A meeting with the bath department

Today I had a meeting with the chairperson and a faculty member on my IHE campus from a nameless department. Let's call the department "bath."

The upshot of the meeting was that the faculty in bath want to add an additional course in bath to the program I oversee. I allowed as how I didn't so much like the idea. There's a crisis in bath skills, they said.

I suggested that maybe we try teaching people to bathe better in the current program. They said that they come in with such remedial bathing skills, that they have to work too hard to cover all the bath basics. And then our students go out and teach kids and they don't know how to bathe either.

I countered that our students don't want more classes in bathing. And that if they add more, our students will go major in something else, like rope climbing. Or cooking. They said it wouldn't bother them if that happened because the students we had left would be the best bathers around and that would be ok.

The major I oversee is the biggest one at our IHE. I said that bathing wasn't all there was to the issue. That we'd also need to talk to the dancers and the graffiti artists and the bloggers and the student government people not to mention the folks from the bath department's own college who talk too much about the weather.

I e-mailed the provost because the bath folks said he was on their side. He was non-committal, so I don't know where he comes down on the issue. I do know that our students could go bathe elsewhere, like at the local community colleges. My dean even suggested that we try teaching bathing ourselves. I'm not sure the bath experts would go for that.

Somebody pass me a loofah.