Faculty Meeting at Snowflake College

I like to think I’m someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.  Unfortunately, I’ve pretty much been ordered to.

It’s time for the semiannual faculty meeting at Snowflake College, a perfunctory affair held each semester the week before classes begin.  The agenda never changes: Although most of the folks in the room are returning faculty, the meeting is a review of basic administrative procedures, library hours, operating the classroom audiovisual equipment, etc.  

The main draw for me is that 1) It’s a paid training, and 2) The college provides dinner.  Three hours’ pay and free food?  Just for sitting and listening?  I’m there, dude!  I don’t care how many times I’ve heard this stuff.

As the sign-in sheet is passed around, Dean Kimpossible outlines the evening’s program.  She introduces the new faculty and the courses they’ll be teaching, offerings which afford our students opportunities for personal growth to augment such perennial favorites as Eidetic Portrait Painting, Indonesian Tribal Dance, and Tantric Navel Gazing.  Kimpossible solemnly reminds us it’s precisely this sort of curriculum that makes Snowflake College uniquely suited to educating a new, more discerning generation of students.

Kimpossible recognizes a few of the returning faculty, most notably Professor Duckie, the Most Popular Faculty Member at Snowflake.  A twentysomething only in his third year teaching, Duckie is beloved by faculty, staff, and students alike.  Rumor has it he’s gotten more chili peppers on Rate My Professors.com than any other prof at Snowflake, ever.  He invites his students to send him friend requests on Facebook.  He’s agreeable and apparently charismatic which of course gives everything he says added weight.  The fact that you could wade through his deepest thoughts and not get your ankles wet is something that seems to have escaped almost everyone in the room, which goes to show that cultivated superficiality will get you far even in academia.

After sitting through several pro forma presentations by our colleagues, the dean shifts the topic to academics.  Kimpossible’s teaching philosophy is informed by her recruitment brochure vision for Snowflake: Carefree youth in dreadlocks and tie dye playing hackeysack on the front lawn before traipsing off to tatami mat weaving class.  And so we’ve now reached that point in the evening’s proceedings where Kimpossible takes a moment to share her views.  We raise our metaphorical paper cups and prepare to drink the rhetorical Kool-Aid:

“Our students are ‘digital natives.’” (Translation: They’re adept at texting and updating their Facebook pages in class, and yet somehow can’t figure out how to access the course’s online content.)

“Our students don’t want to be lectured.  They are ‘knowledge explorers,’ and your job is to be their guide.”  (They want to do the least amount of work for the highest possible grade.  Your job is to be engaging and entertaining.)   

“Our students are idealistic.”  (Ideally, they would spend all their time on the ski run while Daddy and Mommy pay their bills.)       

“Our students have a different orientation toward work than our generation.”  (They don’t like it.)

“Our students know what they want and live by their values.”  (They have an exaggerated sense of entitlement and will angrily confront anyone who challenges it.  And that includes you, my dear professor.)

At this point Kimpossible pauses a beat, then delivers the punch line:

“Of course, you are responsible for maintaining Snowflake College’s high academic standards.”

Ay, there’s the rub!  Since our students’ exceptionalism is axiomatic, standards are pretty much moot.  I’d like someday to walk into my classroom and not feel like I’m in that Twilight Zone episode about the bratty kid who banishes the grownups he doesn’t like to the cornfield. 

Wait, we’re not quite finished yet.  Kimpossible closes the proceedings by reminding us why we’re all here.  She reads us an email from a student who recently transferred to Big State University:

           “Hey, Kimpossible!

           “Just wanted to tell you how I’m doing now that I’m at Big State. 

“The teachers here don’t care about students.  They’re not cool like at Snowflake.

“They expect me to come to class and do homework and stuff.  This jerkwad professor wouldn’t let me make up an exam even though there was six inches of fresh powder on the slopes and I had to go snowboarding that day.

           “It totally sucks here!”

Kimpossible pauses dramatically to make sure the full meaning of this travesty sinks in. 

“‘It…sucks…here!’” she intones slowly.  “Always remember how special it is at Snowflake.  I’m proud we can provide such a nurturing environment…and I’m thankful we have such students!” 

And with that, we’re dismissed for the evening.  Welcome to another semester at Snowflake College!

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar