Yale Takes a New Direction in Sustainability

Sustainability OverView, for Integration & Economic Transformation of Subjects

Yale unveils a new initiative inline with the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDG). The new, overarching department is known as the Sustainability OverView, for Integration & Economic Transformation of Subjects (SOVIETS). The Transformative move by the university is a transdisciplinary acknowledgment of the importance of academic transcultural transition from unsustainable to sustainable goals.

Dr Sam Barazi (ve, ver), a transexual former head of the David Geffen School of Drama’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Working Group, now heads the SOVIETS department.

“Our new department will be in a position to transect and transform the current schools here at Yale in a transparent yet transpersonal transposition of our current transgressions against the planet and toward the transcendent Sustainability Development Goals we all aspire to. We believe the transition will be transient yet transformative,” ve said in a public statement on Monday.

The SOVIETS aim to have management committees for each school, assessing and administrating the schools trajectory in regard to SDGs. Although the committee members will not have any specialist knowledge in the schools they are overseeing, they will have a high degree of social awareness of equity and justice - able to identify racial and gender injustices, and whiteness, in any discipline the schools teach. Already there are promising signs that the Central Committee on Policy have strategies to cut the universities carbon footprint in half over the next 12 months.

“It’s simple really,” said Professor Budallaqe from the English Department. “We want to halve our carbon footprint - so we just cut off one foot! We can learn to hop on one leg if it’s going to save the planet.” When pressed on which foot should be severed, he said it would be the foot that stomps on people of color, the foot that leads ultimately to a changing climate, whiteout and rising seawaters. Professor Budallaqe declined to elaborate on his podiatric metaphor, rather suggesting we search our sole for the answers.

The strategy of cutting off an offending appendage (known by the psychology department as ‘body integrity identity disorder’) will involve all campus facilities phasing out the use of any external electricity and fully embracing the few solar cells around campus and the newly installed ‘generator pushbikes’ (whereby each faculty member must spend at leat 30 minutes a day on the re-purposed exercise bikes, to re-charge batteries for lighting and power before each lecture).

Additionally, combustion motors of any kind will be banned from the campus and any staff or students found operating a vehicle with a combustion engine will be severely disciplined. Special duty committee members, also known as chekists, will keep a careful eye on students both on and off campus, for the students wellbeing and compliance.

It is anticipated this will be challenging for the Laboratory of Internal Combustion Engines, but the committee is confident that the lab can re-invent itself to focus on more socially responsible topics; like exposing the combustion engine as a symbol of white supremacy or re-interpreting Chairman Mao’s adage ‘The weeds of socialism are better than the crops of capitalism’ in terms of the power dynamics between prestige sports cars of the bourgeoisie to the common 4-cylinder of the proletariat.

“Flatulence is also a big problem among students, and the committee chekists will be monitoring this closely. Breathing too much can also increase our CO2 output and this isn’t good for our SDGs and we want to make sure that there is not too much of that going on. We may have to stop any vigorous activity and anything that’s too exciting for the students,” said Dr Barazi rather flatly.

Another focus for the SOVIETS is turning the focus of each department toward SDGs and away from harmful or non-essential topics that may have seemed to be important in the past but have no bearing on the collective revolution at hand.

“There are many outdated and even harmful distractions that we must now reform and transform toward a more sustainable and equitable future,” explained professor Budallaqe. “For example the engineering department has traditionally focused on topics like mechanical and electrical engineering, civil engineering, even training a new generation in designing engines, drilling for oil, and other such monstrous, and honestly, just silly things,” he said shaking his head. “What about gender equality, climate action, and the things that really matter in a modern world? We have to transform our departments before it’s too late,” he yelled banging his fist on the desk. “Oppressive colonial ideas like using helical piles for structural integrity in deep foundations, or lateral force resisting systems to provide lateral stability in tall buildings, and other such nonsense propagated by structural engineers for centuries,” Budallaqe added. “Since when has working out the steady irrotational inviscid flow of a weightless fluid using Bernoulli’s Equation ever helped a poor soul trying to work out their gender identity or their carbon liability? It’s just so obviously oppressive and it has to stop!”

Every school within the university will now have a prerequisite year of gender equity and climate action classes, closely monitored by the SOVIETS committee for that school. Special camps are being set up for students who do not fully embrace the new order, based on a very successful program trialed in the USSR know as the Glavnoye upravleniye lagerey. The hope is that as students realise the incredible and transcendent importance of gender studies and the imminent and catastrophic destruction of the planet by racism, colonialism and carbon footprints stomping all over Mother Earth.

The hope is that one day all universities in America will be administered by SOVIETS.

Source: The Confounding Variable