Oracle Online

“Off the record,” he said, “I couldn’t take any more verbal abuse from [Spanish professor] Barb[ara] [Younoszai]. She’s ridiculed me using accurate stastics, and she even sat outside my office and glared at me every time I left for lunch or a bathroom break.”

“Well, she’s getting what she wants,” he said, sighing. “That’s off the record, too.”

Davenport informed Younoszai, an outspoken critic of the department’s situation, of his decision as she was directing her morning class in a chant of “Do more with less.”

“Oh, glorious day,” Younoszai said. “I’ve been riding Davenport for years and finally, finally he listened!”

She thanked the Oracle for its tireless work in “exposing the Spanish department woes,” and said she would be happy to help any other reporters covering the department with editing their articles.

After a pause, she said, “Wait. Did you say the positions are nonątenure track?”

Spanish students were delighted with the decision.

“Soy muy feliz!” exclaimed student Celina Martina, who recently helped organize a petition asking for reduced Spanish class sizes. “Or at least, I think I said ‘I’m very happy.’ I guess I wouldn’t know. My classes are so huge that I haven’t learned anything this semester.”

Some, however, say the announcement won’t change a thing.

“Does the Spanish department really believe they’ll find two professors who will come here?” asked an incensed Matt Olson, chair of the psychology department. “The pay is terrible and the positions aren’t even tenure-track.

“The only gratifying thing new hires will find is a ‘great teaching environment’ and ‘engaged students,’” he added, puncturing the air with his fingers making bunny-ear quotation marks. “And who cares about those things anymore?”

Olson added that his opinion is heavily influenced by Davenport’s decision to turn yet another psychology research lab into a faculty office.

The hirings mark the first time in the history of the university that a department has received exactly what it wanted.