Solutions to CSU’s financial crunch

Registering for classes is a chaotic jumble that shatters the

spine of hope and punctures the lungs of dreams. In the largest

class in the history of CSU, getting a seat in a desirable class is

a game of musical chairs, sans music and childlike innocence.

However, with the right mix of a sunny disposition and mild head

trauma, you can accomplish anything. Sometimes you can see neat

colors along the way.

Back when space pirates founded the university in 1741,

registration was simple. Teachers were abundant, men were men,

women were women, everything else was violently repressed and

wholesome American values dribbled like melting snow down the

mountainside. It was a lot like living in a postcard, except most

postcards neglect the space pirates.

But the real key here is that classes were smaller back then.

Whether it’s overpopulation or more people attending universities

or deforestation, attendance at CSU has been swelling like a zit on

a balloon. As a collection of great minds and problem solvers, this

overcrowding problem is but one more problem to crush, bug-like,

beneath the gigantic foot of our collective genius. Nothing can

stop us! Nothing!

Current solutions involve raising tuition, which is bad because

college students love money. So do taxpayers – only they’re more

determined about it, so no help there. Other fundraising ideas

included a bake sale and a bachelor auction, but according to a

number I read off of a cereal box, it would take “sixty-bazillion”

brownies to make CSU financially stable again. And you don’t really

need to “auction” bachelors so much as “restrain” them.

No, we’ll just have to learn to cope with increased class sizes

or counterfeit money, which I can’t legally advocate, even if it

was just a silly Euro. Speaking of Europe, we can get an

interesting idea on coping with increased class size from European

countries’ busses and our hamburgers – double-deckers. The class is

crowded horizontally, but really all that vertical space is just

being needlessly wasted. Stacking the decks and students on top of

each other would form a mighty pyramid of knowledge and a fire code

violation of excellence.

There’s also the teacher shortage, or rather, the

teachers-being-stretched-too-thin-age. The underlying assumption

here is that every class needs a teacher to teach it. Naturally,

this is crazy talk. Science has built machines that can read words

out loud, straight from the book. They could even be programmed to

cough significantly whenever they reach a test question, just like

a real teacher always should. Regrettably, the machine wouldn’t be

able to answer questions or explain assignments, but really, who

needs questions?

Now, there’s still the influx of students. We don’t need them

taking up precious, precious seats. The next time you see or lead a

tour group of incoming students, try to discourage them. Mention

that the real reason for water restrictions was to thwart the

rampant gremlin infestation. Tell of the horrors of being hazed by

a gang of tenured teachers. But make sure they spend time in the

gift shop. After all, we really need their money.