Thomas Till     The Tao of Idiocy When listing the basic prerequisites for admission to this university, one would, in theory, rank functional literacy among the most essential, along with sanity, a pulse, and a desire to live the life of an honor-bound ascetic. Yet a trip to the admissions office may soon prove necessary, to tell the boys and girls in the backroom that not a few willful, reptilian illiterates slip through their fingers each year. The proof? Well, take a stroll sometime through Newcomb's grandly re-opened dining facility, the south side, where the all-new "Brown College Only" room resumed operation this year. I greatly enjoy the exclusivity of the Brown dining experience, even though anyone can eat there, since it allows for a modicum of peace; the room itself remains defiantly secluded in an area of the university too often dominated by the noise of the teeming masses. It had attained popularity for one other reason: it houses a second "dishbelt," a quasi-conveyor-belt type thing that whisks your soiled dishes off to the cleaners upon completion of your meal. Its south-side location somewhat relieves the glut inspired last year by having only one belt operational, and, like its cousin, the southern belt requires little effort on the part of the user, hence the attractiveness for students. One problem, though: the dining authorities do not always open it up for use during the lunch and dinner hours. The Admissions Committee's foibles then painfully assert themselves. Whenever they choose not to open the southern belt for business, the dining employees seek to communicate to students this fact via a sign placed on the belt's counter. It reads, "Closed: Please Use Other Dishbelt: We Apologize for Any Inconvenience." Though not exactly Hemingway, the sign does get its message across in fairly blunt, simple terms -- or so its authors like to believe. However, several students routinely take this sign as a joke, apparently thinking, "They can't be serious. Don't they know how long a walk it is to the other side?" Ah, yes, the Long March, that agonizing, fifty-yard (give or take) trek to the end of the earth, or so it seems to the laziest among us, who blithely ignore all instructions and decide (godammit!) that their tray belongs wherever the hell they want to put it. The rot then spreads with impetuous speed, and before long, the counter resembles Berlin, May 1945: trays piled on top of one another, many not even on the belt itself; plates and silverware strewn about -- in short, an ode to responsible living. The words themselves do not come across as particularly difficult to understand. I myself remember learning "closed," "please," "other," and of course, "apologize" at a fairly young age. "Inconvenience" came along a bit later, but come along it did. So what gives? What advantages did my education enjoy over that of the hustlers who engage in this particularly nauseous dereliction of duty? Perhaps their critical abilities developed geometrically, necessitating skipping pre-school, where most toddlers receive their first exposure to these words. Or perhaps they have led an existence devoid of want in any form, absent of the need for bothersome things like apologies. Or maybe they just don't give a flying fuck. In all seriousness, I submit that most of the perpetrators could pass a basic literacy exam with minimum effort. Therefore, something else must motivate them, and it probably goes like this: "It's their job to clean it up." Cute. Practitioners of condescension, of which the matter in question represents a physical manifestation, abide by a special set of ethics: their own. The world must bend to their needs and desires; uppity dining employees with mouths to feed at home resemble a small hindrance, and one whose instructions provide ample fodder for scorn at that. They lead a life devoted to study, with visions of LSATs and MCATs and GPAs dancing in their heads. No time exists, then, to deal with menial tasks such as walking slightly, ever so slightly out of the way to deposit used culinary utensils on the correct dishbelt. Some of them doubtless complain about the workload imposed by their professors without a hint of irony. Those who toil in the dining hall have excelled, so far, at the art of the stiff upper lip, and they remain thoroughly good sports. In the face of contemptuous treatment, they soldier on, still asking forgiveness for extracting an additional minute out of someone's day. Just the mere thought of it revolts, apologizing to a hopeless narcissist. But, of course, the university's avatars of sloth pay no mind -- they've got bigger fish to fry.

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