve already run through the budget earmarked for the next quarter’s supply of steroids and caviar.
Obviously, Arts will just have to go. All of it. We’ll scrap the scripts and scalp the sculptors, pawn the poets Byron-get-one-free. Science will have to take one for the team, too: the swimming team, who will be flooding what is now lab space to practice for regionals, our swimming pool having been foreclosed upon.
Worry not: we will press on, one way or another. Our Alma Mater is not going to roll over and die like Rutherford Burnside, local poutine tycoon and anti-education lobbyist, who just so happened to will us his fortune after his mysterious demise earlier this morning. No, we shall continue as best we can: still will we disassociate ourselves from the surrounding townie rabble, still will we secretly develop superweapons to bring about Armageddon, still will we spend months locked in committee arguing about how properly to break up arguments under Roddick’s Rules of Order. We are still the same old college, so let’s give our new, bankrupt existence the old college try.
Naturally, some minor changes must be made. Mrs. Michaud, the college widow, will start charging. A toll will be collected at all university gates, and also at the doors to most classrooms. Students graduating will be expected to tip the dean when you shake hands onstage.
A new grading system has been implemented, under which, according to this handy chart that we can’t publish (printing charts is expensive), you may receive additional consideration in matters of merit in exchange for entirely uncompensated donations to the university. Professors’ salaries are to be cut from two cents an hour to one cent plus whatever crumbs they may scrounge from the faculty lounge, and adjuncts’ salaries are to be cut from nothing to paying the university for the privilege of working here. A $1 application fee will be attached to all handed-in assignments, with an included 20 per cent gratuity for not ‘accidentally’ losing it.
Lastly, all students will be put to work in the salt mines below campus in twenty-hour shifts eased with two thirty-second breaks for ditch-water and hardtack. Flashlights and digging implements will be reserved for Dean’s List students. Failing students will serve as canaries. Complementary whips will be provided, courtesy of the TAs.
Thank you for your attention, and please insert fifty cents to continue reading.