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My dear students, faculty, and members of the Fordham community: Everybody stop what you’re doing right now. Put down your books, cease your lectures, halt whatever it is that miscellaneous community members do. It’s time for us to all come together and grieve. This morning, as I am sure you are all aware, the US News and World Report released their 2019 college rankings. While last year, Fordham experienced the unfortunate decline from #60 to #61, nothing could have prepared our delicate Jesuit hearts for today’s bombshell. Our dear mother Fordham, the bosom of learning from whose teets we all lovingly suckle, is in a six-way tie at the abysmal ranking of #70. Take a moment to step away from your digital devices and cry, if you need to. I will understand. I know that this news must come as a shock to all of you. But this is beyond shocking. This is downright nauseating. Seeing our beloved university ranked alongside the lackluster institutions of Florida State University, Stevens Institute of Technology, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of Pittsburgh is an insult to both the hallowed halls of Fordham University at Rose Hill, and the adequately dry-walled singular hall of Fordham University at Lincoln Center. There must have been some mistake. Fordham will not stand for this level of disrespect. We are so much better than that. So we at Fordham University are releasing a rebuttal to the U.S. News and World Report rankings. Let’s go through the list of forgettable schools with which we were so unrighteously paired, and explain how the rankers misjudged.
2. University of California at Santa Cruz In a similar case to Florida State, the rankers were simply confused by the similar sounding names of UC Santa Cruz’s provost, Marlene Tromp, and the highly unpopular president who may or may not have briefly attended our university, Donald Trump. Tromp, Trump, Tromp, Trump, they’re basically the same, it’s no wonder there was a mixup! While I am justly disappointed at the rankers’ mixing up Tromp and Trump, I can understand how that error occurred. But what I do not understand, my fellow rams, is how the rankers can look themselves in the eye this morning knowing that they ranked sumptuous Fordham on the same level as those slugs. Don’t think I’m being insulting, fellow rams. I’m serious. Their official mascot is “Sammy the Slug.” Disgusting. We are most regal and dignified Rams. We have lovingly killed over 21 real Ramses the Rams in our impressive 177 years as an educational institution; how do such impressive stats still put us on the same level as slugs? Are slugs the answer? Do slugs determine the rankings? Should we incorporate more slugs into the core curriculum? Into the very fabric of our school culture and society? More slug students? More slug athletes? More slug speakers! MORE SLUG… ME!!! WE MUST BECOME THE SLUGHAM SLUGIVERSITY SLUGS, AND ONE YEAR FROM THIS VERY DAY, WE WILL RANK HIGHER ON THE CHARTS!!! YOU WILL ALL SEE!!!  3. University of Massachusetts at Amherst Now this one was quite the hilarious “Switcheroo,” as the kids say. I cannot stop laughing. Surely this is all a joke, one big joke, and none of this is real. The good youth of the U.S. News and World Report were surely exhausted after poring over the endless data sets and statistics of seemingly endless universities. As a result, their tired eyes were suddenly blinded by the sheer, overwhelming whiteness of both the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and our dearest, most beloved Fordham University, in both the racial makeup of our student bodies and the literal whiteness of our mascots -- the Minutemen and Ram, respectively -- that they could simply not see straight and mistakenly assigned us a ranking 20, no, 30, no, 69 spots below what we would have originally been assigned. It is a shame, but alas, this is a problem that we just are not equipped to ever solve. 4. Stevens Institute of Technology The rankers were simply confused by the male to female ratios of our respective institutions, because their ratio -- about 70% students are male and 30% are female -- is exactly the same as Lincoln Center’s except reversed! As we all know, the rankers only see numbers but can’t discern between women and men (because they are, as well all know, 100% equal in rights and earnings and power and everything but the Church), so they saw our similar numbers and thusly assumed that we were in fact the same institution! MEN AND WOMEN ARE THE SAME. GENITALIA IS A LIE -- at least, I think that’s the case for slugs. Can you tell a female slug apart from a male? Slugs are the answer, they are the future, they are… everything.  5. University of Pittsburgh The explanation for this mistake, like the cavernous womb of our slugging, I mean, loving mother, Fordham, is goo, excuse me, two-fold. The first fold is of course that the rankers were confused that both of our institutions have inslugnificant branch campuses that no one seems to care about -- for Pitt there’s Pitt Bradford, Greensburg, Johnslug, and Titusville, and for our dearest Fordham there is of course Westslugster and Lincoln Center. The labia minora of this explanation is, of course, that both of our mascots, the Pittsburgh Panther and the Fordham Ram, are both animals, and not slugs. There is only one thing we can do, Fordham, to solve today’s issues. We must infiltrate our supposed equal universities. We must become the slugs we fear. It is the only way. The transformation begins: now.  The process has begun. I wish you all the best in your metamorphoses. Ad mayorum Dei slugoriam, Rams. Until we meet again.
Joseph M. McShane, Jr. Comments are closed.
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