The Good Times

One month after graduation and our traffic is way down but I couldn’t stand leaving a reader submitted headline collection as our final post.

Thank you to everyone who made the Northern Plight awesome. We’ll leave the site up here for a while as archives for anyone that wants to check it out. Read this post or this post to get a clearer picture of how and why we’ve ended.

Woodward’s Farewell

The plight was born out of some sly chat between Bernstein and I while reading the Onion in a coffee shop in Minneapolis last summer. Giggling to each other noisily and probably annoying everyone around us, we dreamed innocently of our own “NCU Onion.” It was Bernstein who first put our prattling jokes into actual stories and me who got it all into a blog.

I still have the crumpled piece of yellow legal paper where I wrote my first six headlines, 2 of which made it on the site as “Student Can’t Hack It As A Rock Star, Releases Worship Album” and “2 NCU Students Slain In Spirit, Funerals Monday.” I remember writing them in the confused twilight somewhere over the Atlantic while coming home from a missions trip. I had no idea what that sheet of paper would become.

That was less than a year ago, but the nostalgia and the unexpected success of our blog makes it feel so much further.

Let me apologize for my silence recently. I haven’t posted in over a month and it’s largely due to my own impending graduation. In the past my mind defaulted to thinking of funny ways to say things everyone knew about NCU—but simply didn’t know they knew about NCU. But recently, idle thinking has given rise to more pressing matters like growing up and all that. It’s exciting, certainly, but I still do miss my fervor at the keys in the early hours of the morning, editing and re-editing the scathing details of some poignant article I’d just crafted.

After returning from Spring Break, I felt my satire sense waning. Many of the things that used to annoy me at North Central actually emerged as mostly harmless, and even strangely endearing in their own way. Alumni readers might know what I mean but I don’t think it’s necessary. It’s like living away from home for a few months, than coming back on a visit and finding the creaky stair, the neighbor’s noisy dog, and your mother’s scolding look at your muddy shoes on the carpet, all make you happy—though you recall very clearly they’re once making you upset.

I’m not graduated yet, nor has the abundance of plight fodder ceased to seep from NCU’s policies and characters. But I simply feel like my time with The Northern Plight has come to an end.

I can honestly say there’s nothing I posted on this site that goes against the mission statement we outlined from the beginning:

The Northern Plight exists to create healthy conversation with
the intent of generating positive change at North Central University.

That’s one reason that the plight is easily one of the top five things I’m most proud of from my four years at NCU (two of the other things being feats I accomplished naked or near naked while living in the dorms).

Thank you for reading all this crazy stuff that I wrote. Especially those of you who’ve been reading since the beginning. I hope to be a writer some day, and your support has encouraged me to continue practicing.

I leave you now in the capable hands of my cohort, Schroeder Bernstein. As always, be awesome.

Yours,

Linus Woodward

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WOODWARD’S FAVORITE PLIGHT MOMENTS:
My First Controversial Article
NCU Institution Backlash (Did you know they banned us from advertising on campus?)
My Most Underrated Article
Bernstein’s Most Underrated Article
That Frickin’ Emo Article (It still gets more hits than any other post on the site!)
I Always Liked This One (Not sure why)
1 + 2 + 3 (3 posts I wrote that actually meant something.)

“Boycott The Chapel Audit:” An Open Letter From Woodward to the Student Body

Hello my friends.

For the first time on this blog, I write not as a humorist but as a fellow student. Like many of you, I was surprised, offended, and largely disappointed yesterday when I found out about the audit that occurred after chapel. (A chapel audit being the “check-out” list that was compiled after the service to be compared to the “check-in” at the beginning, designed to catch those students who checked in without actually attending chapel).

While not actually being present—nor being checked in—I nonetheless felt disrespected and a little ashamed of my school for such a petty act. What disappointed me even more was the attitudes I picked up on of many other students who talked about the audit, not in terms of it’s childishness or futility, but in terms of whether or not they got caught, or why they should have to go to chapel in the first place.

I will not say much about the morality of “slashing and dashing” or “who should or shouldn’t have gotten caught.”—such topics belong in another article. Instead, I only want to discuss the abject failure of North Central in creating a healthy chapel culture (as evidenced most effectively by a very unhealthy chapel audit), and why students have every right to feel cheated, patronized, and belittled by these recent actions.

The primary failure of the North Central chapel program is the lack of a positive chapel environment to which students actually want to attend. While I do believe programming has a big part to play in this problem (the humorous idiosycrasies of chapel culture are well documented on this blog) I think the bulk of the issue rests with us, the students. Simply put, we view chapel as something we have to do—a chore. Such an attitude is very evident even in our language (we don’t get to go chapel we have to go to chapel). Such a sour view of something inevitably creates a negative environment fueled by criticism. The results are:

1) students who don’t want to go chapel, so they don’t, and get fined for it,
2) students who don’t want to go to chapel, so they don’t, but sign in so they wont get fined, or
3) students who don’t want to go to chapel, but do go because they feel guilty, and spend the whole time sitting there thinking about how much they don’t want to go to chapel.

I would argue that such attitudes are unhealthy and cannot improve when ignored but only spread.

But while the issue rests with the students, I believe the institution is at fault for creating this culture with us via their policies. Even their language promotes negativity towards chapel (imagine what a change it would be to measure attendance by something positive like chapel goes and not chapel skips). The more the institution reinforces the idea of the necessity of our presence at chapel, it is inevitable that the student body will connotate the chapel as a place we have to instead of get to go to.

The time, energy, and resources wasted in order to conduct yesterday’s hopelessly arbitrary chapel audit is prime evidence for North Central’s failure to provide students with the necessary positive reinforcement to attend chapel.

Any psychology professor worth his books will tell you that negative reinforcement (even towards positive behavior) may be effective in the short term, but over the long term can create serious health problems in an individual. Likewise, any sociologist or historian could list off the failures of governments and institutions throughout history who repeatedly utilized “obey us or else” tactics.

Were it up to me, chapel would be 3 times per week and optional. Such a policy would guarantee a quality, celebratory program that was attended only by the people that really wanted to be there. But it is not up to me. And while I’ve had these thoughts for a long time, I’ve never had a proper platform to voice them, nor known an appropriate action to take to bring change. However, thanks to the Northern Plight, I know have both.

Should I ever be in another chapel service again that conducts an audit, I will not participate. This is not because I wish to “fight the system” or start some adolescent revolution. I simply refuse to continue to participate in a chapel policy system that inevitably creates cynicism and negativity on our campus.

It occurs to me now that if enough of you joined me in boycotting the chapel audit, we might taint their numbers enough to make their records unusable, but sabotage isn’t really my ultimate aim. I wont participate, even if I’m the only person who walks out those doors without giving my name for the second time. They can fine me if they wish, but that will only provide me with the opportunity to meet with someone in the institution to lodge a complaint and voice my opinion. I’m sorry, but these attitudes—and tactics that promote them—do not belong on our college campus.

 Thank you for your time, and as always, be awesome.

Woodward

Member of NCU Assassin Club Actually Assassinated

MILLER HALL, MINNEAPOLIS – “This entire incident represents a gross misunderstanding,” explained NCU Freshmen Phillip Wadsworth’s Attorney to reporters on Saturday. “If anything, the founders of this club are the guilty ones for not making the ‘non-lethal’ clause of their charter more clear.”

Onlookers in Miller Hall were stunned last Friday when Children’s Ministry Major Chad Kerigg howled and stumbled violently to the hallway tiles in front of his 3rd period Old Testament class. Bystanders rushed to the prostrate boy to discover him dead on impact with an aboriginal dart jutting out from his neck. Witnesses then reported hearing a victorious adolescent voice from the ceiling tiles above, yelling “I win” and catching a glimpse of a camouflaged face staring down upon the scene.

The triumphant assailant was later identified as Freshmen Phillip Wadsworth of Madison, WI, a quiet boy from 5 West Carlson who is known by his floor mates for his impressive collection of Japanese Katana swords, strong opinions on the art of Bushido, and a religious devotion to reading the ‘Hagakure’ daily. Police have yet to release a report on the expertly executed kill, but many have speculated both the victim’s and the suspect’s membership in the “NCU Assissination Club” (an ongoing, organized game of Nerf war continuing throughout the semester) as a possible cause.

Despite the allegations of excessive force, Wadsworth’s lawyers remain defensive. “My client is a victim of the continuing prejudice on this campus against people who have difficulty differentiating between fiction and reality. Confusing playful foam dart battles for lethal force is a mistake any one of us could make. Yet when my client actually takes this assumption to the next logical next step and actually conducts an ambush (a damn good one too from what I can see) everyone suddenly wants to point the finger.”

-Woodward

News Snippets

PREACHER UTILIZES MOVIE CLIP EVERYONE HAS ALREADY SEEN TO ILLUSTRATE POINT EVERYONE HAS ALREADY HEARD
FIRST EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF SOMEWHERE: After waiting for what seemed like ages for the sound man to get his act together, members of “New Hope Life Christ Center of God in the Valley” in St. Louis Park were treated to a pixelated, awkwardly framed scene from 1999’s “The Matrix.” You know, the part where Neo needs to choose between the red and blue pill, remember that part? Yeah. Of course you do. The scene was used as ‘creative appeal’ for ‘those artsy types’ to illustrate how we are faced with a decision between two worlds when we follow Christ, or something.

MINNEAPOLIS RANKED #1 FOR CITIES WHERE SMALL-TOWN, MIDWESTERN 20-SOMETHINGS GO TO GET HIP, LIBERAL
THE ELLIOTTS, MINNEAPOLIS – A recent study conducted by two super seniors at North Central University indicates that Minneapolis is the #1 city for the children of stoic, conservative, scandinavian-descended parents, to discover their own progressive leanings. Josiah Moore from Bloomer, WI pioneered the study when he sipped his Chianti, straightened his “Republicans For Obama” pin and remarked that his mom would probably kill him if she saw him right now. Josiah’s roommate, Caleb Reumann of Presho, South Dakota agreed and wondered aloud what his dad would think of that essay he’d written last semester about the book of Jonah being a parable and not actually happening. Both students agreed they’d never have arrived at such ideas at home and owed it all to their visits to Uptown, late night conversations in dim coffeeshops, and the influx of political bumper stickers rampant throughout the city.

SOPHOMORE OVER ANALYZES RESPONSE ON CRUSH’S FACEBOOK WALL
FLIRT DE ELECTRONIC, MN – Sophomore Tim Nieman has had a crush on freshmen Cassie Larson ever since he read her “note” about worshipping God with a pure heart last October. Last Thursday, the relationship escalated when Cassie left a message on Tim’s facebook wall, “thanks for the text message today!” After 18 minutes of agonizing over her initial message, sophomore Tim Nieman finally settled on, “your super welcome! sending texts are the best because they let you communicate without talking” as his response. “It’s enthusiastic yet non challant, but still informative” Nieman told reporters. He’s utilized facebook social dynamics to glean such vital information as Cassie’s cell number, her favorite Disney movies, and the degree to which she despises Foundations of Leadership. Nieman went on further to explain, “I wanted to let her know that I was happy that she was happy that I sent her a text. But I didn’t want to appear over eager or desperate. I left a few letters uncapitalized that should’ve been capitalized as if I wrote it really quick without thinking. My favorite part is the implied message underneath it all: that she should send me a text too.”

 - WOODWARD