In an effort to christen his new chancellor’s office, University of Wisconsin-Madison Interim Chancellor Eric Wilcots invited College of Letters & Science staff and faculty to spend the last evening of the summer celebrating his promotion from L&S Dean. At long last, with the help of Mead Witter sound engineers, humanities professionals have shaken the foundations of Bascom Hall.
Former Athletic Director Chris McIntosh hosted a pregame in Music Hall, where he donned a Bucky head and performed an improvised DJ set. The naming rights to Music Hall were sold moments after the pregame ended as the building could no longer be connected to the word “music.”
L&S faculty and staff then stumbled up Bascom Hill along with Lakeshore residents on their walk of shame home from Southeast dorm parties. Neon strobe lights and muffled 2016 house music were unavoidable outside Bascom Hall, prompting several students to frantically email their teaching assistants for the text they should show at the door.
Wilcots’ office warming party put all of Langdon to shame; university administration and local legends Bucky Badger and Tunnel Bob were all in attendance. Bucky credited his career-defining kegstand at the event to his expertise in headstands, but left it unclear which acrobatic feat he practiced to prepare him for the other.
When asked about anything he’d like to say to his predecessor Jennifer Mnookin, Wilcots told The Beet, “Yeah, Jen is living it up at Columbia where the only people with sticks further up their own asses than her are the students. She can keep getting college kids arrested wherever she goes, meanwhile I’m in Wisconsin making up colleges with names you can’t pronounce for majors you didn’t know existed.”
Two L&S professors approached Chancellor Wilcots with a shot-ski after his comment to The Beet and referred to themselves as “Bacardi bros.”
Attendees flocked to the Washburn Observatory for a postgame under the stars, but upon realizing nobody had the key to the building, divided into two groups. One stayed on the grass outside and imagined they were at a tailgate, and the other borrowed a ladder from Liz Waters Residence Hall to scale the building and crawl inside under the telescope. Professors engaged in scholarly discourse, or as Mnookin would have said, pluralism, on human nature and debated the drinks of choice of 16th century Flemish philosophers until morning.
