A Modest Proposal “For the prevention of the students of York University from submitting negative end of year reviews so that they will benefit the continued employment of professors and operation of redundant departments.” BY SHOSHANA SHERRINGTON
I
t is a melancholy object to those who serve this great institution in its classrooms and offices, when they see departments closed, staff dismissed, and staff and student organizations prevented from continuing due to provincial budget cuts. University programs and institutions are unable to operate as they see fit. Instead, they are forced— shockingly—to give evidence that they are beneficial to student learning and community growth if they want to receive funding. Students, as they progress in their university education, will give increasingly negative end of year reviews, bashing professors, courses, and the university itself, for not fulfilling their expectations for the tuition paid; and this has consequences for the university. I think it is agreed by all parties that these negative student reviews are, in the present state of deplorable underfunding, a very great additional grievance. Student dissatisfaction provides evidence to the board and the government that the university is not fulfilling its mandate, causing the firing of professors and the cutting of funding to dear redundant departments. Therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these students change their tune and become generous with their praise would deserve so well of the public as to achieve tenure and do nothing for the rest of their lives. As to my own part, having suffered through four years of listening to a professorial cast of academics and retirees from pro-
fessional life and completing their readings and assignments, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their approach to appealing to students. The number of students in this university being usually reckoned upwards of fifty-thousand, of these I calculate that their may be forty-thousand dissatisfied students; from which number I subtract twenty-five thousand who never fill out course review forms or other assessment forms, but this being granted, there will remain fifteen hundred who will annually submit negative, even damning reviews. The question therefore is, how is this number to be silenced? Which, as I have already said, is utterly impossible by all the methods—services, amenities and activities—hitherto used by the administration. I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection. I have been assured by venerable scholars who have spent an entire career in academia that young students, who have not yet published anything peer reviewed nor attended an academic conference, have no understanding of the purpose of university and their perspectives are insignificant.
nificant. I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that to neutralize the fifteen-thousand dissenters, it would be best to no longer ask for any student feedback, opinion, ideas, feelings, or input. Those surveys that are required by the government will be completed by the compliant student body who will benefit funding prospects. I have reckoned upon a medium, that a discontented first year student, in four to five years, if tolerably ignored, will move on with their life. A student made so despondent by neglect will lose motivation to speak out, and upon achieving graduation—or falling out and flipping burgers at McDonald’s as the case may be, it hardly matters—will no longer create a problem for the institution. I have already computed the consequential student drop-out rate to be significant amongst dissenters and insignificant amongst compliant students who do well academically. Thus, the university will be rid of negative reviews and academic failures. This will greatly improve York’s rankings so that they won’t have to stretch the truth as far when referring to themselves as Canada’s or Toronto’s number one. (continued on back) MacMedia Magazine | 12
