A Modest Proposal

Do you know what the most deadly animal in the United States is? The white-tailed deer. Boy, is that a let down.

Come on, man, get your game on.

Deer cause almost two hundred human deaths each year. That's more than naked mole rats, Cher, and yodeling combined. As my fellow Cornellians know (from the barrage of emails from Police Chief Kathy Zoner), campus safety is a big issue right now. Sexual harassment, petty theft . . . everyone wants us not to swim in the gorges, but Ms. Zoner fails to notice the deadly threat starting students (and worse, faculty) in the face. Deer-on-car assault.

Picture this: your math professor, driving up Jessup road. He was up late all last night preparing your final exam, which sits in the back seat of his car. Wham! He slams a deer and ends up in the hospital, cancelling your final and ending your last chance of the semester to show how much you learned. Every deer on campus is an accident waiting to happen. Even one deer is one deer too many.

Fortunately, there are more cost effective ways to handle this problem than building a giant fence around campus and/or throwing all the deer into Bebe Lake. That's where my proposed elective comes in: HE 4580, Introduction to Wildlife Management. This four credit course, offered through the College of Human Ecology (otherwise known as the College of Miscellaneous Studies), will be open to all majors and will integrate anatomy, food science, physical education, and Native American history in an effort to holistically and academically end Ithaca's deer problem once and for all.

HE 4580 is not a traditional course, limited by the four walls of the classroom. Instead, students will journey across campus armed with shotguns, quickly and efficiently eliminating every deer they encounter. Whether it be on the crowded green of the Arts Quad, or the crowded green of the Ag Quad, or the deserted, slightly pathetic Biotech Quad, the students in HE 4580 will fire at the first glimpse of brown (Note: This may require slight change in the campus dress code).

This is the back of the football stadium. No one ever goes here, right?

The addition of HE 4580 to Cornell's course offerings will have many benefits for students enrolled. According to research done by the NRA (citation needed), the addition of more guns to campus will lead to drastic cuts in violent crime (murder, assault, peeing on the A.D. White statue). Much like meditation teaches students the traditional Buddhist way of dealing with stress, HE 4580 will teach students the traditional American meditative practice: pumping a living being full of lead. Field dressing their kills will teach aspiring doctors the proper way to prepare a corpse for the dinner table (Dr. Lecter could give a guest lecture!) and cooking the meat over an open fire will teach history majors why they don't really wish they could travel back to whatever time period before decent cookware they're currently studying. Rarely does a proposed class have such interdisciplinary appeal.

Through HE 4580, students would prepare themselves for the eventual collapse of society as we know it. In keeping with Cornell's reputation as the most apocalypse-proof Ivy League (take that, Princeton!), HE 4580 will prepare our students for the high paying jobs of the future, when one deer will be worth a bag of potatoes, a single dose of antibiotics, or two nights of sex. Whether the end comes via zombies, natural disaster, or plague, hunter-gatherers will always find themselves in high demand. Students in HE 4580 would have the time (or end of) their lives!

The entire campus would benefit from the implementation of HE 4580. Ever since The Cornell Review (our preeminent conservative newspaper) ran a headline exposing the lack of white male professors in our Feminist Studies and Africana Studies programs, I have been working tirelessly to imagine a position that would attract this coveted demographic. The teaching staff of HE 4580 will greatly improve the diversity of Cornell's faculty.

Dr. Jackson and his TA demonstrate the proper way to humiliate a carcass

By distributing the fresh venison in our dining halls, we will save the university the burden of having to purchase the usual rat and horse meat from wholesalers. Our suppliers may protest, but one look at ( the good being done by) our shotguns, and I'm sure they'll change their mind. We will also engage the greater Ithaca community by partnering with local shotgun manufacturers like the Ithaca Gun Company (shipped its jobs overseas to Ohio in 2007!)

If this course is successful, which I have no doubt it will be, I suggest that the university make it a required course. I have seen deer eating the shrubs outside the A.D. White house in between classes--wouldn't it be better if a horde of armed students was there at the ready to protect the integrity of our campus gardens? My fellow students, I urge you to share this with one another. Only you can prevent deer from jumping into our cars. Only you, with a gun.