By Lynn Levin

9:15 a.m.

The revolt against the humanities faculty begins as student rebels halt professors in the middle of class and usher them to the quad. Some of the professors assume that they are being led to an assembly honoring them for their service.

Rebel leader Gillian Jones passes around a box and orders the professors to hand over their pens and paper.

“From now on, no writing on dead trees,” orders Gillian.

“And no reading from them either,” chimes in cell-phone poet Billy “Bullz” Rohrer.

“How are we to jot down a thought?” Dr. Leon Babbage wonders aloud.

“Or write in our planners?” asks Dr. Nia Stone.

9:40 a.m.

The captive faculty mingle nervously as rebels march another group of professors into the quad.

“The more the merrier,” says Dr. Kelly Donaldson.

“I love a good mass roundup,” says Dr. Gloria Jiménez.

“Detain them in the library,” commands Gillian.

“Not the library,” counters co-leader Franklin Li. “They love the library.”

“Yeah, no,” replies Bullz. “Lock ’em in the computer center. They hate computers.”

“No, yeah,” says Karim Mohammed.

“Yeah, no,” says Yael Cohen.

Gillian, Franklin, Bullz, Karim, and Yael herd the teachers into the computer center.

Stone says that she needs to use the ladies’ room.

Gillian hastily tapes a “Gender Neutral Bathroom” sign on the nearest men’s room. Glowering, Stone stomps into the facilities and strides past the urinals, some of them in use. Grateful to find a stall with a door, Stone attends to business. Why the term “gender”? What’s wrong with the word “sex”? Does sex sound too sexy to them? When she was in college, she was all about sex. Had a lot of it, was a big fan. Yes, those were the days.

11:00 a.m.

The rebels torture the professors by forcing them to learn a new online teaching platform. Once the professors have mastered some of the basics, the young radicals send through an update that completely changes the system.

“We still have the power of grades,” whispers Jiménez to Dr. Louis Greenbaum.

“Whom do you think you’re kidding?” says Greenbaum. “They’ll grind us down with their wheedling emails like they always do until we put through a grade change.”

“I’m starving,” moans Babbage.

“Hang in there, Leon. Maybe they’ll bring in some non-allergenic, non-GMO, nut-free, gluten-free, organic, soy food,” encourages Dr. Rita Chang. Images from the movie Soylent Green float into the consciousness of several of the faculty.

12:30 p.m.

Gillian arraigns the detainees. “We hereby charge you with criminal use of the sexist pronouns ‘he, him, his’ and ‘she, her, hers’ and your anti-progressive refusal to accept ‘they, them, their’ as universal gender-free singulars. We condemn your refusal to use the terms ‘Latinx’ and ‘alumnx,’ and we condemn, in advance, your refusal to use any x-suffix inclusive terms yet to be invented.”

She takes a breath, “We call for an end to the time-wasting teaching of long works, such as novels and epic poems.”

“From now on, it’s flash fiction, haiku, and tweets,” interjects Bullz.

“Furthermore, any so-called textbooks are to be provided free online.”

“There go the royalties,” sighs Babbage.

“You get royalties?” asks Donaldson, shooting Babbage a jealous glance.

“Our PDF Liberation Organization will upload all books to free open-access websites,” says Franklin.

“That’s theft of intellectual property!”

“Piracy!”

“Copyright violation!”

The professors shout out their protests, knowing that they are helpless before the tech-savvy rebels.

“And no more essay writing. Multiple choice tests and PowerPoint decks only,” adds social media chief Elsie “L-Z” Lockhart, scrolling through their cell phone.

“How are you going to learn anything?” challenges Greenbaum.

“EduSnack Packs,” Karim replies. “All prepackaged and free online. Gives students the highlights. Easy as popping Skittles.”

“At least I won’t get a backache from toting twelve pounds of books in my knapsack,” says Chang. “My arthritis is killing me.”

“And my bursitis. Don’t get me started about my bursitis,” adds Dr. Pete Milano.

“Does anyone know a good cataract surgeon?” inquires Stone. “Getting to be that time for me.”

The young rebels shake their heads in pity. Karim fiddles with their nose ring. Yael adjusts their “Cancel Gender!” button.

“We furthermore accuse you,” says Gillian, “of white privilege, Black privilege, Asian privilege, Latinx privilege, and Boomer privilege. We accuse you of homophobia, heterophobia, transphobia, and all the other phobias now known or yet to be developed. You stand accused of Islamophobia and antisemitism, the teaching of dead white male writers and live white male writers. We call for an end to syllabx and lecturx.” The manifesto covers a dozen more biases and insensitivities.

“No lecturx?” says a perplexed Babbage. “How will I share my knowledge?”

“You give lecturx?” says Chang. “Leon, no wonder you’re exhausted. You should just show videos in class like me.”

2:00 p.m.

The rebels mercifully allow the professors to order their own lunches by old-fashioned phone calls. After lunch, the captives must face the horror of the gender-neutral necessary.

Yael, Karim, and Bullz break the professors into groups for intense self-criticism sessions. The professors apologize for their sexist and non-progressive use of outdated forms of grammar, obsolete pedagogy, flagrant use of paper, failure to offer trigger warnings before discussing disturbing material, unconscionable tolerance of opposing opinions, rejection of cancel culture, and every other social offense and insensitivity, real, imagined, or future.

“We trust that you will take this re-education session with the utmost seriousness,” declares Gillian.

“Remember,” warns social media chief L-Z, brandishing their cell phone, “we have command of Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and all the other platforms, plus we’re on every professor-rating website.”

A shudder runs through the captives. How often had they been pilloried on the professor-rating sites, always surprised by what mild remarks ignited fierce offense?

“We can hack anything,” says L-Z.

Gillian makes a hand motion as if to tell the powerful social media chief to tamp it down.

“Remember when we used to say don’t trust anyone over thirty?” Stone whispers to Babbage.

“Now, it’s people under thirty,” he laments. “It’s either that or depend on them.”

“Remember when we protested the war in Vietnam? Remember Black lib, gay lib, women’s lib, and farmworkers rights?” says Jiménez.

“Now I feel so nostalgic,” says Chang with a faraway smile. “My husband and I met at a sit-in.”

“Maybe we brought this on ourselves,” muses Milano.

“You think?” says Stone.

4:50 p.m.

The student rebels order the teachers to pose for a group mugshot. Milano extends his middle finger and covers it with the fist of his other hand. He nudges his colleagues to do the same. Soon all the professors, wearing sly smiles, display the secret gesture.

L-Z snaps photos and posts them on social media.

A torrent of responses pours in about the hand signal.

“Are you making some kind of elitist, Boomer privilege, retro hippie, white power, racist hand signal?” accuses Gillian.

“Not at all,” ’splains Milano. “This is a sign of solidarity among the people of the remote Brazilian Amazon. Quite well known in progressive academia. Trending, really.”

“We should try that,” says L-Z. “We need to be more woke.”

All the rebels form the gesture and salute each other with it, their faces glowing with new conviction.

5:00 p.m.

“I have to get to my job,” says Yael.

“I have a midterm tomorrow,” says Karim.

“My parents are expecting me for dinner,” Bullz pipes up.

“I could use a martini,” says Babbage.

Gillian gathers the rebels. They all give each other the secret gesture. Gillian dismisses the professors.

“We’d like our pens and paper back,” says Chang feeling bold.

“Fine,” concedes Gillian. “Just don’t use them to write anything.”

“We hope this will not affect our grades,” says Franklin.

“No, yeah,” says Greenbaum, attempting the senseless affirmative-negative collation popular with the youth.

Franklin stares darkly at Greenbaum as if double-crossed.

“I mean, yeah, no,” Greenbaum corrects himself.

“No, yeah,” says Karim.

“Yeah, no,” says Yael.

“No, yeah,” Babbage jumps in, thinking that logically the interjections should negate each other. Then he wonders if the “no” is a serious “no” or if the “yeah” could be a “yeah” of goodwill followed by the “no” of gentle disagreement. Gentle disagreement. That would be nice, but was the world ready for it?

 

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Lynn Levin’s short fiction has appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Cleaver, The Evening Street Review, Amarillo Bay, The Broadkill Review, and other places. She is the winner of the 2021 Bucks County Short Fiction Prize. A poet, writer, translator, and teacher, Levin has published five collections of poems, most recently The Minor Virtues (Ragged Sky, 2020), named one of Spring 2020’s best books by The Philadelphia Inquirer. She teaches at Drexel University. Her website is lynnlevinpoet.com.