Top Four Surreal Education System Stories of the Week

Sadly, The College Fix revealed on April 1 that Ms. Weiss’ speaking engagement was secretly canceled, and UCLA employees had intentionally sabotaged her event under her nose. They had been writing internal emails since February, begging UCLA to pull the plug on Weiss’ speech due to their own distorted fears about potential consequences. In addition, 11,000 people signed a bizarre petition to prevent the university from hosting the event. This unfortunate situation was absurd — but never as funny — as an April Fool's Day prank.

Seeing Your Teacher at a No Kings Protest 

The College Fix found that quite a few professors participated in the "No Kings" protests on March 28. 

The protestors and event coordinators argue that the "No Kings" protests are supposed to be playfully satirizing President Donald Trump and their intentional silliness is to expose his flaws, but they make themselves look hilariously absurd as one could argue that Trump has helped improve our country.

One may also say that portraying him as mainly self-motivated is inaccurate based on Trump's track record of healthy policies, and possibly a knee-jerk "cut-and-paste" stock response in any event; the very ridiculous antics and narrative of the protest indicate a willful refusal to think beyond the premade "egotistical Trump acting like a dictator" argument. One may add that the buffoonery at No Kings and similar demonstrations within the U.S. appears a bit "copy-paste" because the protests are strikingly similar to each other, as well as to the public screaming demonstration at a park for International Women's Day 2026 and the notorious "election cry-ins" at Cornell University during Trump's first term.

Where’s the Oversight? UNL Should Recognize That Simply Including Unsettling Content Does Not Equal Creativity

Joseph Willette, once a student at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, created a sacrilegious drag show titled "Mass of Perpetual Indulgence." He graduated from UNL with a doctoral degree in music, and Mass was his final thesis before he earned the degree. The show was likely pretending to be satirical, akin to "No Kings" attempting to satirize Trump. It may have been disguised as satire so that if anyone pointed out that the show featured unsettling content, Willette could claim it was designed that way to fit the genre requirements and format of satire, and that most criticism of his show came from people misunderstanding it.

Flannery O’Connor used bizarre content in her stories and filled them with satire, but that material was a plot device for characters to have their comeuppance or "their moments of grace." The strongly satirical Charles Dickens also used some nightmarish content to call attention to social issues. Edgar Allan Poe's dark stories also featured social commentary and had artistic value. Disturbing content and no clear "good vs. evil" plot alone does not follow the format or demands of satire, and the simple inclusion of unsettling themes does not make the writer so creative.

Many believed that the performance had a warped worldview, where being bad was shown as being good and the audience was expected to be confused about right and wrong. The disturbing content was considered a work of art by Willette's peers and within the show itself. While a small number of people appreciated Willette's backwards world school play, many Christian audiences—including a local Catholic bishop—did not. They saw it as a superfluous violation of Christian values and moral principles and felt that the skit had no artistic or social value.

The Plains Sentinel of Nebraska wrote that UNL showed no accountability. UNL brass were allegedly scheduled to hold a meeting to address "concerns of anti-Catholicism" prompted by the drag show. Sadly, the meeting never took place. The Sentinel even reported that "no paper trail" ever existed leading up to the meeting. The whole kerfuffle was irresponsible for UNL, as the lack of accountability was egregious and the subject matter sacrilegious.