To the untrained eye, the annual calendaring of Spring Break would seem as arbitrary a system as Scanner Dan has to his heckling targets, no doubt an illusion the powers that be would like to maintain. In truth, that bearded bum is far more impartial than the Board of Regents who set our schedule. Through a painstaking investigation, this journalist finds that in the eight Spring Breaks falling between the years of 2004 and 2011, no less that five coincide with St. Patrick's Day, a ""coincidence"" which in effect outsources the celebration of this critical holiday to spring break locales across the continent instead of allowing them to take place anywhere near the ""progressive"" confines of our beloved campus. Although few students would consider this near-perennial placement of the holiday suspect, the nine days of nothingness surrounding this sacred celebration of Irish culture betrays a systematic effort on the part of this University to suppress and suffocate the cultural identity and general will to live among its Irish members.
From their puritanical pulpit atop Van Hise, the Regents may issue statements claiming that this calendarical contrivance in simply an effort to avoid what they deem the ""excessive"" binge drinking often associated with St. Patty's celebrations; that they are merely doing what has been done to formerly fun celebrations like Halloween and Mifflin: making them safer by making them suck. However, if the African American Studies department on this campus is allowed to rename the African slave trade the ‘Black Genocide,' then we are fully within our bounds to call Spring Break the no-less-true ""Irish Cultural Suppression Week,"" as the policy expounded by this university's scheduling czars patently reveals its pro-Anglo proclivities. This academic calendar essentially screams, ""Leave this city for the 17th of March. Go anywhere in this hemisphere, just don't sully our campus on the day known as St. Patrick's Day with your beer-drinking and your bag-pipe playing. Historical inquiries have revealed that St. Patrick never actually lived. We hate the Irish.""
It goes without saying that many unfamiliar with the plight of the Irish people will scoff at these accusations as offensive and completely unfounded. They should be reminded, however, that that is what people said about proven things like evolution and Rudy's football skills. Aside from perpetual drunkenness, St. Patrick's Day is quite possibly the only article of Irish cultural identity to survive the chocking cultural climate of this WASP-ass nation. Yet
this university, one which makes
specious claims to its commitment
to fostering diversity, actively engages in quashing this last bastion of Celtic pride under the guise of bequeathing its students and staff an innocuous-looking reprieve from school and study.
In the face of this heinous oppression the Irish community of this campus is urged to band together. In protest to this persecution, micks and mick-sympathizers should not acknowledge this ""Spring (upon and) Break (the Irish's back)"" and instead hold a ""school-in,"" maintaining normal class schedules all next week. Throughout the week, protesters are encouraged to don outlandish green clothing, play loud Irish music that no one could stand any other time of the year and remain piss-drunk from sun-up to pass-out time. The Irish are a resilient people, well-adapted to tolerating miserable conditions with the aid of drink and song. We may not be known for being all that bright, but we know when we smell a rat, and we will not be fooled into enjoying Irish Cultural Suppression Week at the expense of our cultural soul.
