Risky business
Our Deputy Head of Risk Assessment, Jocelyn Wager, has praised the Open University for its handling of the aftermath of a recent “fire alarm evacuation situation”.
Ms Wager especially commended the post-evacuation circular from the OU’s health and safety coordinator. This noted that some staff were seen carrying drinks during the evacuation and proceeded to issue the following caution: “Please remember, for future evacuations, not to take drinks with you as there is a risk they may spill resulting in a slip hazard. Also if they are hot drinks there is the added risk of the spillage leading to scalds.”
Although Ms Wager was sufficiently impressed with this advice to recirculate it to all members of Poppleton staff, she added a postscript advising any staff involved in a similar evacuation at Poppleton to also avoid taking whole or half-eaten sandwiches with them “as there is a risk that portions of the sandwich may become lodged in the throat, thus resulting in a choke hazard. If this choke hazard is severe, it might well lead the affected person to step on a slip hazard and fall into a scalding hazard.”
She hoped this clarified the risk situation.
Riding high
After what seemed a promising start, our university has now postponed its attempt to find satisfied members of academic staff.
Louise Bimpson, our Corporate Director of Human Resources, told The Poppletonian that the search had been prompted by Mahesan Niranjan of the University of Southampton, who in a letter to Times Higher Education had pointed out that unsatisfied academic teachers were likely to pass on their dissatisfaction to students and thus seriously affect their teaching excellence framework rating on the all-important National Student Survey.
Five academic teachers eventually responded to Ms Bimpson’s call for satisfied teachers. They variously described life at Poppleton University as “mind-blowing”, “far out”, “ecstatic”, “a great trip” and just “wow!”.
However, the original plan to place these teachers in the front line of our TEF submission had to be cancelled when they all failed a preliminary drug test.
“Obviously,” said Ms Bimpson, “it’s salutary to discover that the only satisfied academics at Poppleton are those who regularly ingest dangerous hallucinogens. Clearly more research is needed.”
Psychological depths
Questions have been raised about our university’s decision to allow another 450 young people to take up their first-year undergraduate places on our BA Psychology degree despite mounting evidence that psychologists lie at the bottom of the league table when it comes to both job availability and graduate earnings.
But Nathan Prest, our Head of Student Recruitment, while admitting that our campus did currently house several thousand undergraduate and postgraduate psychologists with no particular place to go, told The Poppletonian that he derived some comfort from the nature of their studies.
“Imagine if this had happened to a group of students, say metallurgists, who by virtue of their discipline lack any discernible degree of self-awareness. That would indeed be a tragedy. But what we are dealing with here is a multitude of people who are uniquely equipped with the therapeutic tools to combat their own feelings of general worthlessness.”