The University does not care about you
INTERVIEWER (IN): Hi, Chancellor May. Thank you for speaking with me today. First of all, are there any exciting new plans for UC Davis?
GARY MAY (GM): We’ve been considering moving UC Davis into the middle of the ocean. That way we can call it the International University of Rapture. It would be international to everyone, and we could then price-gouge people from all over the world. It’s the apex of capitalism.
IN: How do you plan on charging people?
GM: We’ve actually started a new pricing method for international students consisting of $100,000 per year for each first-born child, which is a pretty high price to pay for students in a one-child policy country.
IN: Wouldn’t that be a way for students to get rid of their child and then have a replacement one?
GM: Well, the idea behind it is that the children will be owned by the university and will grow up to teach courses in place of current professors — without any pay, though. Plus they will be very grim and bitter, so they will essentially be TAs.
IN: Do you have any other plans?
GM: We have been putting some funding into NASA and outer space research in hopes of finding interplanetary students. Image how hard we could rail them. The challenge would be getting them past Trump’s planned wall around the Earth. That wall won’t keep out aliens — I mean, interplanetaries — but it will block out the sun, which will really put a damper on our organic, solar-powered death ray.
IN: Do you think that using interplanetary or international students displaces the spots that in-state students could be filling?
GM: As the UC puts it, we allocate spots for international and interplanetary students. That way they don’t displace in-state students.
IN: But that is displacement since there is a maximum capacity on class sizes and in-state students might lose their spots to out-of-state or international students. No?
GM: No.
IN: Explain the diversity spiel.
GM: We are all about diversity until you get to the campus. Once you’re here, we couldn’t care less if you starved to death in the 24-hour study room. We’ll write your death off on our taxes. But prior to that, we want to have in-state, out-of-state and international students to diversify our income. Imagine that a state gets destroyed by fracking, lack of nuclear power plant regulations and leaky oil pipelines. Students from that state will no longer be able to contribute to the UC. Imagine Trump levels another country that has many students at the UC. Once the mushroom cloud clears, you see there’s nobody to pay the bills. We send those students back for nuclear winter break. If we truly cared about them, we would charge them the same rates as in-state students. Catch my drift?
IN: That sounds rather harsh. Does the university create these ideas, or do fascist dictators?
GM: The university lacks creativity in many ways, but not in railing students. We take credit for those ideas. Just look at how we brand on everything possible. You can get our logo on a shirt, hat, sweater — everything. You know what we got your name on? Our list of assets. We would charge both arms and both legs if we could. But then how would you sign the checks?
IN: What is your main inspiration?
GM: The university’s main inspiration is colonization. Go to a country. Take all its resources. Give nothing of value in return. We rewrote that. They come to our country. We take all their resources. Give nothing of value in return. It’s brilliant.
IN: What do you mean nothing of value?
GM: Imagine you go to a restaurant and order a burrito. Out comes a pile of steaming shit. You ask, “What they hell is this, Chipotle?” The waiter tells you that the burrito is doing research and trying to get grant money, but this steaming pile of shit is very high and very mighty. Additionally, this steaming pile of shit is brand new and fresh, and it determines your grade. Does “TAs in place of professors” sound like “we care” to you?
IN: You’re depressing me.
GM: Welcome to life, kid. It gets worse.
IN: Do you have any final comments?
GM: Do you have any last words?
Written by: Drew Hanson — andhanson@ucdavis.edu
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
