Top Women’s Schools Drop Classics to Expand Aerobics

HOLYOKE, Massachusetts.  In this quiet town nestled in the Berkshire Mountains, Mt. Holyoke College has educated generations of young women in the liberal arts in the belief that a well-rounded undergraduate experience prepares one to travel any career path.  “You may not appreciate Lucretius and Jane Austen when you’re an undergraduate,” says Dean of Academics Wilma Shelley.  “Thirty years after graduation you will, although ten years later you’ll probably have forgotten.”

Mt. Holyoke College

But that principle has come under fire in recent years as high-achieving female high school graduates choose to pursue careers in business, law and medicine rather than accept the lower wages paid in professions traditionally dominated by women, such as nursing, elementary education and chicken sexing.  “I don’t have time to study Latin or Greek,” says Melinda Mangel, a sophomore from New Rochelle, New York.  “I want to be trading derivative contracts by the time I’m twenty-five.”

So Mt. Holyoke, and other prestigious women’s colleges like it, are responding to pressure from their best customers–students and their parents asked to shell out a small fortune over four years–and quietly dropping their classics departments in favor of full-time, tenured aerobics instructors like Traci Sanford, a petite and energetic 23-year old that Mt. Holyoke recruited away from Wellesley College.

“Step and two and twist and turn don’t think about a Grecian urn!”

“With aerobics you get a great work-out in a half-hour and there’s no boring homework to do,” she says.  “It’s no wonder my classes are jammed” while introductory courses in Attic Greek and Latin during the same time slot–Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30 to 10 a.m.–are empty.

Professor Sindon:  Doesn’t look good in a tube top.

The losers in this shifting of tectonic plates beneath the surface of liberal arts college campuses are longtime professors in the classics who are too old to retrain as physical trainers, even in newer disciplines such as Pilates.  “Latin is still an essential element of a well-rounded person’s cultural training,” says Professor Warren Sindon of Mt. Holyoke.  “Without it, you won’t be able to understand ‘E Pluribus Unum’ on pennies or ‘In Hoc Signo Vinces’ on Pall Mall cigarette packages.”

 

“Based on your GPA and your ability to shake that thang, you’re hired!”

Fortune 500 companies confirm that a knowledge of dead languages has become less important to their bottom line as most college diplomas are no longer printed in Latin.  “We used to keep a classics scholar in Human Resources just to translate the sheepskins,” says Herman Butler of American Casualty & Indemnity, an insurance company headquartered in Chicago.  “We had to fire her after we caught her translating Sophocles at her desk.”

“Latin is the loving tongue–if you want to kiss a dead man.”

That’s where aerobics comes in, say career coaches such as Barbara Lively of CareerBuilder.  “Nobody wants to work with someone who’s always saying things like ‘You should use the second declension ablative case more often–it looks good on you!’,” she notes.  “It’s much better to come to work refreshed and energized with buns of steel and your bazooms pointing up towards the fluorescent lights in a professional manner.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

Literal-Minded Parents Push for Irony-Free School Zones

TYSONS CORNER, Virginia.  This booming suburb is situated on a watershed point between two clashing American subcultures; conservative Southern Baptists, many of whom have ancestors who were “f.f.v’s”–members of the first families of Virginia, and newcomers drawn here by information economy jobs in high-tech or government.

Mid-priced home in Tysons Corner. 

“I don’t cotton much to some of the johnnie-come-lately’s we’re getting around here,” says Graham Buchter, whose ancestors grew tobacco back when it was literally used as currency here.  “They’re a bunch of talkers–they wear me out.”

Buchter:  “Give your mouth a rest, would you?”

Mr. Buchter and his wife send their three children to the local public school, but with more than a little trepidation.  “They come home all sassy,” says Virginia Buchter.  “Those new kids put a lot of silly ideas in their heads from their MTV and whatnot.  It takes me a half hour to settle them down to do their homework.”

“I’m just watching to see the kind of vile filth our kids are exposed to.  I’ll come to bed in an hour–or two.”

So the Buchters are joining with other tradition-minded parents to expand the concept of drug-free and gun-free school zones to encompass a social ill they say is just as bad; “Smart-alecky talk,” says Mr. Buchter.  “It eats away at parents’ God-given right to respect from their children.”

“All in favor of sarcastic, smart-alecky kids say ‘Aye’.”

The Buchters obtained enough signatures to place a warrant on the ballot at this spring’s town meeting to prohibit the use of intentional sarcasm or other figurative or literally false speech, and if informal polls are right, the vote will be a close one.

“Oh come on, people–can’t you take a joke?”

“This is a terrible precedent to set,” said Naomi Black, a staff attorney at the eastern Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and an avowed fan of Seinfeld who likes to make fun of her husband with cutting remarks such as “He’s great in bed–if you like snoring.”  “This nation was founded on the notion that you can say anything you want as long as it’s not libelous, incendiary, obscene, offensive to certain protected groups of which I’m a member, or ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre unless you’re watching ‘Bambi’ or ‘Backdraft’.”

Thumper:  “You want to take a walk in the forest and get natural?”

Pediatric exposure to sarcasm has increased dramatically over the past forty years according to the Institute for the Study of Obvious Phenomena at Bowling Green University, as filmmakers have injected subtexts in animated cartoons that can be appreciated by parents who accompany their children to  the movies, and loser adults who go by themselves.  “The average CSI, or Cinematic Sarcasm Index, of a feature-length cartoon has risen dramatically since ‘101 Dalmatians’,” says Dr.  Vendell Benson.  “You would only have room for maybe 88 dalmatians today with all the lame adult jokes they cram in.”

“I just came in to freshen up a bit.”

Television cartoons have been infected as well, with the most notorious case being SpongeBob SquarePants, a sponge with fey mannerisms who has developed a following among homosexuals.  Rumors that SpongeBob himself is gay have dogged him since he was found passed out in a soapdish at a San Francisco bath house following a Saturday night “skip and wave” show at the Nob Hill Masonic Center.  “I can assure SpongeBob’s many fans that he is a hermaphroditic sponge who reproduces asexually and has been in a committed relationship with himself for several years,” said Cheryl Annan, a spokesperson for Nickleodeon.  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

Domed T-Ball Fields Latest Essential in Wealthy Suburbs

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Michigan.  In this upscale suburb of Detroit, the only line longer than the one at Starbucks is the one for playing time on the town’s forty T-ball fields in the spring.

T-ball fever–catch it!

“It’s terrible the way things get backed up if you have a rainy spring,” says Cheryl Brown, a former stockbroker who’s now a stay-at-home mom raising three boys, ages 8, 9 and 10.  “No family planning at our house,” she says with a laugh.

“There’s a drive–it might, it could, it does get out of the infield!”

So last year Cheryl’s town took the drastic but necessary step of floating a $400 million bond issue to finance the construction of the first domed T-ball complex in the nation.  “It may be expensive, and it may drive a lot of old people out of town, but Jason’s got karate at 11 on Saturdays, and Mikey has Cub Scouts at noon, and I can’t be running back and forth all over town” in her 13 mile per gallon Ford Expedition.  “Think of the damage I’d be doing to the environment!”

“I know you have to go, honey–we’ll be there in a minute!”

Cost is no object to younger families here and in other wealthy suburbs as the first wave of T-ball “Superdomes” opens up this spring in northern latitudes where warm weather won’t kick in until mid to late June.

“Evan–here’s your Evian!”

“It’s a real problem,” says Bill Urquardt, town manager of Dover, Massachusetts.  “We had a choice between increasing our tax rate by $4,000 per single family home, or letting our second graders get wet.”  When the alternatives are placed in such stark contrast, the choice in most cases is easy.  “The second graders stay dry, unless they spill bottled water on themselves,” Urquardt says.

“As far as I’m concerned, your little brat can get electrocuted on a metal bench!”

When a town opts for a domed t-ball stadium, it means many senior citizens are forced from their homes, causing hard feelings that may take years to smooth over.  “That’s the bad news,” says Urquardt.  “The good news is, most of them will be dead soon.”

“Time to hit the showers–you’ve lost your fastball.”

For senior citizens who are displaced by higher tax rates, the fact that they are helping a new generation learn the basics of America’s national pastime offers little consolation.  “I saw Ted Williams play,” says Dorothy Darby, a 90 year-old resident of Dover who was forced from her home last spring.  “He never had a domed stadium, and he was the best hitter who ever lived,” she says, her eyes misting over at the thought of the man they called The Splendid Splinter.  “Of course he was a jerk too, but that’s beside the point.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman