(Ed. Note: this post was revised on Saturday morning 2 March. The added material has been underlined for your convenience.)
<absurdem> <parody>
We don’t suspect you saw this recent item in the news; you pay Side to stay abreast of such things and pass them along when they merit your notice.
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2013/02/25/yale-health-considers-sex-change-surgery/
The opening paragraph reads as follows:
Though Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and Brown offer health insurance coverage for students to receive gender reassignment surgery, Yale is still reviewing its policies for the procedure.
Followed soon thereafter by these words:
Gabriel Murchison ’14, president of the Resource Alliance for Gender Equity, said the lack of coverage is a sign of how unwelcoming the campus environment is for prospective transgender, gender nonconforming and queer students.
“The [current] policy sends a message to trans and gender nonconforming students that our concerns are not a priority, not to mention its effect on students who need this care and rely on the Yale Health Plan for their health coverage,” Murchison said.
“Well!” we say, with a modicum of exasperated melodrama. Think Jack Benny. And here we thought we’d ‘seen it all,’ when V-Day Celebrations and Vagina Monologues productions became campus standards! ‘Please come, Mumsy; it will be so liberating!’
We are curious, though, as to why we never hear of P-Day events and the like. Probably the same reason there isn’t a major in Masculinism. Anyone with the ‘stones’ (to be polite) to propose either would likely be subjected to immediate academic castration and intellectual emasculation, which could be seen as ‘gender reassignment,’ we suppose.
Ironically, colleges these days are engaged in ‘free market competition’ for the best students, even though they all preach disdain for the ‘unseen hand’ in such matters. That’s just another dimension of the faux ‘intellectual consistency’ mentioned in our prior post.
Bowdoin, of course, would love nothing more than one-upping Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and the other stuffed shirts in this anything but friendly competition. At the same time, Bowdoin would have an institutional case of the vapors if anyone were to suggest that it has ‘an unwelcoming campus environment’ for ‘non-conforming’ students, regardless of how fluid that term may be.
Gender reassignment? This is so yesterday, and is not the bold new frontier of academic progress.
So we expect soon to read reports that Bowdoin is adding the following special health insurance coverage for students, faculty, and administration:
Ethnicity reassignment: just as Bill Clinton was the ‘first black American President,’ students can declare that while they are visibly white, they feel black, and are entitled to have their ethnicity surgically reassigned. Or for those once derisively labeled ‘Oreos,’ they can surgically be made white, all at no personal expense.
Dogmatic theology reassignment: some students have reportedly claimed that while others label them ‘greens,’ or environmentalists, they really feel like communists. They will qualify for pigmentation transplants that change their dominant skin tone from green to red.
Ideology reassignment: admittedly, very few students fall into this benefit category. It addresses those who wish to pursue a career in academia, but come from conservative origins. The coverage trains them to forsake reality and everything they know to be true in order to ‘fit in.’
Personality change surgery: some students have noticed that a Type A personality in a Type B environment, or vice versa, can be problematic. Though experimental in nature, the insurance plan provides appropriate mind altering medications to resolve any feelings of self-doubt.
Wealth revulsion therapy: campus dogma preaches the evils of capitalism and wealth accumulation, while deifying the collectivist mantras of the 99%. Realizing that if they are to succeed in their post-graduate pursuits, and measurably enhance the College endowment and their own stature in the eyes of future students, those afflicted will undergo intensive tutelage by Gordon Gecko, Visiting Professor of Meritorious Greed.
Name-change procedures: this coverage falls under the non-invasive out-patient category of the group policy. Hyphen-otomies and other procedures that reallocate cognomens from patriarchally dominant to matriarchally dominant sensibilities will be freely available, and can be repeated on an annual basis. The Elsbeths, Dylans, Quinns, Pats, Chris’s, Alexs and other afflicted seekers will be free to reverse the order of their bifurcated surnames to match the campus fashions of the moment.
Take that, Yale. Smoke that in your bong, Stanford. Tap this little keg, Harvard.
In case you haven’t realized it, Bowdoin is not about to let you best it in the great insurance coverage race. No matter how much it costs to prevail.
Ain’t non-profit status a wonderful thing?
</absurdem> </parody>
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