Chace cobbled together an article that is the same old collection of cliches about why English departments self-destructed. No need to repeat them here, but we agree with Chace that English departments no longer serve any useful function. Study of language is now done by linguists in linguistics departments. Writing is taught in journalism departments. Rhetoric is taught in speech and drama departments. And so on.

What’s left is a scramble to find yet another critical fad to use for reading—sorry, for deconstructing a text. Books are no longer read in English departments, which reminds us that the name for the department has been wrong from the beginning. Not just incorrect. The department has nothing to do with the study of the English. The English department was invented by a bunch of disgruntled Harvard composition instructors who had to put up with the likes of “C” students like Thoreau; the faculty wanted to do more than grade papers. They invented, therefore, philology, the study of language, which, as mentioned has long since been usurped by the upstart and ungrateful linguists. So you can’t even find a grammar course in a university English department.

Digression: The word “composition” is somehow still in use in English departments for writing courses, although no English professor can explain the difference between “composition” and “writing.” However, continued use of the word “composition” as in compose something such as a symphony, calls into question the hard hat metaphor used by reading professors to describe what they do. They “deconstruct” a text, as if deconstruction is the antipode and equivalent of creativity, as if the whole of a work of art can be reduced to its constituent parts. Which begs this question: If writing is composition, why is not reading decomposition. Reading professors, therefore, are decomposing. But we digress.

Fact is, the English department tenured reading faculty have been fighting a rear-guard action for decades now (a fight that coincides with the alleged “demise”) to avoid going back to teaching composition. At Oregon State University, for instance, the desperate tenured English faculty invented an oxymoronic degree called the master of interdisciplinary studies, and then went on to introduce programs that were already taught at the University of Oregon in spite of the legislated dictum not to have redundant programs at two state universities existing only 45 miles apart.

But having to teach bogus grad students, of course, meant literature faculty no longer had the time to teach undergrad composition, which would, of course, be taught by grad students, who would provide even cheaper labor than the full-time, professional writing instructors who were fired to make room for the MAIS program, but for instructors married to tenured reading faculty.

So we had to LOL long and hard when we read this passage from the learned Professor Chace’s disquisition on demise, the passage presented as a solution (or part of one) for reviving the dead patient. “The English department has one sturdy lifeline, however: it is responsible for teaching composition.” To which we responded, after the laughter died, “What has he been smoking?” Has he not heard of writing across the curriculum, which means learning to write in any department but the English department? Where was he when mandatory first-year writing courses were scattered across the requirements-for-graduation list to be taken at any time before commencement? Has he ignored the reality that but for elite schools where the students arrive literate and articulate, most college and university mandatory writing courses are a joke? Some of the students improve slightly by the end of the semester, but then regress to a state of semi-literacy the moment they leave the course, unless they’re journalism majors—with the exception of Sarah “Refudiate” Palin.

And, once again, as with any stupid suggestion like this, Chace, even though he’s exploited writing instructors all his years as a college president, sez, out of the other side of his mouth that teaching writing (aka composition), though “central to higher education . . . is devoid of dignity. Its instructors are among the lowest paid” and have crowded classes, lousy office space (if any), no tenure, no recognition for publication, and so on. We’ve heard the litany before, and we know that writing will always be denigrated in education—in this country. Presidents and other politicians speak of the importance of science and math and reading in schools. None mention writing. Besides, as long as universities crank out English grad students with MA, MFA, MAIS, and PhD degrees, the pool of cheap, easily exploited itinerant paper graders will remain large.

So here we are in the 21st Century and Chace is still proposing a rescue using a lifeline that doesn’t exist, that tenured English reading faculty—the philologists—don’t want, that political leaders don’t want, that no longer has any relevance offline. But the biggest reason the Chace solution is well within the pale of the absurd happens to be the English department reading faculty itself.

Here’s a sample of prose written by an Arizona State PhD in English now teaching something called “cultural studies,” not to be confused with the legitimate cultural studies of anthropologists. No, we’re talking about good old fashion art appreciation, now morphed into the study of “texts” both visual and written and wherever you want to find one (look out your window). “The privileging of image as an eminent textuality of human subjectivity is one problem, and the absence of attention to how race and gender function in the valence that images carry in the social order is another.” Chace wants this guy to teach undergrads how to write clear, concise English prose?

Don’t worry, only a few (and “few” is an overstatement) attendees at the annual Modern Language Association jargonaut understand such gibberish spouted by the allegedly learned professors of cultural studies who hide out, according to one deep background faculty source at a top Catholic university, in small liberal arts colleges and talk to each other and no one else in their insular, monastic communities. A very deep background academic from a Big Ivy school who writes readable prose and has the publications to prove it, said: “What can we say about cultural studies? It’s a sham field and attracts lazy fakers. Perhaps I’m being too generous?”

Yes, far too generous. Kill the English departments. Outlaw their doctoral programs. Outlaw creative writing programs. If people want to learn to write well, they’ll learn on their own just as Thoreau did. If people in the 21st Century want to learn to write well, they get a blog. If people want to learn to read well, they buy a Kindle. They don’t need a canonical priesthood to tell them what to read any longer or how to read it. And critical theory will never usurp creativity.

No small wonder, then, that the main title of the Chace lament was a mocking echo of the 60s: “Where Have All the Students Gone?” Online laughing, Professor Chace. On the Internet, you anachronistic fossil.

The English department is dead.

—the editors

Tiffany Greca, a Bryn Mawr College assistant director of admissions, interviewed J for admission in the lobby of a Marriott after having conducted a presentation and interviews at a local prep school where a high probability existed not only of affluent parents but of daughters who would be future donors to BM. It was not without accident that the dean of admissions at Bryn Mawr College at the time, Jennifer Ricard, also served as the dean of financial aid. Ricard clearly understood that the words “enrollment” and “endowment” were synonymous.  No accident either that little Tiffany works now as a fund raiser for Haverford College just down the mainline from BM.

This was J’s first college interview, which made J extremely nervous, especially given that the interview was with an admissions rep who did nothing to make J feel at ease, but that wasn’t the point of the meeting. Greca, given her youth, needed to stick to the script and ask penetrating questions such as: “What recent book have you read that changed your life?” What else would J do with a book but read it, and what seventeen year old would know if she’d read a book that changed her life when she had not lived it yet? But that didn’t matter. The question, of course, was a trap, one a well programmed gatekeeper like little Tiffany knew how to use. She did not, of course, have any intention of allowing a young woman with a mother who was a dental hygienist (one who had been admitted to Swarthmore, but how could little Tiffany know that) into a school like Bryn Mawr. The admissions guidelines forbade it. The examples given on the BM website of bad recruits and good recruits were quite clear on that point.

The bad recruit was a shy young woman with superb grades in high school whose father printed music for a living. That young woman was rated “adequate,” admissions euphemese of course, but Bryn Mawr admissions people never, ever speak any language other than euphemese and never give any reason for rejecting an applicant and never use the word “reject.” Never.

Of course J was not given early admission to BM, which clearly indicated that she would not receive regular admissions, and yet BM insisted on the charade that somehow a chance remained that J would be admitted. She wasn’t and she was crushed.  When the rejection letter arrived, J went to her room and didn’t come out for hours. She cried and cried and nothing her parents could do or say would salve her wounded soul (yes, a bit dramatic, but J was decimated). It was the first time she’d been rejected by someone she loved and BM was the love of her life. She ended (and still does) all her emails with that EB White quote about Bryn Mawr College women, and like any other abused and rejected lover, she brooked no criticism of BM or its admission personnel. She would rationalize their behavior as any co-dependent would in spite of the large and obvious psychic bruises she suffered.

The pain was only compounded when J went east with her father the next spring to visit the schools where she’d been admitted. At the end of a long day in Philly, J insisted and pleaded with her father that they stop by Bryn Mawr just to see the place, just once. He was angry that she could not find solace in being admitted to so many other fine schools and forget the Bryn Mawr College rejection, but he relinquished.  He knew she belonged at Bryn Mawr College.

J had a vocabulary of 138 words at an age when most kids had five. When she was three, J went to her mother and asked why she was “a mean mommy.” When “mean mommy” asked for an expanation, J answered: “You won’t teach me to read.” Mean mommy taught J how to read and headed J straight into trouble at school for the first time. Actually daycare where one of the women walked up to J’s father one day and asked if everything were okay at home. Puzzled, he said, yes, things were okay. The woman said, “She can read” as if a four-year-old reading to other children were a clear indication of a dysfunctional family.

Clearly J would never quality for Bryn Mawr College.  J was tested in kindergarten and tagged as talented and gifted. After that, it was one moronic teacher after another (but for one who recognized that J would never find her peers until she reached college).  After the sixth grade, homeschooling with course work from the University of Nebraska, which finally gave J the freedom to work at her own pace but for one other small problem. By the seventh grade, she’d already gone through the three integrated math books provided by the local high school and trigonometry. To earn a diploma from Nebraska, J had to retake algrebra, and she had better things to do than repeat subjects she’d already mastered, things such as study for the SAT. Even though taking the exam with a bad cold, her scores on the PSAT placed her in the 99th percentile. Her scores on the SATs placed her in the 95th percentile. But still some colleges and universities insisted on either a diploma or a GED. Consider this paraphrase from the American Council of Education 2007 report on those who completed the GED that year.  A test score of 700 placed a GED test taker among the top one percent of high school graduates academically.  700 out of a possible 800.

J’s scores on four of the five GED tests were perfect. She earned 3960 out of 4000 possible points on the 2007 GED, or 99 percent of the points available. She placed in the top one tenth of one percent of high school graduates in the United States according to the American Council on Education. That’s the 99.9th percentile. Of those who passed in J’s state, an estimated six had scores in the range J earned. “Estimated” because the state department of education did not keep statistics on the number of students who placed higher than the 99th percentile.

Now, of course, perceptive college admissions officials like little 24-year-old Tiffany did not need this data. One faux interview was enough, which was also enough for Ricard and other members of the admissions committee who “regretted” not being able to find a place for J at Bryn Mawr College. It was just so obvious that J was not qualified to attend Bryn Mawr College. They just knew she did not measure up to the profile of the ideal candidate given to interviewers, the profile of a young woman who had organized a pollution study for a stream in her hometown, miraculouly finding the funding from corporate donors for the project. The profile did not explain where the money came from or if the ideal candidate had help from her parents who had corporate connections. Not necessary if the word “corporate” were used in the sentence. The only other candidate to exceed qualifications of a corporate candidate was a referral from the old girl network of prep schools and Bryn Mawr College alumna. It’s not what you know . . .

picayune peaches

But Ricard and her ilk, including the equally perceptive Peaches Voldes, associate director of admissions, did not understand the sheer will power of J. She had never been told to study in her life. From the moment she demanded to be taught to read, she led her parents through her education, had graduated from the music conversatory ahead of schedule with four honors recitals to her credit. She had completed the Swim America program ahead of schedule at age eleven. On the ice, she had persisted when one coach, a callow young woman who equaled Greca in maturity and judgment, stated that J simply could not learn to jump. J not only learned to jump, she moved up to senior level in figure skating, and earned 38 competition medals.

In later summer of 2007, when J arrived at Villanova, J scored off the top of the scale in her German placement exam. She earned a 3.97 GPA her first semester, she was recommended as a candidate for the Rhodes, the Fulbright, for the honors program, and labeled the brightest student he’d ever taught at Villanova by an English professor who’d earned his doctorate from Bryn Mawr College. A continent away from home, unable to go home on weekends, J overcame being jammed into a cement cell in a loud dorm with two other freshpeople, overcame homesickness, overcame one roommate who left after a week, overcame another roommate who acted like a seventh grader, mastered life in the big city, and refused to accept Bryn Mawr College’s decision that she was a second class citizen because Bryn Mawr College was plainly and simply wrong.

Of course, Bryn Mawr College admissions would not admit it was wrong, and could not, at the same time, deny J application for transfer—the policy was in writing and public. BM admissions people could, of course, make J feel as ugly as possible to let her know that her chances of admission were between nil and none. They could and would simply reject her again and again and again without explanation; and therein lies the sheer brilliance of Bryn Mawr College admission practices. How is it possible for a student initially rejected for first year admission to apply for transfer when she is never told why she was rejected? How can she ever know how to improve (if needed) her application if all she’s told is that her application is “under review” again and again and then told again and again and again that the admissions committee “deeply regrets” they had to reject her again and again and again with the same form letter?

Peaches allowed J to schedule an interview after J arrived at Villanova. Not versed in the snide methods of bureaucratic duplicitiy, J actually thought she was meeting with Peaches to discuss how to improve her application for admission, to learn where she had not quite measured up to BM standards. In short, in spite of her father’s warnings, off J went from her Nova dorm to meet with Peaches and back she came feeling much the same way she felt after her interview with Tiffany. Humiliated. J called in confusion and explained to her father what had happened in the meeting with Peaches, and her father immediately realized that J had been blindsided by Peaches, who had turned on J within two minutes of her arrival. When J started to ask questions, Peaches turned the tables immediately and started firing questions back at J, admissions interview questions, and when the meeting ended a few agonizing minutes later, Peaches smiled and told J “that took care of the interview,” meaning the interview for her transfer application. It was not a meeting, it was an insult, the verbal equivalent of a school yard slap in the face, a put down to let someone know they were not wanted and would never be allowed to enter a clique.

J recovered and again defended her abusers by again explaining that they were just doing their job. Again. And J, even as she studied constantly her first semester at Nova to earn a GPA worthy of BM transfer, found time, made time, to write and revise her transfer application essays. Each essay went through 15-20 revisions with feedback from numerous people, including Stephanie, a former BM student (now an attorney) who had worked in the admissions office. J also collected letters supporting her application from top professors at Nova and from a Princeton don. All, of course, to no avail.

Rejected again, tears again, self-loathing again, but the worst of it was not knowing why, and not knowing why meant she had to keep trying. She had to. She loved Bryn Mawr College more than anything in her life other than ice skating. She crashed a dining hall at Bryn Mawr College two weeks after she arrived at Nova. She studied in Bryn Mawr College libraries. She found friends at Bryn Mawr College and was invited to witness the step sing and other traditions that J loved. She chose to write about Marianne Moore for one of her lit papers at Nova. She turned down the honors opportunity at Nova in lieu of cross registration at Bryn Mawr College, where she completed a linguistic course and a graduate level sociology course, both with top grades. She skated as a member of the Liberty Bells, the syncrho skating team comprised of students from Nova, Bryn Mawr, and Penn.

An aside: J was the top skater on the team due to training with top coaches, including a three-time Olympic medalist, in Vancouver, Canada, Colorado Springs, and at the Philadelphia Skating Club.

And on and on. And again rejected. And again the tears and self-loathing. Nothing can provoke such intensity of emotion than being spurned by someone you love without hesitation, without doubt, without question, and with the absolute certainty of knowing that match would work but for the (alleged by her father) unmatched stupidity of the BM admissions people. So again why?

Brilliant. Make the student feel so humliated that she will simply stop trying to gain admission. Build a stonewall as thick and impenetrable as the façade at the Bryn Mawr College admission building, as the corrupt muscle that beats beneath the sordid sternum of Jennifer Ricard, dean of admissions and financial aid. J stopped by Jenny’s office after she received the second rejection letter in the summer of 2008 and asked for a meeting with Ricard to get an explanation for the rejection. Ricard’s secretary made the appointment and then, when J was on her way back to her apartment, the secretary called to cancel the appointment, telling J that Ricard had said “all decisions were final.” Ricard, unlike Peaches and little Tiffany, did not deign to go through the motions of a sham meeting with J. Peaches followed her leader months later when J was resubmitting her final application for transfer. Peaches once again scheduled a meeting with J ostensibly to discuss her transfer quest, but cancelled the meeting by telling J that her schedule was full. And again J was rejected, but just for the hell of it J also applied that last time to Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Barnard.

Of course J was admitted to Smith, was admitted to Mount Holyoke, and admitted to Barnard. During the summer of shock following admission to three of the five sisters, J happened to run into Sanford Schram, who had taught the advanced social policy seminar J attended at Bryn Mawr College during spring semester of 2009. She’d asked for a letter from him for her last transfer application, and he obliged without hesitation, as did the Swarthmore professor who taught the linguistics class J attended at Bryn Mawr. Professor Schram asked if she’d heard from any school, meaning had she heard from Bryn Mawr. J told Professor Schram that she’d been rejected by Bryn Mawr and admitted by Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Barnard. And Smith had offered to pay all of her tuition. Professor Schram responded with genuine puzzlement: “That makes no sense. Smith is a better school.”

ricard the runt

Which left the big question open and still without answer: Why? But Ricard and her ilk need not answer. It did not matter that Ricard told J that all decisions were final at the same time J was also being told by Voldes that application for transfer could be made during any semester during the first two years of college. Voldes had not gotten the memo.  Nor did Richard and Voldes know that J had met with fourteen Bryn Mawr transfer students, one of whom was a transfer from the University of New Hampshire with the sole credential of having attended a very expensive New York prep school. Daughter of donor and future donor. Did not matter because Ricard and Voldes made it up as they went along. Never did they have any intention of considering any application from J other than the first application—assuming they read it. Never did they intend to do anything other than use the transfer admission procedure, if it can be called a procedure, as anything other than a stonewall. J’s humanity was secondary. They had tough financial decisions to make, and they could not be held responsible for their actions or who got hurt as they did their duty as fund raisers for Bryn Mawr College.

Now, verbatim, an exchange between a deep background source for this piece and Jennifer (her friends called her “Jenny”) Ricard with a little help from Peaches Voldes. Every word below you read is direct quotation. Only the source’s name has been changed to protect Jenny and her ilk.

___________________________________

17 June 2009

Ms. Voldes, given that J has been admitted to Smith College, Mount Holyoke, and wait listed at Barnard, I think it’s now safe for you to give a specific reason she was turned down by Bryn Mawr. I’d like to meet with you to hear your explanation. I’ll be in Philly June 29-July 2.

Thank you,

M Thomas Cary

___________________________________

June 18, 2009

Dear Mr. Cary,

Peaches Voldes shared your message with me. I wanted to let you know that there is not one specific reason that led to J’s admission decision. More often than not, the most significant factor in any student’s admission decision is the composition of the applicant pool as a whole. In the case of Smith and Mount Holyoke, they enroll about 4 to 5 times the number of transfer students that we do.

I am sorry that we had to send J disappointing news, but am pleased that she has some fine choices for transfer.

Best,

Jenny Ricard

___________________________________

June 19, 2009

Dean Ricard:

That’s an oblique response. How many specific reasons were there for J’s decision?

The request for a meeting stands.

Thank you,

Thomas M Cary

___________________________________

Dear Mr. Cary

As a matter of policy, we do not discuss the details of individual admission decisions with applicants or their parents. As a result, a meeting to discuss J’s decision is not possible. Although I can appreciate that you may find my answer to your question oblique, the fact is Smith, Mount Holyoke and Bryn Mawr have different transfer applicant pools and different numbers of availabile positions. We make different decisions because of that.

Again, I’m sorry that we sent J disappointing news and wish her all the best.

Sincerely,

Jenny Ricard

___________________________________

Dean Ricard, if the don’t ask, don’t tell admission decision policy exists, then how is a student who is initially rejected ever to know how to improve her application for transfer admission? If that policy exists, then the entire transfer admission process for J was a sham each time she applied for the last two years?

A glaring omission from your emails was even the slightest suggestion that J lacked the academic or social acumen for Bryn Mawr attendance—it would be impossible for you to make that assertion.

Should I then assert that from the very beginning Bryn Mawr predetermined J’s fitness to attend, a position taken by Tiffany Greca in a faux interview, a position taken by Peaches Voldes in an ambush interview during her first meeting with J, and a position you took last summer when you slammed the door in J’s face by having your secretary call her to cancel a meeting with the imperious pronouncement that “All decisions are final”? Unless applying again for transfer?

Given the inherent contradictions in your responses to date, the rhetorical bottomline, therefore, is projection of power by the Great and Powerful Ricard. When power is projected, logic is not needed even if illogic undermines all remaining vestiges of your credibility and generates the impression that something is being hidden behind the curtain.

Thomas Cary

____________________________

In 2009, Ricard was removed as dean of admissions and wedged into the newly created position of Chief Enrollment and Communications Officer.  The acting dean of admissions does not have “financial aid” in his title.  Again Bryn Mawr College transcended its legacy of eugenics, antisemitism, and racism.

He’s leaving then for the usual reason: the corruption of power.  The West Virginia governor’s daughter had been claiming on her resume that she had an MBA. A little resume padding never hurt anyone.  Nonetheless, for some reason, she decided she actually needed an MBA and needed to have a little transcript modification done at WVU to get the MBA (she’d apparently done some of the coursework but was a few credits short of the degree), which is where the dean of the business school and the provost entered the picture somehow.  The details in the AP story are fuzzy. 

The bare facts are that the daughter’s WVU transcript was modified by adding courses she’d never taken, courses that added up to enough credits to award her that MBA.  The AP doesn’t say who pressured whom to have the daughter’s records fabricated, but the story does say that the faculty rebelled, the dean and provost are looking for new jobs, and, though Garrison and the governor were found to be innocent (or at least maintained deniability) in the whole matter by a committee that allegedly conducted an investigation, Garrison resigned anyway for the good of the university.  The governor is still in office, and the AP didn’t say whether he had a heart-to-heart with his daughter or if she’d lost her corporate job.

Breaks our heart.  Garrison, a young man only 39, cut down in the prime of life by phony grades.  We agree with Mike Garrison’s supporters that there’s nothing wrong with a little cheating here and there, now and again, to grease the skids for budget support from the governor’s office.  The WVU dean, the provost, and the president all made only one mistake—they got caught. 

As a consequence, the WVU faculty lost a champion for a cause much greater than academic integrity—a raise.  Garrison was advocating a big raise for the faculty and staff, which is what university presidents do (see “400/1 student/prof ratio” on this site).  That and a daycare center.  With all the other corruption on university campuses from coddled athletes to nepotism for trailing spouses to exploitation of part-time faculty to junk science, you’d think that awarding one little phony degree would not cause such an uproar.

We had her in the local school system through the fifth grade, where she learned to follow rules, that most teachers are bullies collecting a paycheck, how to be a bigot (lessons of the schoolyard), and that she would never find her peers until college. That was her second grade teacher’s excuse for never getting around to implementing a supposedly mandated program for the officially designated smart kids.

In the sixth grade, we tried a charter school, which turned out to be an even bigger disaster, because the charter school, that year, had just gotten financial support from the local school district for the first time, which meant mandated (more mandates) open enrollment, which meant the charter school got the dregs of the local school system. The camping trip at the end of the year included orienteering taught by a teacher who knew nothing about declination and camp recreation that consisted of boys chasing each other around with sharpened sticks. The barely supervised tribal behavior resulted in one arrest. Seriously. One of the boys had to be arrested for beating up another kid.

So we went the homeschool route with a distance education component and more fights with benighted educators. The distance assistant principal thought letting kids fail was a good idea. It helped them learn. No, they did not allow revisions of written work; the graders they hired simply didn’t have time to offer feedback on drafts even though modern rhetorical research recognized the importance of revision. You get a grade and that’s it. Judgement day.

But our child was (and is) about as motivated as a kid can get and studied her butt off and finished the SAT with 99th percentile verbals, but her overall score wasn’t enough for National Merit status, and we’re not rich, so she was accepted by semi-elite schools on the East Coast, which is where she wanted to be. Had to see the East Coast, the big cities, the bright lights, and you know the rest.

At this overpriced, semi-elite school, she was “tripled” in the dorm her first year, which meant being crammed into one room with two other freshpeople. One of the three dropped out after a week, the other turned on my daughter and moved out after the end of the first semester. That turned out to be a benefit to my daughter, who had the whole room to herself for spring semester. Housing sent her four potential roommates during the semester: one told my daughter she did her homework and then watched television each evening, the second told my daughter that her boyfriend would be staying with them during the semester, the third liked to get drunk (like most other kids on campus) each weekend, and the fourth decided she didn’t want to move after all. She decided to stay put and work it out with her current roommate and that roommate’s boyfriend.

That stimulating frosh social life took place in a dorm made of cement where every sniff or cough echoed up and down the halls, where everyone got drunk and loud on the weekends and stumbled back to bed at 2 am. Party, party. Of course, the school adapted to student behavior and didn’t bother serving breakfast until 10 am on weekends. To bad if a student kept sane hours and actully got up on the weekends.

Somehow my daughter survived and managed to finish fall semester on the dean’s list. Probably because she left her dorm room each evening, rain or shine, to find a place to study on campus and studied on the weekends (some of the time). But maintaining sanity that first semester was a major chore, and she flew home each chance she had to get away from the mean streets of her well manicured campus.

And there was one dorm lockdown due to a shooting in a parking lot after a dance, but that’s another entry here, along with reports on the teaching (or lack thereof) encountered by our daughter.

Yes, nothing has changed since we first put academicsatire.com online, except the price of tuition. Just a new generation suffering through the absudities of education, lower and higher. It’s just as corrupt as ever. Of course, the purpose of any college or university education is to learn how to survive mindless, heartless bureaucracies.

–the editors
copyright (c) 2009
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