In the years to come, the little boy would study hard. He refused to buy into the received wisdom from the two ideological strains of foreign trained professors, and little by little, started developing his own theory and way of working. Under his guidance, the younger students he used to mentor started flourishing – the overall scores improved; articles per student appearing in peer-reviewed journals improved across faculties; indiscipline and malingering went down considerably, though this was often attributed by jealous peers to his authoritarian streak.
The Plot Thickens
The Family of Inherited Authority sat up and took notice. How could this renegade, parochial professor, who often openly insulted the Family’s anointed authority by not adhering to their tacit policies – gasp! – dare to perform better than their very own? Thus began a long, vicious campaign of premeditated resentment and hatred. The Counselors, often referred to as the Fourth Pillar of the University, were regarded as the epitome of impartiality and virtue – their sole job was to keep the students Informed and present them with Key Facts And Figures. Alas, little did everyone know that the same counselors were paid by the Family to bury secrets about its favorites and manufacture skeletons in the cupboards from those they wanted to punish.
Alea Jacta Est
It all began with a fight between second year engineering students and first year arts students. The engineering students wanted to rest in the common room after an exhausting day of field measurements in the summer sun. But they found the arts student lounging about in their favourite haunt. To make matters worse, the FY arts students had been given special rights of first use to the common room after in-camera discussions between the Family and its professors.
Nobody knows what happened next – there was a lot of noise about the number of students hurt on each side, while the Counselors, who were despairing of what to fry the Anti-Christ on, got their opportunity. The way things went, the Counselors made an entire career out of this one incident, and soon they were being hailed as the New Liberating movement, the Arts for Self Respect Brigade and all manner of neologisms. They never got around to reporting the fact that on all performance indicators, starting from grades to job prospects, that professor’s classes were all the rage among parents who wanted to kickstart their wards’ careers.
Remember “Cui Bono?”
Since then, there have been many matters that the Professor has been hauled over the coals for – the report by (Arts) Student Welfare Committees saying that the Professor’s students were consistently malnourished; that Arts students hate him (though under his watchful eye all Arts students have landed far better jobs than other Universities which gave them handicap marks, or gave them busy jobs, or consistently inflated their grades, or created a non-competitive environment in which they would continue to resent engineering students while doing nothing to improve their own job prospects). Even the perfect opportunity – when a global college called What-On-Earth refused to let him speak despite having invited him – turned in his favour as hundreds of his admirers railed against the decision.
…And the truth shall set you free
Incidentally, the University is about to exercise a new rule next year – the authority over the administration and management of the University would be passed into the hands of elected representatives, instead of resting unquestioningly with the Family, who are of course rattled with the portents of things to come. The Counselors are working overtime, but even they have begun to realize that though they can fool all the people some of time, and they can fool some people all the time, but they cannot fool people all of the time.
Exam dates are coming closer – which subject will you choose to study?
(Image taken from www.corruptionbribery.com)