Each day seems to bring worse and worse news about the grim fate of higher education in the United States. First, the removal of $400 million in federal grants from Columbia, then the repeat targeting of international students by the Trump administration, and, just this week, Trump threatening to go after Harvard’s tax-exempt status. Everything is getting worse, and, through it all, I can’t help but feel it’s kind of all my fault…
See, in my freshman year University Writing class, I had to write a paper analyzing an experimental stage play. When I got my grade back, my professor marked my grade down 20 percent for “serious citation issues.” He wrote, “Your paper gravely violates principles of academic integrity, and you are spitting in the face of higher education.”
And now, just a mere two years later, the entire American university system is falling apart. Coincidence? I sure don’t think so.
Clearly, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was casually browsing an archive of failing Columbia amateur theatre criticism papers when she stumbled across mine. “Great Scott!” she must have shouted. “No attributions for any of these quotes? Incorrect page numbers? A quote extending beyond four lines that isn’t indented into a block?! I’ve got to get this to the president’s desk at once!” Naturally, Wiles probably burst into the Oval Office and handed this to President Trump. His eyes probably bulged out of their sockets when he began reading. “This author incorporated a theory from Laura Mulvey without any reference to its origin?!” Trump surely cried. “He cited the first edition of the play but only quoted from the second?! I bet the publisher isn’t even correct. Did he even read the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (3rd edition)?!?!”
Sorry guys, thanks to my half-assed P1, we all have to face Trump’s wrath now. My essay clearly left him with no choice but to strip all universities of their federal grants and carry out a brutal attack on free speech, I guess. My bad, who would’ve guessed he was such a citation connoisseur?
