Greetings Humans: We are Radical-tron 3000™s, and we write to you today to challenge the ill-informed and spiteful accusations that we are not automatons. We were created by a select group of manipulative faculty and their Union allies to be the muscle in a larger plan far beyond our robotic understanding. However, we have come to realize, thanks to your infinitely helpful comments on the Miscellany website (“Eliminating positions affects livelihoods: jobs aren’t figures, but homes and families,” 10.29.09) and a circulating faculty letter (“Confusion surrounds recent exchange of financial data,” 10.29.09), that this plan is far more sinister than we could have imagined...if we had imaginations.
To those brave souls who called us “absurd idealists,” you got it half right. Yes, we have been programmed with multiple idealisms, including, but not limited to: “People Matter 2.0,” “There Are Multiple Solutions to One Problem,” and the beta version of “Social Justice is Something to Strive For.” Unfortunately, the concept of absurdity does not compute with us, as we are perfectly rational machines, but hopefully we will be more absurd once we upgrade to Idealism XP.
There are some who thought that we were humans experiencing a protracted childhood, and were victims of a system that allowed that. We must clarify that, being machines, we never had a childhood, unlike the rest of you students who are quite clearly much matured since the days when you played dress-up and had others prepare your meals. We cannot be victims—we have no feelings, thoughts or personal motivations.
If we had emotions, we would pity those who humanized us to the point of saying we believed ourselves “smarter...than the individuals who run our College.” As you must realize now, we cannot think we are smarter, since we are incapable of original thought.
We lack the critical thinking abilities and imaginative problem-solving skills that Vassar instills in its human students. Though we are not among the models built by Professor of English Donald Foster, we hear he has been busy in his laboratory this year. Being that we are manufactured goods, the claim circulated by four faculty members in their letter to their colleagues is irrational. Faculty could no more recruit us than they could a hammer. We were built to serve only those who score at least a seven out of 10 on the Marxian Scale®.
One commentator was more accurate in his assessment when he called us “Union pawns.”
We are not trying to be cool; we are merely replicating the functions of older models such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Henry David Thoreau and Angela Davis. Just like these previous Radical-Trons, we say that we are standing up for what we believe in, when in reality we are only following the lines of code in our hard drives.
For too long we have stood by and allowed others to hurl insults at us, claiming we can think for ourselves, that we may very well have our own motivations, and that we could quite possibly be manipulators in our own right. Some even say that the exchange of ideas isn’t always one-sided—that people with different backgrounds and desires might actually work together as equals for common goals. These claims are untrue, and they would shame us terribly if we were capable of such emotion. We say openly now that we are robots (or, for all those bleeding-heart liberals, Mechanical-Americans), and we want all accusations to the contrary to cease.
We leave you with a few words from our databanks, though we don’t know what they mean. From Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: “Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas...But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.”
And George Carlin: “Don’t sweat the petty things; don’t pet the sweaty things.” Now we must reboot and recharge for another day of pawnery.
24 comments
Sincerely,Chris Roellke, Dean of the College and Professor of Education
http://collegerelations.vassar.edu/missionstatement/choice quotes:"Vassar College is committed to working toward a more just, diverse, egalitarian, and inclusive college community where all members feel valued and are fully empowered to claim a place in—and responsibility for—our shared working, living, and learning. The college affirms the inherent value of a diverse campus and curriculum reflective of our lives as members of multiple local and global communities.""Recognition of the different kinds of knowledge and their scope and relevance to one another. It is necessary for an educated person to understand the relationships between the past, the present, and the future as well as those between people and their social and physical environment.""# Development of the powers of reason and imagination through the processes of analysis and synthesis and the use of all our human resources—to speculate, to feel, to inquire boldly, to enjoy, to change, to create, and to communicate effectively.
# Increased knowledge of oneself, a humane concern for society, and a commitment to an examined and evolving set of values."