The following piece is satire and should not be misconstrued for actual reporting. Any resemblance to a student, staff or faculty member is coincidental.
Moved by the apparent deteriorating state of mental health of administrators, an anonymous staff member within the Counseling Center is scheduled to publish a piece in The Eagle titled “Administration Stress.” The article aims to highlight how administrators, typically of the baby boomer generation, have less resiliency and a lower appetite for publicly admitting mistakes.
The piece advocates that universities, specifically American, can no longer consider university staffer mental health to be outside of their purview. When administrators have tantrums because students disagree with them, it is clear that the administration has not done enough to prepare them for a job that includes success and failure.
Within the past few academic years, AU’s human resources department has received an influx of complaints regarding senior-level university administrators. These complaints include reports of public tantrums as well as destroyed university property.
In response, Jack Child Hall, which is typically reserved for child care, will offer nap time and sippy cups sessions for senior-level administrators who are still learning to not take things personally. This mandatory program, which lasts through an administrator’s first year at AU, helps staffers adjust to their first year at AU.
The program teaches participants how to navigate their academic, social, cultural and psychological adjustment to university life. One lesson focuses specifically on the fact that no one cares how many degrees an administrator was able to afford. Another helps administrators focus on their optics, instructing them to avoid organizing themselves like a misshapen boy-band when addressing student protests.
Just last week, AU police had to respond to an incident in which a university computer was thrown from an Mary Graydon Center window, nearly striking a passerby. The computer belonged to a staff member within Auxiliary Services who reportedly yelled in response to reading a Facebook post about a planned student protest.
“You can’t win with these students! You can’t! You can’t win. One misstep, and they’re all crowding the MGC steps with bullhorns!” the administrator reportedly said, according to an anonymous AUPD source.
The Seagle reached the student, Jennifer Higgins, who was nearly struck by the computer. Higgins expressed sincere concern for the administrator stating, “I hope they know the Counseling Center has drop-in hours from 2 to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.”
It is HR’s hope that providing nap times for administrators will give them time to decompress and realize that student grievances aren’t personal. The binkies, also known as pacifiers, will serve the sole purpose of ensuring that some administrators just stop talking altogether.
Some junior administrators within various departments housed in MGC are delighted about the changes. While they requested anonymity, they issued the following joint statement:
“We welcome the changes recommended and implemented by HR to deal with these ‘big babies.’ While we’d never be absent-minded enough to physically write our fellow community members off as “Old” or senile, it’s human nature to recognize the common denominator.”
Nickolaus Mack is a senior in the School of International Service and The Eagle’s managing opinion editor.
This article originally appeared in The Eagle's March 2019 print edition.
