The hour badly spent

Friday afternoon, servicey tipster Sean Trolinder let us know the wheres and whens of the English department’s super-secret final soiree this semester (Beach Museum, 6pm). Believe me, I really wanted to bring someone with me but let’s face it, you’re all pretty lame, so I went alone.

Upon arrival, the head of the department took my coat, which felt like a little bit of awkward because I also have a class with her (Not for long! End of semester! To be honest I’ll kind of miss it. I’ve been feeling weirdly nostalgic lately. Let’s not talk about this any more). Upstairs, the thing was in full swing. Everyone was dressed to the nines and I hardly knew anybody. And the people I did know had already gone off into grad-student cliques. And I needed a drink.

I spent a few minutes doing that thing where you circle the periphery of the party, gaping stupidly at the people who know what they’re doing but not quite knowing how to approach them and start talking. Largely because, as I’ve suspected all long, they all look pretty fucking sexy and that shit is distracting. What, are you gonna go up to Naomi Wood and tell her "hot dress!" That’s okay, because she came up to me.

"This might be the last of these parties for a while. The English department budget’s getting drastically cut," she said. Oh noes! Then we made fun of the Collegian. With which I acquired a new teacher-crush.

Some professors performed a short reading of ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales,’ a short story by Dylan Thomas. It is fascinating to watch certain people read out loud: Naomi, Michael Donnelly, Wendy Matlock, Liz Dodd, Donald Kimball, Alyssa Dawson; they all had this incredible ability to inflect the sentence just so the humor comes out just so at the end of it. Fun fun fun (yes, I am a huge dork).

I finally gave Wendy Matlock a piece of my mind. Specifically, she is brilliant and enthusiastic, which makes class with her amazing. But! The students, so christianey; sometimes class feels like church, and when it gets like that, my eyes glaze over and my mind shuts down, not to return until someone says "may I get freudian for a moment?" I was afraid you’d never ask.

Phil Nel, by the way, is massively cooler than you. Just ask him anything about music. I dare you.

Tim Dayton is also massively cooler than you. He only listens to punk rock made between 1976 and 1984. We know this from talking to the head of the women’s studies program, Angela Hubler, Dayton’s wife, who wasn’t afraid to zing him. "Does he ever let one else speak in class?" No, he doesn’t, but we don’t mind. We never have anything important to add anyway.

Then we went to the Kathouse, where I flirted with a bunch of grad students. Happy Festivus!

In Eisenhauer 016, two students had already come up with a plan.

"Let’s pull down the blinds. Dayton will think it’s darker than it really is, and cancel class," said Cherry. She and the Sexy Communist Spy went to work.

Professor Dayton walked in just as they finished up, and he did not give a fuck. "If you think you’re getting out of class because of a little power outage, you’ve got the wrong guy," he said. He rolled up the blinds, tugged his podium over to the window and started the afternoon’s lesson.

The power had gone out on campus 20 minutes prior. It affected buildings on the main campus; the Stuni but not the library, the classrooms and lecture halls but not the dorms, administrative buildings but not Lafene. It was a bright day, a sunny day; the mindset of “let’s just call it a day and head back home” had not set in, except among slackers.

"If there’s anything that K-State’s students are, it’s flexible and accommodating," said Pat Bosco, dean of student life. "They have great common sense about them, and they respond to these natural phenomena with ease." Sunlight streamed in through windows on two sides of his office.

"For me, I’m a little different. I can’t stand being without my phone," he said.

Due to the power failure, Bosco had to cancel a 1:30 lecture he was to deliver in the Little Theater on boscology — "the art of climbing through broken glass."

A lady in the finance office, having been in contact with K-State Facilities, said two squirrels got into a transformer at the Westar power station by St. Isadore’s Church, repeating an incident that had happened years ago. She didn’t want her name printed in the paper.

Another man in the office overheard her. "So we’ve got barbequed squirrel?"

"Fried squirrel," she corrected him.

At the power station by St. Isadore’s, nine guys in white hard hats stood around the transformers, fenced in by barbed wire. Insert your own Stormtroopers joke here. Two of them fiddled around with a tower of machinery that did not, in any way, resemble the Death Star II. They weren’t interested in talking to the press.

"If I were a new teacher, I’d be in trouble," said Robin Mosher, instructor in the English department editing her lesson plan in pen and ink that afternoon. Mosher has taught at K-State for 28 years.

"If the power isn’t on tomorrow, it won’t affect class at all because we have plenty of windows," she said. Technology would help her classes (sometimes she uses PowerPoint slides), but everything can also be done the old-fashioned way, she said.

Terri Engnoth, another English instructor, took her freshman expository writing class outside and handed out papers.

"It was exciting. It felt like a snow day," she said. "All of my students showed up. I couldn’t believe it."

The power came back on after several hours. Westar would not give out any information about the outtage. The Collegian would not print any information without a named source. Thanks a lot, Finance office. Everyone is hamstrung by red tape! Except the Kansas City Star, who, without naming any specific University official, scooped the K-State Collegian with this AP report late in the evening (link provided via Facebook by Princess Glitter Bunny):

MANHATTAN, Kan. | A couple of squirrels put Kansas State University in the dark for a few hours.

The Manhattan campus was without electricity for more than three hours Monday. The university says power was cut when two squirrels got into a Westar Energy transformer.

Electricity was restored around 4:30 p.m., allowing evening classes and activities to proceed.

In American (Literature) Survey, Tim Dayton walked us through Emma Lazarus’ famous poem, "The New Colossus."

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!