A Modest Proposal

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

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 proI

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.

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The overall effect of this plan will be to ensure that all reports of the university are overwhelmingly positive. Compliant students will select satisfied replies whether or not the stated criteria have been met. The average student is lazy and unintelligent and will not meditate over their responses, choosing benign to ambivalent options. This docility is beneficial to the institution’s image. I can think of not one objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal considering that the impact of unhappy students will thereby be much lessened in the university. I desire the reader will observe that I calculate my remedy for York University alone, and for no other that ever was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon Earth. Therefore, let no one talk to me of other expedients. Of making tenured professors who rest on their ego and laurels accountable for teaching effectively; of recognizing that students do not wish to follow in the path of their professors, pursuing knowledge for knowledge's sake so that after a lifetime of living on the university dime they can claim with ironic authority that they are an expert in the field because they wrote articles for peer-reviewed journals on the subject; of teaching practical skills and assigning relevant projects, no longer trusting that an academic, theoretical approach will benefit their students; of acknowledging that students today do not live in the blissful, responsibility-free learning their professors enjoyed and instead work multiple jobs to support them

BY MICHAEL KARPATI

He was uncertain. Why had he come to her apartment? He didn’t know what to do. He never did. He felt strange.

Afterwards, everything felt the same. And he wondered why he had done it. MM

selves; of understanding that a degree alone is no longer sufficient for employment and that resumes must be stacked with relevant experience; of therefore offering that experience in the coursework; and of questioning students as to the resources they feel are important instead of wasting funds on departments, buildings and programs that no one but theoretical research enthusiasts asked for

Therefore I repeat, let no one talk to me of these and the like expedients until they have at least some glimpse of hope that there will ever be a sincere attempt to put them into practice. But as for myself, having been wearied out for many years of reading theory and doing assignments on the topic of my future career instead of practicing the career itself, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal of ignoring my needs entirely, so that I will incur no danger to university funding and professor employment with my complaints.

I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer, proposed by those esteemed career academics, which shall be found equally effective and beneficial to the future of the university as a center of learning and growth. But before ideas of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, I desire the author or authors to consider this: real, foundational change takes so much time, commitment and humility, and it is simpler by far to feel secure in the belief in your academic superiority, and that you know what is best. MM

SHOSHANA SHERRINGTON is a fourthyear English and professional writing major and an executive member of MacMedia Magazine. Find her on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/shoshana-sherrington/