WT is W-Terrific

Aaron Wells

copy editor

2-13-2001

With the inauguration of our new president, George "Dubya" Bush Jr., it's more vital than ever that we retain our tribute to him ­ "Dubya"-T. The last president to compliment our college was Richard Nixon. It is imperative that we get on this one's good side before he admits that he, too, is not a crook.

WT courses are even more important because they provide easy A's to people who like philosophy, and anyone who likes philosophy is going to have a rough time in every other aspect of their life. Personally, I loved WT because it was the last class in which I could sleep through lecture, read William Burroughs in the back of my discussion group, totally ignore everything said in class, and still get high grades from cramming my way through the texts on the night before test and writing a killer essay with skills learned from years of procrastinating and sucking up to English teachers. This is how all classes should be. It seems to be in vogue at present for professors to demand "participation" from students, and for student to "pay attention" for up to an hour at a time. While these avant-garde concepts may be popular amongst the ivory towers of classroom research, when will it ever come in handy in a professional setting, for a person to be able to participate in discussions and pay attention to anything for up to an hour at a time? Never! And that's the beauty of WT. It's the only program at this university that prepares us for the vital skills of reading the works of dead white men and coming up with opinions about them.

The other important thing I got out of WT was a cultural de-programming. I'd never heard the historical origins of the Bible before (but then, I've never been to church). I'd never heard anything about the pilgrims except for when we cut out construction-paper hats with buckles on them around Thanksgiving in elementary school (...except for "The Crucible" and "The Scarlet Letter", and a bunch of shows on Nova, and talking to Richard Tillett).

And as for WT 202... well, okay, so I already had read Kant and Descartes and Rousseau ­ pretty much everything except Faust ­ in high school classes, but, you know, easy A's! Perhaps we could stand to eliminate 202, the awkward middle child of WT. We could always just say that Christopher Marlowe lived in 17th century Boston, and tack Faustus onto 203 in place of "The Narrative of Mary Rowlandson". Literary enjoyment should never take a backseat to historical accuracy.

Although, admittedly, Mary Rowlandson had its charms. The one thing that kept me awake throughout its 80 pages of drivel was watching with fascination as she goes on about how savage the Indians are, yet how nicely they treat her, and how it must be a gift from God that savages are so not savage. I hung on each word, waiting for her to make the leap that perhaps the Indians were just nice people when they weren't forced to slaughter the Puritans (and does slaughtering Puritans really make you a bad person, really?), but she never did.

Another benefit of the WT program is that it helps fund the UNR bookstore. That place would probably go out of business if it weren't for the hundreds of dollars spent by WT students each semester in books they can't sell back. And it helps build college students' personal libraries with books they will cherish and never open again until they are thrown out, covered with mold and dust, after those college students are dead.

The WT program is vital to the UNR experience, at least inasmuch as it provides easy A's for students who have already read all the material, enjoy discussing philosophy, and love to write essays. I'm pretty sure that's a majority of the student body.