by Skye Kopfgeschlagen
Freelance Writer

"I don't use Twitter anymore," said freshman Mandi Arnold. "Since my professors have started doing it, it's just not cool."

With the rampant use of cell phones on Harmony University’s campus following the institution’s texting-as-class-participation pilot program, Twitter has become a popular way for faculty and staff to complain about the students with immediate gratification by “Tweeting” their frustrations.

One Tweet from a user called “@ProfHarmU” stated, “The little bombastic simpletons could not form a simple sentence if it slapped them in the face!” Another said, “If they can’t identify the food maybe we should start feeding them what they think it looks like!”

Several faculty and staff have been reprimanded due to intercepted Tweets that were read and shared among students and administration.

Wally Battle, an administrator at Harmony, stated, “This behavior is despicable when students are saying it, but downright inexcusable when adult employees are participating.”

An anonymous faculty member in the psychology department was quoted as saying, “I am sick and tired of these cell phones everywhere and I needed an outlet to express my feelings. What better way than through the same medium students use to create those feelings?”

Holly Swinson, a sophomore at Harmony University, said, “I don’t Tweet anymore because all my crazy professors are doing it and it’s kinda creepy.”

The Harmony campus is abuzz with cell phones, quite literally. No matter where you go, buzzing, ringing or little flashing lights indicate texts and new Tweets.

Computer Science Professor Kevin Goodspeed said, “I hardly look at my colleagues’ faces anymore, let alone remember how their voices sound. I just sit around on my cell phone texting and Tweeting. I can’t stop.”

“Can you say ‘Pot meet kettle?’ I mean, all these professors and people were complaining about the texting program and now they’re doing the same things they were accusing students of doing,” said student Carly Barfield.

The administration has decided to call an emergency council to convene due to the behavior around campus concerning cell phones; however, meetings are usually cut short due to cell phone usage.

by Sasha Tremento
Freelance Writer

At its annual meeting in Chicago yesterday, the Association of Academic Affairs Professionals warned of the perils of a rapidly growing new social-networking phenomenon, BrainSnipe.net, at which students write anonymous snarky comments about their peers’ intellectual sophistication.

“Acumen is in and tact is out,” said Sheila DeGenarro, assistant deputy dean of academic affairs at Plenora College. “And it’s really sick stuff. Kids will just post anything and everything without realizing the damage they’re doing to others’ self-esteem and even their future careers.”

Administrators and parents became more aware of the site after the recent highly publicized incident at Southwest State University in which Lydia Thomas, a sophomore, having received vicious critiques of her understanding of Hume, switched her major from philosophy to political science.

“You’re so stuck in George Berkley-esque subjective idealism you can’t even see the advancement of Hume’s thought to proto-logical positivism, you moron,” read a typical post in that case, signed by someone calling herself “Uniformity of Nature My Hiney!” “BTW,” that commenter added, “linen skirt and those incred’ly cute gladiator sandals! Loving it!!”

“I could barely look myself in the mirror after that,” Thomas told reporters. “I mean I’m glad they liked my outfit, but I had been steeped in a fairly traditional reading of causation, and this vicious clique of skeptical realists had it in for me. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

But Todd Markham, a senior comparative-literature major writing his honors thesis on Borges, said he appreciates the candid assessments at BrainSnipe. “Like this one commenter found my seminar discussion of ‘The Garden of the Forking Paths’ quite jejune in its consideration of nonlinearity, and while I hated to admit it, that person was so right. I’m totally going to revise that chapter in my thesis. That’s the kind of criticism a classmate might not say to your face, but it’s really helpful to know what people are thinking of you.”

“I don’t mind that you slept with my boyfriend,” said another typical BrainSnipe post. “After all, he has a pretty irresistible understanding of Rilke, and your feel for the works of Louis Aragon, well, that’s just not something I can offer him, so I can see how he’d seek it out elsewhere. But the way you slapped down my riff on Friederich Holderlin’s influence on cinema? You b—-!”

DeGenarro urged colleges to carefully consider their policies toward BrainSnipe, perhaps issuing student guidelines for its use.

“I mean, this one girl came to me in tears,” DeGenarro said, because a classmate ridiculed her misordering of pyruvate oxidation, the Krebs cycle, and phosphorylation. Someone needs to monitor that kind of thing. These are real people with real feelings.”

Likely, the final hours of American College Personnel Association (ACPA) President Tom Jackson’s term will be spent issuing pardons for a number of misguided conference delegates.

ACPA held its annual convention this week in Boston, where over 3000 college student affairs professionals met to attend workshops and learn the latest trends in higher education.

“What happened at the ‘Helping Students Deal with Abuse, Trauma and Devastation’ workshop was terribly unfortunate,” said a member of the ACPA public relations team. “From what we understand, a well-intended group from Pennsylvania created quite a ruckus.”

According to reports, the workshop presenter used storytelling as a technique to help the audience empathize with students who had experienced significant traumas.

“Every time the speaker mentioned a horrible maiming incident in Altoona, a group from Pennsylvania yelled ‘Woot! Woot!’ and high-fived each other,” said a witness.

“At first it was subtle. They used ‘raise the roof’ motions and made eye contact, but it quickly escalated,” explained a shaken session facilitator. “When the presenter described the awful mining accident that caused the Altoona maiming, the Pennsylvanians jumped from their seats and started doing dance moves like the Robot and the Cabbage Patch.”

“We’re from a small school in rural PA,” said one of the instigators. “With budgets so tight, we rarely make it to national conferences, so we get our cues from Tweeps. All the Woot-Wooting during previous conference programs painted a picture for us that was very different from reality.”

“We thought the presenter was using this thing they keep calling a ‘shout out,’” said another Pennsylvanian. “Tom Jackson gave one the other night at the opening gala, and we’re hoping he has it in his heart to give us one more.”

Freshman Pamela Roggins of Sunshine State University in Boca Raton, FL, set a new world record this week by writing her 34,077^th Facebook wall post stating some version of “Facebook is boring.”

Among her famous posts are these masterpieces:

• Yaaaawn. FB is sooooooo stuuuuupid.

• Ppl who use FB all the time are loosers.

• This is so laem. Kewl people don’t do fb anymore, peeps.

• Im going to hold my breth until facebook goes back to it’s old look. Dosn’t matter tho. Fb is stoopid anyways.

Congratulations, Pamela!

Riding on the momentum of its announcement that it might ban Twittering from the stands at its athletic events, the Southeastern Conference is now brainstorming other ways to make sure home viewers tune in to the televised games.

“If we can control leaked Tweets, perhaps we can take things to the next level and ban erroneous trips to the bathroom or kitchen,” said one policy maker. “We think we could disguise Conference agents in pizza delivery uniforms and arrest viewers who step away from the television to answer the door. It’s brilliant!”

The public wants to know how the Conference intends to enforce its social media policy, let alone the bathroom break rule.

“It’s a work in progress,” assures the spokesperson.