Elephants banned in classrooms, “vengeance” reportedly “coming to professors like a bag of bricks with tusks.”

Last week’s Hatchet included another editorial about the proliferation of laptops in classrooms. The argument is that laptops allow students to look up words like proliferation when they’re listening to their wise, mustached sage of a professor. From where I’m sitting, a 20-year-old student talking about the necessity of electronics is a lot like a CEO talking about the efficacy of bonuses. The arguments may be passionate, but they always ignore the elephant in the room: reality. And the reality of a classroom full of blue lights and motionless man-moths is a lot like…having an elephant in your room. In fact, if a student spent as much time staring at elephants as he did laptops, he would engineer an equally compelling argument. Let’s say I’m that student…

Banning Elephants Hurts the Environment

Capturing the brutal elegance of the elephant is an elusive goal for any writer, but soon that beauty will go from elusive to extinct. Overzealous professors—most of them born before we invited Discovery’s Planet Earth into our homes and elephants into our classrooms—are making every effort to banish them. Simply put, these tweed tyrants are poaching our greatest ally in the game of learning, and by willfully ignoring the benefits of these heroes, they are just asking for 10,000 pounds of trouble.

I believe it was Sir Isaac Newton who said “If I have seen further, it is only because I am soaring on the hilarious ears of elephants.”

“I would never f*** with one though,” he added. Since then, the elephant in the room helped us win The Great War and land a man on the moon.

Naysayers call them distractions, but so what? They use their giant trunks to hold our Starbucks, they use their giant tusks to tickle our bellies, and they use their giant brains to plot revenge on naysayers. They demand our attention by building massive piles of felled trees or by spitting 100 ounces of salivary bliss onto our chests. It is the professor’s duty to grab our attention. Instead, they silence our friends, almost like they’re just asking for it man…

It’s not my fault if facts aren’t interesting. PowerPoints just don’t cut it in today’s world, and the fact that professors have chosen to accept minimal salaries to share a lifetime of wisdom with us isn’t enough. They need to incorporate Megan Fox into lessons about supply-side economics, and they need to show movies and Youtube clips. I have a whole playlist devoted to elephants making the rest of the food chain their slaves, but professors are stuck in their ways like old dogs. They may succeed in taking the elephant out of the classroom, but they can’t take the classroom out of the elephant—once it chooses to devour it as an example to the rest.

Also, Michelle Rhee supports elephants.

Now look yourself in the mirror and say you aren’t convinced, not even in the slightest. That’s what a liar looks like my friend…you’re staring at the freckles of deceit. Don’t be ashamed though, we’re trained to trust the editorial format even when it doesn’t match reality. As for the laptop: anyone who has ever sat in the back of a classroom can probably tell you what all of their classmates did over the weekend, and if they have any respect—or even empathy—for the teacher, they can’t help but feel a little bummed out by this. I mean, it’s not like we take our laptops to the mall or the movies…

Oh wait, I watch a movie every week for my Philosophy of Film course, and that’s exactly what everyone does.

Yeah…

I think our only hope now is for Hannibal’s army of elephant justice to somehow conquer our minds. [By the way, googling Hannibal AND elephant justice is always acceptable, especially if you’re in class]