Friday, April 01, 2016

April Fool's, Half-Seriously

It may not be the funniest April Fool's essay ever published, but "The Stanford Review Demands Change" is notable for its rarity among campus articles. It reminds me of the day when humor fell on the just and unjust alike.

The text repeated below (in case the link goes down because of technical difficulties):
Stanford University has repeatedly failed to address systematic issues on campus. We, the Students of the Stanford Review, have seen our voices silenced, our rights trampled, and our experiences ignored. Not once has an administrator inquired as to the relative health of our feelings – the system is broken! We, the Students of the Stanford Review, DEMAND change.

1. WE DEMAND that Stanford builds a wall around El Centro Chicano, and makes MEChA pay for it.

2. WE DEMAND that Stanford expels Panda Express from campus, since its food is culturally appropriative, and celebrates the harvesting of the endangered panda bear.

3. WE DEMAND that Stanford renames White Plaza to Black Plaza. Naming a central plaza after a race is hateful.

4. WE DEMAND that Stanford recognizes that half-lives matter, and establishes a committee to fund the Chemistry and Physics Departments accordingly.

5. WE DEMAND that Stanford’s Classics Department end its disgusting and exploitative profiteering off the lived experiences of ancient Greeks and Romans.

6. WE DEMAND that swimming pools be abolished at Stanford, since their blueness shows implicit support for the Israeli flag, further dehumanizing the Palestinian people.

7. We DEMAND that Stanford ends its use of European languages, since they are inherently colonialist. We recommend Xhosa, Zulu, and interpretive dance as alternatives for person-to-person communication.

8. WE DEMAND that Stanford’s Applied Quantitative Reasoning requirement not be fulfilled by cis-linear algebra. The experiences of marginalized matrices have been ignored for too long.

9. WE DEMAND the banning of the Stanford Federal Credit Union from campus, since all debt is alienating and shackles people to the capitalist machine. Also, people use their SFCU debit cards to purchase food from the aforementioned, oppressive Panda Express.

10. WE DEMAND that Hoover Tower be removed, since its phallic symbolism is not countered by a suitably feminist building on campus.

11. WE DEMAND that the Math Department immediately cease reducing fractions, each having their own unique identities and experiences, to their lowest common denominators.

12. WE DEMAND that Stanford base grades only on attendance records in class, since all other measures are discriminatory, as SAL already nobly recognizes.

13. WE DEMAND that Stanford remove the clearly ageist language in “Old” Union. From now on, the Review will meet in Union 215 on Monday nights.

14. WE DEMAND that Stanford bans hard alcohol in dorms.

15. WE DEMAND that the Administration immediately accepts the aforementioned demands, and that a statement of acceptance, a timetable of implementation for each demand, and an administrative point person for each demand be presented to the Review at 3 PM on Friday April 8, in open forum at Buffalo Wild Wings, San Jose.
Related note: for the sake of comedy it would be good if a Republican were to be elected President again. Comedians have wandered eight years in the wilderness. That is long enough. We DEMAND that they be freed to mock the (Executive Branch of the) Government again, to sneer again, to live again!

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