Posted by Jesse Shayne
This article was written for April Fools and the events described in it did not actually take place
After spending numerous semesters at the top of Princeton Review's Reefer Madness list, the Skidmore administration recently decided to hire a new Public Relations firm to try and rebrand the College's image.
President Philip A. Glotzbach, at a recent Community Coffee Hour, offered his take on the matter to passer-bys (namely the five upperclassmen capable of waking up for an 8:30 a.m. breakfast).
"How can we distract the media from the rampant drug use on this campus?" Glotzbach reportedly asked those in the audience.
And the response, as the media has been sure to highlight, was to introduce a course so bizarrely obscure and removed from the core values of the College that it would be sure to distract those who still linger on the days of the notorious Octobong that propelled Skidmore to Reefer greatness.
Indeed, in case you are the only person in America with internet access who has not heard of the summer course offering that has been abuzz all over the web, this summer Skidmore will offer a course entitled "The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender and Media."
"So far it's working great," said a ranking member of the administration who asked to remain anonymous. "We're no longer that pothead Saratoga school. We're the Miley Cyrus school now."
For a college with a student body that prides itself on being far removed from mainstream culture, the decision to offer this class might come as a shock to some.
While Professor Carolyn Chernoff, a visiting assistant professor of Sociology who will conduct the course, asserts that Miley Cyrus is simply a lens through which students can explore themes about race, gender and identity in the media, some students aren't so sure.
In response to the announcement of the course, members of Skidmore's Student Entertainment Club have started a picketing campaign to have the course removed from the registrar's website and replaced with a course entitled "The Sociology of The Ramones: Why the 70's Were Awesome."
So far the group has amassed roughly 60 signatures from the student body. They will need a solid majority in order to have the course revoked.
Ultimately all this does exactly what the administration intended: distract the student body from the pervasive infrastructural issues of Skidmore that never seem to dissipate. This will be an interesting development to watch unfold.