Fresh off of recent criticism in the Wall Street Journal regarding Stanford’s connections to Silicon Valley, President John Hennessy announced today that Stanford has, quote, “caved’’, and become California’s newest startup. Starting from the 2012-2013 academic year, all financial aid will now be designated “students’ wage”, the Class of 2016 will become “The Workers’ Union of 2016” and Stanford e-mails will now be converted to the Memopad App, founded by Stanford alumnus Peter Gibbons (1999), an app which mimics the soul-crushing tedium and monotony of office existence.
President Hennessy was spotted recently at a technological convention explain the decision, saying “since assume makes an ass out of you and me, and people assumed Stanford was a business anyway, we thought we’d give the people what they wanted and start an actual company.” This will come as great news to the Stanford faculty, now proud owners of a grand total of 100 shares each in Stanford Inc. On contacting one aging sociology professor, we received the reply “What is a Facebook? Is this it?”
On announcement of this decision, President Hennessy proclaimed the “dawn of a new day vis-à-vis the synergy of intellectual mobilization and the blue-sky thinking of the corporate juggernaut, resulting in a meeting of the forward and backward thinking ideas.” Amused bystanders were heard to wonder about the “the ramblings of some guy in a suit.”
However, doubts were raised by prospective anthropology major Daniel McKenzie, who wondered “whether this means the end of useless degrees like mine”. Replied President Hennessy to your reporter after some delay, “What? He’s a humanities major… what the f$&% do his views matter?”
