by Wrun A. Wai Kourd | April 1, 2023
Ever since the opening of the Eggers Innovation Center, students have marveled at the charging ports installed in the ceilings of many second-floor science classrooms. Recently, however, some daring students made a discovery about this classroom feature that has sent shockwaves throughout the student body.
The day after a recent campus power outage, Innova Lightway (’23) tried to plug in their iPad into a ceiling charging port in their physics classroom. However, every time they connected their iPad, they kept running into a major problem: “The exact moment I let go of the charging cable, it contracted to the ceiling and launched my iPad into mid-air. It was like a real-life projectile problem.”
Indeed, the science department took Lightway’s metaphor a bit too literally, using aerial iPads as a means to assess student understanding of projectile motion. Determined to put an end to iPad projectile problems once and for all, Lightway made a daring climb up the charging cable.
The cable reportedly transported Lightway into a special faculty-only collaborative space, the new secret headquarters of the Office of Student Stress. Previous reporting by The Lancer has established the office’s central role in the recent controversial changes to grading policy, including the introduction of the New Curve and Zoomative grades. However, Lightway’s observations suggest that the office’s role on campus may be broader than previously thought.
Among the features of the office’s space is a new brainstorming lab, akin to the glassrooms, intended for goal-setting. Harmless intention-setting? Not so fast. Camera footage provided to The Lancer by a whistleblower has revealed the contents of one such brainstorming session that took place in the lab space just last week. Apparently, inspired by the novel features of the brand-new office space, faculty at the Office of Student Stress brainstormed ideas for assignments that would make efficient use of the Innovation Center to frustrate students.
The now-infamous iPad projectile problem is only the start. This same leaked footage also revealed a major proposed policy change in English and social studies classes. To stimulate student creativity and encourage Lancers to break convention, the Office of Student Stress plans to require them to handwrite all their essays in the glassrooms. Ran out of space because another writer chose to include page-long quotes in an essay? Good luck cramming an essay in the bottom right corner!
But unlike previous changes in grading policy, these revelations have brought students and educators together, particularly since most educators were shut out of the planning. One educator declared, “This office represents such a brazen violation of the separation of powers. I demand the right to enforce conformity to the MLA8 format to the letter.” This educator further elaborated that they were “having none of this single-spaced writing nonsense” in the glassroom.
The one silver lining from these revelations is the stimulated civic engagement among the student body.
