Pepys into the Corridors of Power

M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP-ISSMP
Associate Professor of Information Assurance
Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont

A graduate student was given the Samuel Pepys Student Diarist Award for keeping a learning diary during her graduate studies and sharing it with the Program Director as part of the Continuous Process Improvement program at the University. She asked if she could have some time to speak to her classmates upon receiving the award. Here is what the Program Director responded.

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The entire Program Team met for seven hours of vigorous debate to discuss your proposal for permission to address your peers as the recipient of the Samuel Pepys Student Diarist Award for 2009 during the Graduate Conference Plenary Session coming up next month.

Unable to come to an agreement on how long to give you for your acceptance speech, we moved the question to the Program Directors Committee, who deliberated for a total of 14 hours over three days. They were unable to come to a conclusion.

The PDs moved the question to the Deans. They met for over a week, receiving box lunches shipped in from the Thai Restaurant in Flummoxville, some 40 miles away and having pajama parties in the large conference room to permit continuous discussion. No luck.

The University Administrative Committee was next: these worthy folks discussed the proposal for two months in weekly meetings each of which lasted 26 hours; they were fed with intravenous V8 juice and received electroshock treatments so they could pretend to be conscious. Despite over 438 resolutions, including proposals for renaming the School of Architecture as the School of Building Things That Look Pretty and Don't Fall Down, and defining five new categories of professorship including Approximate Professor, Adumbrated Professor, Adipose Professor, Anonymous Professor, and Arrogant Professor, the UAC, which considers itself subservient only to G-d, finally appealed to the Supreme Deity of the Space-Time Continuum for a decision.

She said you can have exactly five minutes.

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