Hail to Thee, Okoboji U!: A Humor Anthology on Higher Education

Front Cover
Mark C. Ebersole
Fordham University Press, 1992 - Education - 322 pages
HAIL TO THEE, OKOBOJI U! is a collection of articles, stories, poems, and drawings that pokes fun at the revered institution of higher education. Nothing is sacrosanct; everything is fair game: admissions procedures, intercollegiate sports, student affairs, professors, the curriculum - English, music, art, history, philosophy, science - college and university presidents, commencements, alumni affairs, and fund raising. The anthology includes some of America's most distinguished writers and artists: Woody Allen, Russell Baker, Roy Blount, Jr., Robert Benchley, Jules Feiffer, Fran Lebowitz, Henry Martin, Don Marquis, Mary McCarthy, Ogden Nash, Frank Sullivan, James Thurber, Garry Trudeau, Mark Twain, Peter DeVries, and E. B. White. Contributors also include Richard Armour, Jeremy Bernstein, Max Eastman, John Kenneth Galbraith, Randall Jarrell, Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel F. Pickering, Jr., John Crowe Ransom, Leo Rosten, Delmore Schwartz, Calvin Trillin, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Though higher education is universally renowned for fostering prodigious learning and wondrous knowledge, HAIL TO THEE, OKOBOJI U! reminds us that this eminent intellectual institution is caught in the meshes of the nonsensical and the ludicrous - the querulousness of faculty meetings, the posturing of college presidents, the banality of commencement speeches, the inanity of arcane scholarship, etc., etc., - and that, therefore, the institution's important personages best not take themselves too seriously. HAIL TO THEE, OKOBOJI U! takes a light-hearted look at the groves of academe and will appeal to administrators and faculty members, graduates and students, and all of us who wonder what really goes on in the ivorytowers.

From inside the book

Contents

A Reflection
7
The Rich ScholarTeresa Bloomingdale
14
Gather Round CollegiansRoy Blount Jr
21
Copyright

39 other sections not shown

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About the author (1992)

Mark C. Ebersole taught at Bucknell University, rising through the academic ranks to be Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Provost. Subsequently, he served as Program Adviser for the Ford Foundation, Dean of the Graduate School of Temple University, and President (now President Emeritus) of Elizabethtown College. As is evident, his entire career has been a deliberate preparation for compiling this anthology.

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