A Campus Crisis

 

Yes, it's the Professor here. I know that many of you are still very disappointed that I did not make a better effort to capture the presidency in the last election. However, it was obvious to me that I did not have the right set of skills to compete with the eventual winner--our current president, Mr. Trump. He has intelligence, grace, and social skills, combined with a temperament, never before seen in a leader of the free world, in addition to a great comb-over hair style. These attributes have established a new level of competence for those seeking the presidency. I simply could not compete.

But I digress. My reason for communicating with all of you, my loyal followers, on this occasion is to make you aware of a growing crisis on our college campuses. I have become aware of this serious problem during my daily walks--and no, contrary to what some of my detractors have suggested, I am not wandering about campus because I can no longer find my office, but because I have found that many of our societal social problems can be observed in these brief excursions from my protected office environment.

Yes, well--here is the crux of the problem, or the problem in a nutcase--or should that be nutshell? I forget. Anyway, the problem is this: more and more young people, particularly young women, are suffering in extreme poverty while they attempt to complete a college education. How do I know this, you might ask? Well, I did not get to be a doctor of science for nothing. I make observations, you see. I watch our students as I wander around looking for my office...no, I meant to say while I am getting some fresh air. You may be as shocked as I to discover that perhaps 15-20% of our current college students cannot afford to buy a good pair of jeans. I have attached a few example photos for you so that you can see the magnitude of the problem.

 

Can you imagine the struggles these students must have to even keep themselves fed and housed when they cannot afford to buy new jeans. Where is United Way, the World Health Organization, the Children's Hunger Alliance, the national church charities, the AMA, ABA, NOW, OPEC, NRA, CBS, ABC, USSR, etc. on this important issue. Do they not care? Where does our President stand on this critical issue?

Frankly, I am quite disturbed that I have not been able to find anyone who seems to care. University administrators say their hands are tied by federal regulations. My contacts at the Environmental Protection Agency have told me that although this might be considered an environmental issue, they have got their hands full right now trying to decide whether or not global warming is real. The Department of Health and Human services refused to take my phone calls--something about my previous involvement with the DiHydrogen MonOxide (DHMO) scare. Which, by the way, is still a serious problem. 

Although both men and women are affected by this epidemic of student poverty, it seems to be much more prevalent among the young women on campus. So, I would have thought that the National Organization of Women would take up the cause, but here again my pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

So, I have come to you, my faithful followers. I am going to start a fund called something catchy like "Grants for Pants" or "Means for Jeans" or perhaps "Anti-Poverty Program for Ladies in Education (APPLE)". I would like to hear from you and get your input on the name. Funds, of course, will be deposited in an unnamed account somewhere in the Caribbean. As always, you can be sure that any donations will only be spent on the purposes for which I intend them to be spent.

One Fan's Opinion on Coach Bronco Mendenhall

Let me start by saying that this is just my opinion. I am happy to allow anyone else theirs, so I hope you will put up with mine.

I have sat by patiently waiting for someone else to speak up, and maybe they have, but I haven't seen them. I'm a BYU fan and have been for as long as I can remember, which in my case is a long time. Back when I first started following BYU sports no one cared too much about football. Basketball was king. As a BYU freshman, I spent many nights in the Fieldhouse waiting in line for tickets to the next basketball game. The games were always entertaining even when we lost. President Wilkinson would come out at the start of the game and got down on the basketball court to do push-ups. This always got the crowd worked up since he could usually do more than most of the students could do.

Football season back in those days was an afterthought. Beating Utah was not really something we got too worked up about because, frankly, we rarely beat them. We got excited when we beat anyone. My freshman year of 1970 we played and lost to such powerhouse teams as Western Michigan (35-17), UTEP (17-0), New Mexico (51-8). We did beat North Texas (10-7), Utah State (27-20), and Wyoming (23-3), however, and ended the season with a glossy 3-8 record, not quite as good as the 6-4 record of 1969, but a significant improvement on the 2-8 record of 1968.

Then, of course, Lavell Edwards came along about the time I returned home from my mission and things changed. Not quickly, but there was change. We generally started to win more than we lost: 7-4 in 1972, 5-6 in 1973, 7-4-1 in 1974 with our first bowl appearance, and then 6-5 in 1975. Three out of four years having a winning season was almost too much to handle. But we got used to it and Lavell and his teams got better.

There's no point in my repeating what happened over the next few years, because you all know. We won a lot of games. We also occasionally played a team from one of the power conferences and won a few of those, but we lost more than we won. We got to bowl games, but we lost more than we won. Still they were pretty good years all and all. Still, there were the down times.

The year after winning the national championship, we lost three games. Two losses were against power conference teams UCLA and Ohio State (Tangerine Bowl). Against UCLA our defense couldn't stop the Bruins from driving the length of the field with only 1 minute left in the game even though we were playing here at home in front of a very noisy home crowd. Against Ohio State, our vaunted offense never got untracked. In both games we were right there and could have won. But then there was UTEP.  In the middle of that same 1985 season we went to UTEP and played a team that hadn't won a game, a team in last place in the league, a team we were supposed to cream...and we lost. It happens. I don't remember anyone calling for Lavell's head that season.

So, this brings us to the present and Coach Mendenhall. Just to be upfront let me say that I have never met Bronco even though I walk the same campus he does every day. I guess I should get down to the practice field more often, but going down the hill is not so easy for me anymore. I've got bum ankles. But even though I have not met Bronco, I have a deep respect for him and what he brings to the BYU football program. Yes, I like to win. And yes I can gripe about the officiating and the coaching right along with the rest of the fans. But you won't hear me complain about Coach Mendenhall.

In my role as a professor at BYU, I have had a lot of football players and athletes in my classes over the years. I teach sections of some very large general education classes. During the Lavell Edward's period I annually had coaches call me to see if I couldn't help with a student's grade or if I couldn't perhaps let a student take a test that they had missed or if I couldn't just give some extra credit. I had players come to my home in tears to plead for a better grade so they could continue to play. I watched as star players seemed to ignore the honor code and no one cared. Allowing those students to get around the standards that every other student committed to live always felt wrong. It was wrong, and I am glad that we have moved past that era.

My point in all this is that during the Bronco Mendenhall era, I have never had a coach call me, I have never had a football player come to my home to cry for a better grade, and I have never had one miss a final exam even though I still teach the same classes.

I get it that fans want to win every football game, but I am tired of the senseless, derogatory way that many fans behave. No one knows more keenly than Coach Mendenhall that in college football you have to win games to keep your job. This season has been rough and there are things that need fixing. I am confident that he will get them fixed and my vote (as meaningless as it is) is that BYU will keep him around for a long time to come because he not only knows how to win, he knows what it means to represent Brigham Young University. If we lose that, then there is no point in having a football team.

All in the Line of Duty

As some of you may know, I have been recently a guest on the ISP Network's popular show Yesterday! You can read the transcripts of those shows here (First Appearance) and here (Second Appearance). I was there, not only to promote my candidacy for the 2016 Presidential Election, but to lend my expert advice to the show's host, Mr. Ichan S. Plurg who was interviewing Dr. P. P. Phraan. Dr. Phraan claimed that he had discovered several guaranteed ways to lose weight. Well, as a scientist I took exception to some of his claims and he, in turn, challenged me to try them. So, as your future leader, and as a scientist, I took the challenge and agreed to try whichever diet Dr. Phraan selected, assuring him that none of them would work to any great effect.

Well, it was perhaps a mistake to agree to let him pick the diet. He chose the "Butcher's Diet", which for those of you who missed it on the Yesterday show is Dr. Phraan's diet where he recommends that you cut off part of your body to lose weight. He suggested I might want to try having my head removed, but that, to me, seemed a bit drastic. But not wanting to lose face with my loyal followers and fans, I moved forward and selected a part of my body that seemed to be the least necessary and, more importantly, the least painful to remover. It was a lump that had been growing on my side for some time. When this lump first appeared, I had hoped that it might develop into an extra limb or at least an alien baby, but for several years now it has just seem to languish as a lump.

The first step in this "Butcher's Diet" of Dr. Phraan is to visit your local butcher...er, I mean surgeon. I got a recommendation of who to go to from my housekeeper (I assure you she is not here in America illegally, at least I don't think so). She claimed this doctor had never seen lost anyone yet, and of course that interested me right away because I was hoping to not lose anything so that I could prove that Dr. Phraan was a phraud...I mean, fraud.

The doctor's office was clean, not too much moaning could be heard from the back rooms, and he had that flying house moving playing on a big screen TV, you know that one I'm talking about with the old man and the boy scout and the dog and the big bird and the balloons. Anyway, my turn eventually came up to see the doctor. He took a look at my lump and in less time than it took me to climb the stairs to his office determined that he could remove it in 10 minutes–maybe 15 minutes tops. It would be easy in-the-office surgery with only local anesthetic.

I liked the sound of that except for the part about the local anesthetic. I am not a big fan of pain and prefer not to be awake when I am being cut up. Nonetheless, I returned a few days later and laid myself out on his operating table expecting to be home in time for my mid-afternoon snack. I had, of course, weighed myself carefully before the procedure and was planning to weigh afterwards to see how much, if any, weight I had lost.

The operation began cordially with me making small talk and the doctor, working alone, preferring to remain silent. I began to worry a bit when, as he approached to give me the anesthetic, he said, and I quote, "You're going to feel a little pressure." I thought, of course, that he was making a joke referring to Brian Regan's skit on going to the doctor, but he was deadly serious. About forty minutes into my 10 minute operation, the doctor called for backup. The removal of my lump consisted of the doctor cutting and pulling and cutting and pulling and squeezing and pulling and me screaming that I needed a bit more anesthetic and more cutting and pulling and then after about an hour he sewed me back up having removed the lump along with about three quarts of blood. He had to get his PA to dig my fingers out of his operating table. I have included a photo of the aftermath for those of you who may not believe what I am telling you. Please keep women and young children away from the viewing screen–this will be fairly graphic.

The downside of all this is that I did indeed lose a little weight, about half-a-pound, and so I could not gloat and proclaim Dr. Phraan a fraud, even though he still is a fraud and I will continue to try to prove it.

The good thing is, however, that I proved to all of the voters that I am a man who keeps his word. I made a promise and I kept it. I also learned that there are some promises you should not make and that sometimes when you need a surgeon, it might be better to go to the butcher. I am confident that the butcher could have had that lump out in 10 minutes or less.


You can read more about my 2016 Presidential Campaign in these earlier blogs:

• Preparing another run for the Whitehouse
• Professor Claims He Told the Truth
• I Like Mike
• Health Care Crisis
• The Truth about DHMO