By Keith Blincoe, Staff Writer
WARNING: Satire article. Reader discretion is advised.
Everyone knows the Thunderbird Honor Council doesn’t do anything, and now that ASU has assumed its academic-discipline function, THC does even less. Hence the rampant gossip about how THC will spend the lavish budget it has received from ASU. Adding fuel has been ASU’s expropriation of other student organizations’ funds. Even the amount of money in question is not known for sure—estimates I just made up range from $10,000 to $35 million to half of Michael Crow’s salary, though $25,000 is the most commonly cited figure.
All the speculation can now end. According to Honor Council spokesman Ashu Malik, THC has decided to build an honor hall on Thunderbird’s campus. I sat down with Ashu to discuss the project.
Das Tor: Why has THC decided to build an honor hall?
Ashu Malik: We think an honor hall is the best use of the funds. We on the Honor Council have always felt the campus conspicuously lacked a hall dedicated specifically to honor. Well, we’re putting a stop to that. It’s going to be called the Thunderbird Honor Council Honor Memorial Hall in Honor of Honor.
DT: Can you tell us a little about what the hall will look like?
AM: Of course. It will be located in that empty field east of campus. It will rise to a height of 150 meters—that’s 500 feet–and be shaped like a pyramid. The shape symbolizes the importance of a bottom-up approach to everything. Top-down is so last century. Of course, since the idea for doing things bottom-up came from the top in this case, the pyramid has to be upside-down. Oh, and it’s going to be made of obsidian, to symbolize…uh, next question?
DT: That seems unique. But will you really have enough money for that?
AM: The important thing is that we’re using the money wisely, not whether we have enough. But we researched exhaustively and could not find a single better thing to spend our funds on than this giant black upside-down pyramid. Oh, and it’s going to have the word ‘honor’ carved on the top in every language on the planet.
DT: Ashu, that’s rather ambitious, don’t you think? There are 6500 languages, and some of them are sign languages—
AM: Yes! This is not a light undertaking. But honor has always been a core part of the Thunderbird brand. You know, the honor code and all that. If we want to keep a distinctive place in the world, we have to do something different. You have to admit that no other business school in North America has a humongous black inverted pyramid on their campus. Oh, and we were originally going to do the carving in gold, but—
DT: Are you serious? How is that possible?
AM: I know! Crazy, right? Only gold! But now we’re going to do it in every element, all 118 of them. Even the unstable ones. Especially the unstable ones! Every language and every element, in every combination. 767,000 carvings on the flat top of our beautiful black obsidian pyramid.
DT: What do you hope to accomplish with this project?
AM: We want to raise awareness. Of honor. And halls. Boom! Two birds, one stone.
DT: What will be inside the building? Will there be offices, classrooms, what?
AM: Oh, yes, sure, we’ll have plenty of that. We’ll also have a dueling grounds for people to avenge their own honor.
DT: You mean old-school dueling? With pistols?
AM: No, it’ll be strictly non-lethal. The point is that if someone besmirches your honor in public and you want to desmirch it, we’ll provide the facility. Oh, and we’ll probably have an event center to hold networking events, panel discussions, and workshops related to corporate responsibility, business ethics, and academic integrity. But that stuff doesn’t cost anything close to $25,000, so that’ll be a relatively small part of it.
DT: Well, best of luck with that.
AM: Luck does not figure into it.