All the most treasured aspects of UTD’s culture can be traced back to our athletics program. The Whoosh? Created to show support for our athletes at games. Our pride and joy, Temoc? Created in 1998 to represent UTD’s athletics program. The Official Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers™ UTD Comet Kids Club, the university’s first foray into culinary collaborations? Our greatest achievement here at the UTD athletics program. Unfortunately, all these cultural treasures are now at risk due to the greatest threat to the university: nerds. The modern Comet would rather spend two hours arguing over the thematic implications of the My Hero Academia ending than doing just about anything related to exercise. This is a problem that I, the new Director of Athletics at UTD, seek to rectify. Under my tenure, the university will introduce our new athletics program designed to reshape our student body into modern-day Spartans, and revive the long-dormant culture of athletics at UTD.

Policy 1: The New Expansion

In order to finance our new athletics program, we must make a difficult decision. Do we liquidate some of our multimillion-dollar weapons manufacturing stocks, or do we implement severe budget cuts to our liberal arts programs? After much deliberation, we have decided that we cannot part with any of our stocks. We here at the university believe that they make us look badass, which is necessary for a strong athletics program. Speaking of being badass, our first round of budget cuts involve converting the incredibly lame Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology into the Chad Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Athletics, Huge Muscles, and Training. The new AHT will be dedicated to rejuvenating UTD’s latent culture of athleticism, and what better way to do that than with a new curriculum? New classes such as LIFT 2306, JUMP 3345, and BALL 1200 will train Comets in the arts of the body. And we haven’t forgotten about the other arts! All the classes of the school formerly known as AHT will be moved to the athletics shed. Don’t say we don’t do anything for liberal arts majors.

Policy 2: The Mandatory, University-Wide Intro Class

To bring about an athletic renaissance in UTD, the entire student body must be educated in the core Comet values. This is why we’re introducing UNIV 1969: a brand-new mandatory course for all students. In this classroom, every student stands for the flag — the UTD flag, that is, while the Alma Mater plays valiantly in the background. According to the syllabus, the class will involve learning how to perfect one’s Whoosh, memorizing the lyrics to the UTD Fight Song, and how to best accept things like getting your rocks taken away. Students who fail this course will be strapped to chairs in the basement of ECS South and forced to watch Temoc edits until they exhibit sufficient Comet pride.

Policy 3: Un-Computering Your Science

Computer scientists are the architects of some of the university’s most important services. Our beloved Tobors, the Orion portal that only works half of the time, and UTD Grades are only possible due to the efforts of CS (and related) majors. This makes it all the more unfortunate that these students are the most likely to disregard all notions of hygiene and the least likely to engage in any type of exercise — a clear threat to the goals of our new athletics program. It is therefore imperative that we find a way to get CS majors to leave their rooms and start exercising. There is a bright future ahead if we play our cards right, one where CS majors destroy their health with pre-workout instead of Monster Energy, let the shower water absolve their sin-infested hides, and finally feel the radiance of the sun on their skin. That is why we have decided to replace all outlets in the CS buildings and residential spaces with giant electricity-generating hamster wheels. To power their devices, these CS majors must first hop on one of these public wheels and get moving. This is the most effective way to make CS majors physically active while also allowing them to complete their schoolwork. Some people may feel like it’s inhumane to force students to use enlarged versions of contraptions meant for gerbils, but one must remember that all CS majors are joining the rat race anyways, so making them run like rodents only amounts to extra practice. And best of all — the energy generated by the wheels is sustainable. How’s that for a green campus?

Policy 4: The Comet Coliseum

Now that our previous policies have shaped our students into athletes, we can begin the final stages of our plan: immortalizing UTD as the prime location for Division II athletics. For this to occur, we need something that will capture the attention of those alien to the university, something that will circulate in their minds whenever they think about Texas. We want to turn UTD into their Roman Empire, and what better way to do that than to build a Roman-style coliseum here in Richardson? The Comet Coliseum will be UTD’s superlative symbol of athletic prowess, forever making sports inseparable from the school’s legacy. The impact of the coliseum far outweighs the cost — we can easily sacrifice space for more on-campus housing and our students’ money (through the addition of a $1000 tuition fee) for the future of sporting at the university. Whenever UTD hosts home games, people from all over will stand in awe of the most bombastic NCAA Division II competitions in the continental United States. The beauty of our all-marble stands will enchant spectators, the broadness of the field will stretch their eyesight to the horizon, and the concessions, supplied by our very own Dining Hall West, will stun guests due to their quality (and price). For many years now, UTD has been known as the MIT of the South. With the erection of the Comet Coliseum, perhaps a time may come where MIT is referred to as the UTD of the North. 

Closing Remarks

At the end of it all, we must ask ourselves — was it worth it? Was taking over schools, enforcing mandatory athletics classes, forcing our CS students to go outside, and constructing a new coliseum all worth it? Or is it possible that some students simply aren’t meant for athletics, and that their energy is better spent on their work and building relationships with those around them? Upon much rumination, the answer has revealed itself to me. Of course it was worth it. Our policies are the only thing creating a legacy for this university that will extend far into the future. Even after society collapses, after the Anthropocene is supplanted by the new age of the rat people, the site of UTD will remain a shrine for those who believe in the perfection of the athletic spirit. The names “UTD” and “Richardson” will lose all meaning, but on the site of our school will remain two remnants of the past: seasonal competitions to determine athletic superiority, and the strange effigy of a fiery-haired, blue-skinned man.