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Monday, October 18, 2004
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READERS’ CHOICE
Hokay, today you can either find out what it’s like for an English professor to attend the Singalong Sound of Music with two of her students, or you can get up to date on the latest academic embezzlement scandal. You say you want both? Fine. Any particular order? Sound of Music first! Fine. I Close to Home: UD Attends the Sound of Music Singalong with Two of her Students People dress up in S of M related costumes for the event, but the only thing UD could find was a Soviet army hat that her husband picked up at some outdoor market in Poland years ago. Nazi headgear would have been correct (for the scene in which the local Hitlerian gives Captain von Trapp hell for flying the Austrian flag), but UD made do with the Soviet thing. On the Metro trip to Foggy Bottom, quite a number of men eyed UD’s hat (which she held on her lap) with alarm and contempt. “What now?” she could hear them asking themselves. “ A fucking Commie?” As the train neared Lisner Auditorium, UD felt nervous and excited. She had over many years idealized this event. What if it fell short of her expectations? What if she felt constrained in her singing, sitting next to two students from her Novels of Don DeLillo class? Anyway, here are her students, waiting for UD in front of the concert hall. They look pleased but confused when she puts on her Soviet hat. Why Soviet? they want to know. UD tries to explain. Very strange audience mix: Elegant little girls with their mothers; fully fledged female impersonators; tough-looking women dressed as brown paper packages tied up with string; anonymous drifters who UD figures just happen to like the movie and have no idea what they’re getting into. “You come too,” says a brown paper package to UD, as the package heads up to the stage for the costume contest before the film. “You’re in costume.” “Yeah, but just barely,” UD replies, full of shame at her shyness. “I’ll stay here.” Everyone has been given a little yellow plastic bag, inside of which are various props to deepen our viewing excitement (a piece of edelweiss to wave; a popper to set off when the Captain and Maria first kiss; a tiny swath of fabric to hold up when Maria makes play clothes for the children out of her room’s curtains, etc.). We are also instructed to hiss whenever the Baroness appears, to boo the Nazis, and so forth. From the very opening scene (when we chant JULIE? JULIE? JULIE? as the camera slowly pans the Alps, and then, as the camera finally finds her, burst into deafening applause) to the last (here we reprise “Climb Every Mountain” as the von Trapps crawl over the mountains into Switzerland), both UD and her students do it all: we sing; we wave; we shout; we pop; we bow (remember the song festival’s third place winner? the woman who keeps bowing and bowing and bowing? The audience gets up and bows in every direction through this scene.). UD is pleased to see that she’s not at all self-conscious about wearing a Soviet army hat and belting out UNDERNEATH HER WIMPLE SHE HAS CURLERS IN HER HAIR while seated in a large auditorium next to two of her students. Neither are her students in any way hampered by her presence. II LATEST ACADEMIC EMBEZZLEMENT SCANDAL UD begins to think that all colleges and universities should have a Cadillac SUV/Gated Condo on a Golf Course contingency fund. The imagination of embezzling professors and administrators is so pitiful that when they steal money from their schools they all do exactly the same thing. They buy a Cadillac SUV and a gated condo on a golf course. The State of North Carolina Auditor Robert Campbell uncovered the latest Caddy-Course purchasing pattern at the North Carolina School of the Arts, which is part of the state university system. (Campbell is a man of such independence and integrity that one local newspaper anticipates his defeat in the upcoming election.) Comparing the scandal to Enron (though this one only involves the theft of a million dollars), Campbell says: “Money was shifted between various entities to avoid detection and the rules that apply to the main enterprise. Today, Enron is financially and morally bankrupt. Our university system cannot and should not sink to that level.” “The damage to the school is likely to be serious and long-term,” writes the Winston-Salem Journal of this “combination of greed, arrogance, incompetence, and extravagance.” A few people at the school thought things were getting rank even before the shit hit the fan: “Some wonder whether the school has put too much emphasis on wheeling and dealing. ‘There are those of us who believe education is education and business and business,’ [a member of the Faculty Council said, sounding very much like, well, UD]. ‘When you begin to operate education as a business, does that open the door to things like we just saw?’” |