Binge Idiocy

We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” like to keep abreast of the inanities of academic life. Ward Churchill; the notorious Group of 88; the pea-brained Houston Baker—these are just a few delights that greet the ivory tower watchdog.

Given our veritable advanced degree in tenured radical sightings, we’re seldom amazed by professorial obtuseness. We’re well aware, for instance, that the rigors of academia force the non-tenured to hope never to have an unpublished, un-refereed thought. Accordingly, more than a few examples of academic idiocy make their way to the neighborhood bookstore. (If your neighborhood bookstore carries Radical Third-World Quarterly.)

Every once in a great while, however, a study so jaw-droppingly dumb rears its head that even we chuckle with morbid delight. And such was surely the case when we spied a story from the UPI news service detailing some of the results of research undertaken at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

The report is so delicious that we think it merits reprinting in full:

COLUMBIA, Mo., June 27 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers recommend early Friday classes -- before 10 a.m. -- to help reduce excessive drinking by college students on Thursday nights.

Lead author Phillip K. Wood, of the University of Missouri-Columbia, surveyed 3,341 volunteer undergraduates at a large Midwestern public university and found significant relationships between the presence and timing of Friday classes and Thursday drinking.

"About half of the students with late or no Friday classes consumed at least one drink on Thursday, but only one-third of students did so if they had Friday classes which met at 10 a.m. or earlier," Wood said in a statement.

Approximately two-thirds of students who consumed some alcohol Thursday consumed a "binge amount" if they had late or no Friday classes, according to the study published in the July issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Wood said he was surprised that many faculty don't teach on Fridays, and instead use the day for consultation or other research; however, he suggests early undergraduates might be best served if mandatory core classes were only available early on Friday.

Boy, the folks at the University of Missouri-Columbia really have their thinking caps on, don’t they? Students who don’t have Friday classes tend to drink more on Thursday nights than those who do. Who would have seen that coming?

Couldn’t anyone inform Herr Doktor Wood that early-morning classes on Friday might not prove to be such a panacea? You see, lots of students with early classes—mirabile dictu—will simply skip class.

Now, maybe they wouldn’t engage in such deleterious pursuits at academic powerhouses such as the University of Missouri-Columbia. From what little we can tell, to get into that stellar school, one requires…a pen. (No small feat, that.) Hence it never entered Professor Wood’s mind that Women’s Studies 101 at 8:45am may not fix things after all.