UC Luggnagg

By Jonathan Lemuel

“A Messenger was dispatched half a Day’s Journey before us, to give the King Notice of my Approach, and to desire that his Majesty would please appoint a Day and Hour, when it would be his gracious Pleasure that I might have the Honour to lick the Dust before his Footstool. This is the Court Style, and I found it to be more than Matter of Form: For upon my Admittance two Days after my Arrival, I was commanded to crawl on my Belly, and lick the Floor as I advanced; but on account of my being a Stranger, Care was taken to have it so clean that the Dust was not offensive.”

Gulliver’s Travels, Book III

I’d never thought to live in Luggnagg. I was, thereby, both stunned and pleased when I received the formal address of the Academic Council on the discontents that surrounded the recent Regents’ Meeting. I was reassured by their stature, it was, after all, “the Academic Council of the University: we are the chairs of the ten campus divisions, as well as the chairs of the systemwide committees” who graced us with their “address” regarding the protests at the Regents Meeting and throughout the system. With true nobility they humanely shared “the anguish” of staff, students, and faculty in the face of furloughs, layoffs, course reductions, fee increases, and increased class sizes. Despite their anguish, they sought to enlighten us: these policies are a regrettable but necessary response to the state’s actions. There were, of course, no alternatives: no refraining from loaning the state millions of dollars, of reversing some of the internal fund transfers, of tapping into, temporarily, some of the revenues from what President Yudof recently referred to as UC’s “businesses,” no administrative bloat, no responsibility on the part of the Regents for their long-standing compliance with the State’s Disinvestment.

But luckily for us Luggnaggians that is not the only point of the Address. Instead, they wondrously reminded us of the value of civility in our discussions. The Council was “especially concerned about group protests in which a number of individuals attempted to move past police barricades, physically threaten and throw objects at police, and surround vehicles to trap those within.” I am happy to know that the Academic Council opposes violence: had they not spoken, some might have thought otherwise. And clearly, moving past barricades and surrounding vehicles were the most worrisome actions during the Regents’ Meeting. But, and I fear here that I may overstep my humble bounds, I noticed that in their rush to remind us all of our duties to work together that they inadvertently forgot to mention their concern about students being tasered, they misfiled their explicit condemnation of the use of pepper spray, and that someone accidentally deleted their objection to students being hit with batons. I am sure that that will be the topic of their next address. And I would assure you all that it was purely because of their great learning and acumen that while they humbly called for police policies and actions to be “subject to inquiry and review” they were able to achieve enough certainty to condemn the protesters and blame them for the violence that occurred. They are too noble to have held different standards on an issue that important.

I was also reassured that the Academic Council is only concerned with protecting the open and civil exchange of ideas. But then, my heart went out to them. Clearly they had been ill-served by whoever acted as their proofreader (most likely a lowly humanities professor the Council was aiding with funds to overcome his or her furlough losses). Surely in their commitment to open exchange they had originally condemned the fact that Regents cut off public comments early because they were behind their own schedule, and that the Regents limit public comments so sharply, that UCOF meetings allow speakers from the floor only one minute, and especially the fact that members of the University community are only allowed to address the Regents through the good graces of the President’s office—a practice more suited to a feudal regime than an enlightened realm like UC Luggnagg. Yet these had not been translated to the page!

In Luggnagg after you have licked the dust on your way to the King, "it is capital for those who receive an Audience to spit or wipe their Mouth’s in his Majesty’s Presence.” (GT BOOK III) Luckily that is not the case here, fellow Luggnaggians; our leaders would never look down upon us that way. And only a Yahoo would think that the lustrous wisdom of the Academic Council would be just as hard to swallow as the dust spread on the King’s floor.