A luxury buffet. Bottles of wine. Imagine that! Drinking on campus! We thought that had been banned years ago … We thought the campus was an alcohol free zone …
The times for drink are gone – that’s what we thought. No one trusts a drinker on campus. Drinking is moral dubious now.
People don’t even go out for drinks anymore. There’s no after-work pint. Everyone just disappears … melts away back to their domestic lives, if they have them.
There are no campus alcoholics anymore. No lives cut short. No youthful promise dissipated, more’s the pity.
Everyone’s active, efficient. Everyone’s clear-headed. Too clear-headed! Everyone’s able to concentrate. To focus. To put themselves to work.
Gone are the days you could secret a bottle of whiskey in a filing cabinet.
Gone are the three pint lunches. Not even for leaving dos.
All the eccentrics, driven away years ago. No Personalities, capital P, on campus. No Characters. Oddnesses have been smoothed out. Quirks lost.
Only smiling pleasantness now. Only amiability. Capability. Only, Yes I can do it. Only willingness! Hard-workingness. A perpetual jumping to attention. To get things done!
X’s hipflask. Thank God for x’s hipflask. It’d saved us on many occasions, X’s hipflask. Who would we be without X’s hipflask?
Really, we should all have hipflasks. It should be an urgent priority: buying hipflasks.
No one’s witty anymore on campus. No one’s funny – have you noticed that?
No one laughs. It’s all seriousness. Not High Seriousness, it’s true. But a sober seriousness. An industrial seriousness.
No one says anything outrageous on campus. Nothing loud.
There are no loud voices anymore. The academic whisper, instead. The pss pss pss instead. So you have to lean forwards at meetings.
The invisible consensus. Need to make everyone feel Safe.
Nothing confrontational. Nothing contentious. No joking about certain subjects.
Agreeability. Non-offensiveness. We’re virtually whispering. Respectfully. Unoffensively …
Only certain personality types will do. Who score high for Agreeability. For Communitarianism. There are no sovereign individuals here. No room for toxic individualism …
Total Inclusivity. Which is the new form of exclusion. Total Tolerance. Which is the new form of Intolerance. It’s all about what’s good for All, which is to say for Them. It’s about what’s good for the Collective, which is to say, not good for us.
Totally Tolerant. This is how it is.
Happening right now: the quiet revolution. The coming of the new commissars. The new apparatchiks. The head boys and girls. All calm and efficient. Whisperers. Nearly humourless.
Calling out all toxicity! All antisocial behaviour! Who lead by example – by quiet example. Who speak fluent equity and equality and all that.
The rise of a new Type. The rise of the New Rulers.
We have to guarded, on campus. We have to Watch Out, on campus. We might say the wrong thing, in the wrong tone. We might end up with a lawsuit. With a disciplinary.
Don’t be caught off guard … Don’t chat in the corridors. There are no friends here. Only potential betrayers …
Mild positivity. That’s the New Way.
They’re learning from each other. The necessary behaviour. The mode of groupthink. They’re picking it up …
And for the rest of us? No friends. No allies. No one to roll your eyes with.
Work in Progress 