Moderator: “Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to our Emory Town Hall. We hope that this can provide relief for all of you. It’s definitely helping us, by fueling both our superiority and savior complexes. Please note that attendees will be placed on mute and you can write comments in the Q&A section down below, because the university values YOUR thoughts and opinions more than anything else, aside from our Coca Cola money. We want this to mimic an in-person town hall that Emory would have, in that we wouldn’t have one because addressing your concerns without a script would be very difficult for us. You can write what you want in the Q&A box. We won’t read it. Due to the large number of participants, we will only be answering questions that we already have on our FAQ page. In fact, we will just be reading the FAQ page aloud with a bit more jargon. Now, President Smirk.”
Smirk: “Thank you very much. And thank you all for joining us. We are all, including me, very uncomfortable with the current situation. I understand some of you are essential workers. Consider yourselves lucky. At least you get to go outside, see the sun, smell the air. I, for one, am already getting quite bored of taking walks along the east end of my estate, and we are still awaiting projections for how long we will be in quarantine. We all must adapt to the new normal. Today, our leadership team will be wasting your time by providing you with no new information, answering none of your questions, and patting ourselves on the back when it’s all over. This should hold you guys over for a couple of weeks, right? ”
Glove: “Thank you President Smirk. This is not the semester any of us were hoping to have. When we first heard about COVID-19, we were absolutely devastated. We never thought the situation would end up like this, despite having some of the leading public health experts right here on campus. We want to start out by congratulating ourselves for how we handled this situation. Today we’re going to address your questions in large categories. Like really really broad categories. Categories so broad that you may not even call them categories. You may even call it us talking about nothing you don’t already know. To take up some time, we will list our values: teaching, health and safety, the law, accreditation, and the ability to tell the press we’re protecting our students and faculty financially. Now we will just say the word collaborative a bunch of times so you know that these decisions aren’t entirely our fault. Collaborative. Collaborative. Collaborative. Collaborative.
“To dive into some difficult topics, we will first discuss the stipend that, for the record, we offered you. Always remember that. We knew some students were upset that their $1000 stipend was distributed as a credit to their tuition, so the university reissued the $1000 as real, tangible money for your account. The university is aware that this action really hurt some students who relied on that $1000 to feed their families, cover travel expenses, or whatever else you people spend your money on. We just assumed that chartering a luxury jet and hiring a live-in chef should be cheaper than ever due to the worldwide recession. I mean, what could it cost? A couple million dollars? Oh it actually does? Oh most people don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal? Well then I guess the only person at fault here was my secretary, for not briefing me on that fact.
“Anyway, we would like to formally apologize for our misguided placement of the stipends. We made a mistake. These are unprecedented times, and it is difficult to know what actions will produce the most beneficial outcomes for literally anyone aside from ourselves, our Board, and our Donors. Even wealthy universities with literal thousands of advisors and consultants make mistakes sometimes, and that’s okay! Aside from the additional $1000, we would like to offer another token of our apology to these students:
NobodysPerfect_HannahMontana.mp3
(P.S. For our students who have sick grandparents and have to work night shifts, you guys are so inspirational 🙂 Oh, being called an inspiration doesn’t tangibly help you manage your day to day difficulties at all? Moving on…)
“Everybody wants to know when we will open for the fall. We’ll let you know as soon as we find out how we can maximize our profits without taking any liability.
“We would also like to take this time to acknowledge the massive student petition for a double-A grading system, which has been widely regarded as the best compromise between S/U, universal pass, and typical grading systems. To this request, the university would like to say: no sorry :/
However, we would like to provide some reasoning behind this choice, as some students were confused and frustrated by this decision. Firstly — wait! Look over there! Oh, this is a print piece? Oh that diversion tactic does not work in this medium? Oh this didn’t fool anyone? Well, as previously stated, we would like to reiterate that everyone makes mistakes and because of that no one can hold us accountable for this or ask us a question about grading policies ever again! Now, I’d like to turn it over to my colleague, August Martini.”
Martini: “We have implemented some cost saving measures. One of the most commonly asked questions was about our endowment. If we tapped into our endowment to help our current students, or any of the other billion dollar reserves we have, some students in the year 2095 would be deprived of scholarships. Also, after accruing 75 years of interest, that much money would basically put a Gucci belt on our U.S. News and World Report ranking page. We want to provide every student who deserves it with their money. Just to be clear, this is NOT a cop out. It would benefit us all to be #20 once again.”
“Finally, to take some time away from answering urgent student questions, we will provide you with some information you already know. There is a virus called the Coronavirus outside. Wear a mask. Sing happy birthday to our donors twice when you wash your hands. It doesn’t matter what day it is; at Emory, we celebrate them everyday!”
Thank you all for tuning in to listen to us tune you out. Once again, these are unprecedented times. Please continue washing your hands, staying inside, drinking whatever brand of bleach donated the most money to the university, and sacrificing your grandparents to the economy. We can’t wait to see you on campus sometime soon, and we will continue to make your lives more difficult from a distance until that is possible.”
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