Admissions of Guilt, by Arthur Tebbel & Chris Toia – Pop Art… and Chris #18

April 7, 2009 Arthur Tebbel & Chris Toia 6 Comments

Dear Art & Chris,

This week someone in my office sent out acceptance letters to all 46,337 applicants to our university.  That included 28,889 students who we had not, in fact, accepted.  This was probably crushing to many of these kids who have worked long and hard to get into college, I mean not hard enough but you know.  What can I do to make it up to these kids?

Mae W. Brown, Assistant Vice Chancellor University of California San Diego

Mae,
We think you have an obligation to provide these people with the college experience that they were otherwise deprived.  These kids clearly weren’t at the top of their classes so we think you should give them the part of college they were really after.  Throw them a really sick kegger.  Go all out, free red cups, a mid-level beer (Rolling Rock or better) and find some way to get a bunch of hot girls there.  For tips on getting hot girls to show up to a party in San Diego consult the M.O.T.U. (if he won’t answer I would recommend offering free course credit).  Run it for an entire weekend and let them trash the coolest looking building on your campus.  Your model should be the end of  Animal House.

Applications to state universities have gone through the roof this year as the shrinking economy forces people to consider cheaper alternatives.  I would explain to them that if state university is cheaper than a private school then not going to college at all is even cheaper.  In fact, if they can get a job at the local In-n-Out Burger they can actually make money.  Just tell them to save their money and not do anything risky like put it in a bank.

On the other hand, it’s not like you guys couldn’t use the extra tuition dollars.  We’re sure your campus couldn’t accommodate an extra 30,000 students but there’s a place where space is free, the Internet.  Set up an online school and broadcast your classes to this set of rejects and charge them something like 95% of full tuition.  It’s not like class attendance is a vital part of the college experience. Now students can attend classes in their pajamas, and the kids at home can wear whatever they want too.  The writers of this column probably only attended about six or seven classes per semester and now we’re successful Internet humorists. You can finally chip into the dollars the University of Phoenix is raking in.  You’ll even stimulate the economy; someone has to buy the ad time on The People’s Court.

Honestly though, you can’t make it up to these kids.  There’s no apology you can make that will take the sting of this away from those 28,889 kids.  Especially to those for whom UCSD was their greatest hope for a college education.  Your office fucked up big time on this and this should be a wake up call to get your house in order.  You should be held to a higher standard not just as state employees but also as educators to not so casually toy with the emotions of fragile young people.  Let’s leave that to the sadists in the admissions offices of Ivy League schools.

—
Art Tebbel and Chris Toia both attended Hofstra University, the Harvard of Long Island.