Following the release of a video of racist chanting by members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, the University of Oklahoma has announced that it is creating the post of vice president of diversity and wizardry.
University president Dave Borderline says hiring a professional mind-melder is the best way for the institution to better manage what students think and say, as well as avoid such embarrassments in the future. The position, which comes with a $200,000 annual salary, has been reserved for Lord Cornelius, a well-known diversity wizard “with a proven track record,” Borderline says.
Cornelius, known as “Dr. Tolerance” and the “Pied Professor” in some academic circles, was most recently employed by a university in Peru where he was in charge of ridding the campus of the last vestiges of self-defeatist speech patterns imposed by Spanish invaders nearly 400 years ago.
“He has cured students in Lima from centuries-old colonial mind cancer, so I’m confident that he can fix our tiny language-thought quagmire,” Borderline said.
The nine seconds of Sigma Alpha Epsilon members’ racist chanting on a bus were recorded by an undercover agent who turned the footage over to the student newspaper. Its release sparked global outrage and forced Americans to ask themselves: who are these racist chanting frat boys on a bus, why are they wearing tuxedos, and how can we stop their chanting before it sweeps the country?
Sophomore psychology major Cassandra Tobolsky — herself descended from a line of Tatar thaumaturgists who were employed in Soviet re-education camps — says that the university should expel not only the racist chanting frat boys, but all members of campus Greek organizations, based on their exclusionary recruitment practices.
“I have no doubt that every fraternity and sorority spends entire weekends reciting racist limericks and chanting bigoted nursery rhymes,” Tobolsky added. “But the university is too chickenshit to kick them all out because of the tuition money and alumni donations they bring in. It boils down to greed. This university is cursed. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had built on ancient Indian burial grounds. Yes, I sense that.”
The practice of hiring a diversity wizard doesn’t come without criticism. A few skeptics compare it to brainwashing, citing cases in which diversity wizards used controversial mind manipulation techniques to turn their undergraduate subjects into mantra-chanting turnip brains.
“Nonsense,” Borderline said. “Lord Cornelius is a source of healing light, and he would never coerce people into professing things that they didn’t already believe. He’s got the degrees to prove it.”
Supporters of diversity wizardry point out that its practitioners employ simple, benign methods such as organizing consciousness-raising “awareness weeks” or bringing in motivational speakers to make students stand up and repeatedly moo like cattle.
Still, some critics say that the $200,000 salary the diversity wizard will earn is excessive.
“I have a buddy who’s a magician, and on the side he dabbles in hypnosis and black magic,” said University of Oklahoma regent Max Burgess. “He got me to quit smoking after just two sessions, and it only cost me 50 bucks an hour. Why don’t we corral all incoming freshmen into the football stadium and let my buddy do his thing? 5000 bucks per year, and we will never have another racist chanting frat boy to tarnish our image.”
President Borderline says that while he will pretend to listen to other options, for him there is only one solution: get Lord Cornelius on campus, and do it quickly.
“Sure, this university was founded in 1890 by a couple of racist hicks who dreamed inventing buses, so that one day they might get merrily chant in them all day long,” Borderline said. “But the past is the past. Today is tomorrow. Lord Cornelius will usher us out of this darkness.”
The “Nine Seconds of Racist Chanting by Tuxedoed Oklahoma Frat Boys on a Bus” incident has sparked protests in other universities, where activists are calling on administrators to create official departments of speech monitoring — along with deputized students who can report their peers for racist, hateful, divisive or simply unkind speech.