University of Pittsburgh, Under God

The 27th of September, the Year of our Lord 2015 University of Pittsburgh, Under God

The 27th of September, the Year of our Lord 2015

Dearest Mother and Father,

Have pride! Have joy! I’m proud to report that your humble son is on his way to completing the first leg of the OCC-IR, the Outside the Classroom Curriculum for Indoctrination Reversal, with only the highest honors. I never knew stoning adulterers would be so much fun — and earn me so many credits!

I know what you must be thinking. “Didn’t I send my boy to the University of Pittsburgh, Under God for a quality ‘education,’ not to squander his time on meaningless add-ons?” Well, don’t worry, it’s not just that all students, faculty and staff are required to complete the OCC-IR under penalty of ostracism. On campus, the OCC-IR has become much more than an add-on: Indoctrination reversal is now a way of life, and we’re all indubitably better off for it, both in terms of cultural purity and distance from the scary, fiery depths of hell.

Ever since President Rick Santorum, on his glorious campaign to the high office in 2012, was kind enough to share his divine revelation about the evils pervading U.S. higher education, we have been enlightened and, at least for those of us lucky enough to live in Oakland, allowed to experience the everyday reality of that enlightenment. We all remember that day, Jan. 25, 2012, when president-to-be Santorum revealed the true goal of American universities at that time: forcibly “indoctrinating” America’s youth to create a country of Jesus-hating, baby-killing and evolution-touting Mao worshippers (otherwise known as Democrats, the “D” word on campus). In order to counteract this indisputable trend, President Santorum arrived in office and bravely, amid fanfare, charged the first-ever White House Pious Corps with the holy task of reversing the indoctrination of American twenty-somethings.

To be honest, I’m glad Pitt ran into such severe budget trouble in 2013. If appropriation-cut-intoxicated Gov. Tom Corbett hadn’t finally twisted the knife in Pennsylvania universities’ bottom line, it’s hard to say Chancellor Mark Nordenberg would have accepted the emergency presidential aid that brought the Pious Corps to Pitt (now Pitt-UG, of course). Because of that serendipitous exchange of borrowed dollars for obligatory religio-social homogenization, the Corps has provided a college experience literally unavailable anywhere else, routing out the indoctrinators so we can think — or not think — in peace.

The Pious Corps does the good work on top of the Cathedral of Wholesome Learning, operating military-grade telescopes and loudspeakers to enforce the new campus order. You might remember that the floors it occupies, the 35th and 36th, once housed the “esteemed” University Honors College. Well, after discovering a hotbed of indoctrination brewing in the UHC, the Corps quickly chose to disband the heathen organization last year, repudiating the UHC’s encouragement of interdisciplinary study, a practice deemed a direct threat to the one-track-mindedness necessary to complete the OCC-IR and listen to Rick Satorum.

So let me tell you about my OCC-IR involvement. As you recall, I came to Pitt aspiring to be a biomedical researcher, but you should know that I’ve since come around. That’s because upon my arrival, the Corps returned hundreds of millions of grant dollars to the National Institutes of Health after discovering that much of Pitt-UG’s supposed “cutting-edge” research relied on a hazy, unsubstantiated theory devised solely to aid the indoctrinators — “evolution.” Since all the labs have closed, I now earn OCC-IR credit by conducting science outreach, that is, taking the Santorum-approved science of intelligent design to the destitute camps of unemployed professors on the outskirts of town. To my surprise, the professors make excellent students, especially when we bring canned beans.

OCC-IR has enriched my education in other exciting ways. Just yesterday, I helped my fellow first-year “Young Fundamentalists” (I’m about to become a “Values Patriot,” and then, if I’m extradutiful, a “Faith Crusader”) in implementing President Santorum’s ingenious ABC (Annihilate Birth Control) initiative. That is, with executive permission from Santorum himself, we swiped our Pitt IDs, raided the Student Health Service and Oakland pharmacies of all kinds of birth control methods, dumped our booty on Schenley Plaza, and put on Pittsburgh’s first Great Condom Bonfire — the dense smoke of smoldering latex could kill cows 15 miles away, reminding us all of the perils of defying God’s copulatory will by not marrying our college hookups.

I’m also getting OCC-IR credit by helping put together the most honorable of nascent Pious Corps programs, the SOID (“Sexual Orientation Identification Device”). The Corps, under direction of President Santorum, has decreed that the student body should not be indoctrinated with the notion that we could live happily among gay people. The initial plan was simply to waterboard students and then place the orientation results at the end of their PeopleSoft numbers (like “-HOM” or “-HET” following the 7-digit code).

While rewatching the tapes of Santorum’s 2012 campaign, we learned a man can instantly become homosexual by merely sitting on a couch with another man, a revelation which brought us back to the drawing board — thousands of students veering in and out of the gay state at a moment’s notice could conceivably crash the PeopleSoft system.

In the revamped project, I’m contributing to a team of electrical engineering students to develop a SOID system in which battery-powered devices, sewn into the standard white Pitt-UG uniforms, detect proximity between SOIDS and emit sirens if students of the same sex get too close for too long. Our computer science double majors are hoping to program the siren to scream in the voice of Secretary of State Michele Bachmann, “The sanctity of marriage has been threatened!” or “Gather your rocks and sizable stones!” or even better, “Ignore what’s best and embrace your darkest prejudices! Vote Santorum!” Who knew I’d ever use technological fundamentals to advance religious fundamentalism — and get credit for it?

Oh, by the way, I heard the unfortunate news about my brother Matthew. Let us pray his body spontaneously rejects the large doses of indoctrination he’ll be receiving at “graduate school.”

Sincerely,

Cornelius Schaff

The future University of Pittsburgh, Under God considers incoming emails as forms of indoctrination. So if you have questions for Cornelius, contact his thoroughly indoctrinated brother Matt Schaff at [email protected].