Standing behind a tall oak lectern decorated with maple inlays last Friday at 3 p.m., Mortono Joaquin Fendelson broke his previously emotion-free discourse with simple declaration: “Radiant, quite radiant.”
The occasion wasn’t, as you might expect, a lecture on solar energy, or an Art History class on Da Vinci. Rather, Fendelson was announcing the McGall administration’s endorsement of a ‘yes’ vote in the upcoming Twice-Weekly Publications Society (TWPS) referendum.
Speaking to reporters from The Twice-a-Weekly, Le Willit, and the McGall Herald-Tribune, Fendelson, renowned scholar, orator, and winner of a bronze medal in the Javelin at London 2012, said that the decision to endorse a ‘yes’ vote was easy because the “people at that newspaper know more about how this place works than we do.”
“It’s not that we are bad at running the University,” said Fendelson, who was impeccably dressed in a Jil Sander suit with tailor-made blue suede shoes. “It’s just that there are so many documents and emails and stuff that we have to read and some of them are really long and often reference complex concepts such as ‘knowledge’ and ‘freedom’ which are kind of too boring for me. The Twice-a-Weekly crew just does a lot of that kind of ‘thinky-assessmenty’ stuff for us, in that indirect ‘we-read-it-on-the-website-when-they-put-it-there’ kind of a way.”
Fendelson, who is known globally for his excellent judgement and inability to make mistakes ever, said that, in his personal opinion “the TWPS is the best thing I have ever experienced since all of Shania Twain’s albums: creative yet sensual, vital yet timeless, spiritual yet prefigurative of a better age to come.”
“If Fendelson has endorsed the organization then you can be sure it is the right thing to do,” said Michael Sandel, Professor of Political Philosophy at Harvard University and author of Justice: What’s the right thing to do?
“Really the only correct choice to make from an ethical perspective is voting for the TWPS,” said Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton. “This is particularly the case if Fendelson has also endorsed the TWPS, which he has.”
The Twice-a-Weekly understands that McGall Principal Heatha Mama Boom had planned to make the announcement but found herself overwhelmed by the occasion.
“Yes, unfortunately Mama couldn’t be here today,” said Fendelson. “She told us that she needs time alone to dwell with and within her own thoughts at this time of spiritual rebirth and becoming. The Twice-a-Weekly has been, and continues to be, a big part of her life: she feels its echo – it’s mark, it’s legacy – in all material things; and [she] likes that.”
The administration’s endorsement of the TWPS has come as a surprise in some quarters.
“Are they trying to be funny?” asked U4 Orwellian student Jolivier Jolly Conroy. “Why do they make life so difficult for the campus press if they love them?”
When The Twice-a-Weekly put Conroy’s question to Fendelson, he replied with a chuckle.
“Oh you silly sausages! We were just testing them! All that stuff with denying them Access to Information requests and threatening to sue them and being all mean in interviews was just one big joke! We put out the hoops to see if they could do it, and they did! They know about the Law and all those old books of legal stuff better than we do, in fact! They passed with flying colours. We did kinda mess up on the whole referendum thing; we didn’t realize it would be a thing that would have to keep happening, or even happen at all if we’re honest…didn’t read [our own] small print! Woopsy-daisy! We love The Twice-a-Weekly!”
“I too love campus media,” said Nelson Mandela, choking back tears of hope.