The Cavalier Daily
Serving the University Community Since 1890

Error 404: Live human not found!

In the past year, the University has launched over a dozen MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses. The program helps make a education available to people from around the world for free, and represents the hope of a future full of transparency and global communication through the web. With all of the success this program has had and will have in the future, I think the University should seriously expand its commitment to integrating the Virginia experience with cyberspace. This could be accomplished by creating more MOOCs or involving the web more in existing courses on grounds, but why stop there? So many parts of the University could be made cheaper and more efficient if they were replaced with an automated or online counterpart.

For example, our football team racks up millions of dollars of expenses every year. The stadium has to be maintained, the players have to have equipment, scholarships have to be awarded to players, etc. And while the team does generate millions of dollars of revenue as well, occasionally enough to make a profit, wouldn’t it increase our profit margin if we got rid of the team completely, and instead just one scholarship could be awarded to some computer science major to play Madden? Every time he played a game it could be broadcast on TV and shown on a massive screen to just as many people as currently attend games. And if no suitable gamer could be found amongst the Computer Science majors, I’d be more than happy to play myself. I wouldn’t win any games, but then again, would that be much of a change from what we have now?

The University also has an outdated campus police, who drive around in marked cars and lack the stealth necessary to really catch anyone doing something wrong. Wouldn’t a fleet of automated drones be much more effective at catching wrongdoers in the act? They are virtually undetectable, can cover huge areas by themselves, and require almost no maintenance. The potential utility of drones is boundless. For example, the Honor Committee could install programming that would not only recognize violations of the Community of Trust, but immediately impose the single-sanction and destroy the guilty criminal with a varied array of long-distance weaponry. And because drones lack the capacity for empathy, the Honor System would be freed from the whims of student juries uninterested in turning guilty students into bloody piles of rubble and guts.

And why stop there? The school administration has struggled for the last few years with friction between the Board of Visitors and the President. A potential fix could also be provided by electronics and the internet here. The recent success of the online experiment Twitch Plays Pokemon provides provides an intriguing alternative. In the Pokemon version, anyone on the internet could contribute moves to a single game of Pokemon Red. The game would alternate between listening to every command of every user and having massive votes determine the next move when the situation required a more delicate touch. By abolishing the Board of Visitors and the President’s office, the University could be run via a similar crowdsourcing method, with important University decisions on all sorts of questions being put to a vote online. Should we cancel classes for snow? Should we fire that teacher you hated from Organic Chemistry? Should we replace Aramark with a caterer that serves you more than two bites of food on each plate? You get to decide! If the system can solve one of the best Nintendo games of all time, why couldn’t it tackle the unprecedented challenges facing higher education?

I think its clear that the potential benefits of fully integrating our University with the digital world is enormous. And who knows what future opportunities technology could bring. I know we all talk like TJ just left the room, but give genetic engineering robotics a few years to catch up, and Cyborg Jefferson could walk right back in.

Tom Hanks spends his free time as a University student who likes video games.

April Fools!

This article is part of our annual April Fools’ Day issue. Pick up a print copy on stands today!

Or click here to read more online!

Comments

Latest Podcast

The University’s Associate Vice Provost for Enrollment and Undergraduate Admission, Greg Roberts, provides listeners with an insight into how the University conducts admissions and the legal subtleties regarding the possible end to the consideration of legacy status.



https://open.spotify.com/episode/02ZWcF1RlqBj7CXLfA49xt