Apologies to Dan Brown, below is my report on the recent Honor Code.
Shortly before her untimely and suspicious demise, linguist Rosetta Orwell Stone had discovered a cryptic code in use on campus. On the underside of a boulder stating the university’s etiology in and dedication to good citizenship and Christian religion, Dr. Stone discovered a new micro-chip off the old boulder. The micro-chip preserved a secret code for phrasing documents from Student Affairs.
Applying the secret code to an honor code recently approved by the trustees, Dr. Stone learned that the honor code hid a remarkable message.
As passed by the trustees, the honor code appears to have been produced when meringue and tapioca, each travelling near the speed of light, collided over a blue dress:
“I am a member of the community of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing its members’ academic abilities and personal integrity. I accept the responsibilities of my membership in this community and acknowledge that the purpose of this community demands that I conduct myself in accordance with Puget Sound’s policies of Academic and Student Integrity. As a student at the University of Puget Sound, I hereby pledge to conduct myself responsibly and honorably in my academic activities, to be fair, civil, and honest with all members of the Puget Sound community, and to respect their safety, rights, privileges, and property.”
Not so fast, Dr. Stone cautioned. “The ocean is a desert with its life underground and the perfect disguise above, as the folk-rock group America told us long ago,” said the linguist. “So, too, the honor code is the perfect cover for an insidious oath. ‘Member of the community’ is an anagram for 'botchery if momentum me,' which of course is the official Klingon designation for all subjects of the Klingon empire.”
Dr. Stone’s suspicions were aroused by the sentiment that all members of the Puget Sound community should have their rights respected. “Puget Sound is a private university. Who has rights here?” She rearranged “safety” and “rights” into “thrifty gases” and “privileges” and “property” into “soppy girlie pervert.” The adage “Soppy girly perverts are thrifty with their gases” was, readers will recall, the first of T. E. Lawrence’s seven pillars of wisdom. Hurrying to the mausoleum of Judge John Minor Wisdom, linguist Stone found on its seventeenth pillar "Refragatio non sufficiens," the Latin for “Resistance is futile.”
“That was the breakthrough,” Dr. Stone enthused. “Klingon designations and Borg imperatives in the university’s honor code? Coincidence? I think not.”
Dr. Stone also recalled that the late Paul Newman is alleged to have said, "24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not." Rosetta thought Paul handsome.
After some Saurean brandy and Romulan baked beans, Dr. Stone was able to piece together the actual code underlying the seemingly meaningless honor code recently promulgated. Substituting for the red-letter oath supra, the honor code cryptically says:
“I am a subject of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing hive mentality. I am but a thrall and submit to Puget Sound’s regimen. As a tuition-paying robot, I forfeit all rights and dignity, I lose my individuality in my academic activities, I abandon all pleasures but to please my superiors, and I believe that resistance is feudal.”
In a related development, Dr. Stone’s interment in a Tacoma time capsule has so far been ruled accidental by TPD.
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