Exploitation of students
By Dr. C. Hilly
Heat emitting department, University of Svalbard, Norway.
Introduction
The Body of Gibbering University Students (BOGUS) has, after extensive research, propounded an enlightening theory that suggests an alternative reason to why students are encouraged to enrol at centres of higher education. Contrary to popular belief that it may be to enhance their future prospects and satisfy their seemingly unquenchable thirst to learn, BOGUS proposes that it is in fact entirely owed to the comfort needs of the academic staff.
It is known that heating a large departmental building necessitates the costly installation of heating systems and the use of these systems will erode the finances of any such department. Hence, in a cost cutting scam developed in the early 1900s, students are encouraged to partake in higher education programmes not as a source of future leaders, but as a source of heat.
Methods
Twenty-nine students, out of the goodness of their hearts, willingly volunteered for the initial part of this experiment. Other students had to be rejected for the fear of having a result that was too powerful to handle. Each student was monitored over a 24-hour period in which they were subjected to a number of treatments that would simulate their everyday activity. These included; lying down, sitting, sleeping and yawning. Through out this period, every degree of heat emitted from their soulful bodies was recorded.
For the second part of this experiment, ten highly trained rats (on loan from MI7) were released into the University (which will remain unnamed) to infiltrate office files in search of the building’s blueprints. Their mission brief also encompassed recording the temperature at various locations around the University and taking video footage of any suspicious activity.
Results
The results from the initial stages of the experiment are graphically displayed in figure 1. For legal reasons the building blueprints cannot be displayed (not even in an appendix). The video footage was handed over by the rats and analysed carefully. All of the information that the rats uncovered was pooled together with the results from the first experiment to provide an enlightening discussion.
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Figure 1. The average temperature of each student has been plotted to reveal a dot-to-dot puzzle.
Discussion
Each individual was discovered to emit only a small degree of heat (through the body’s natural processes), however, by constricting the size of lecture theatres (as shown from the blueprints) and squeezing more innocent studious individuals into them, the pooled warming effect is astonishing. It can be observed that lecture theatres are predominantly placed on the ground floor so that the radiating heat can rise up through the building and heat the offices above.
In addition, many University departments have been seen to adopt the deceiving ploy of placing porters by the front door. They heat the entrance in a similar way that large high-street stores welcome their customers by placing large heaters above the door. Departments have even tried to enhance the heat that these porters emit by subjecting them to physical excursion.
Some Professors, in a bid to further boost the temperature of their work place, have been noted to encourage students into their offices under the disguise of “tutorials”. By supplying the students with a number of mental tasks, Professors can significantly increase the amount of heat that escapes the students’ bodies, thus warming the office air.
In this investigation, BOGUS found one outstanding example in which a department had convinced authorities to place the toilets on the lowest possible level. This insured that any escaping heat from the electric hand dryers would ascend through the building.
Whether these methods are breaching student rights is a matter for further investigation, but BOGUS are now in the process of approaching departments that are exploiting their students in this way and asking them to reconsider their heating methods.
Acknowledgements
BOGUS wishes to thank MI7 for the loan of 10 highly trained rats. However, we regretfully inform you that only 9.7 rats were handed back, because rat number 003 (Roland) caught his tail in a rat-trap. We also inform you that rat number 007 (James) has been detained after his frolicking behaviour with the hamsters in the department; we understand he was trying to get ‘three in a wheel’.
Thanks also go to:
Dr. Ho Tair. Department of Warm Current Affairs, University of Reykjavik.
Prof. Pete Za. School of Economic Heating, University of Anchorage.
Written by Simon Baxter
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