Presidential Prerogative -or- Saturday, Observed

Presidential Prerogative

   The sweetest words any Pensacola Christian College student can hear are “I am exercising my prerogative as President . . .” With those words is ushered in the fabled nirvana — the right Elysian Fields — or a day free of all classes. Deadlines are pushed back and rest reigns supreme.

   Most years, Presidential Prerogative falls on a Wednesday: the Wednesday on which Freshman English research papers are due. In fact, all three of my previous years here, such has been the case. Now, in 2004, fall semester, we have Ivan. I have never gotten back on any semblance of a daily schedule since the near shut-down of all of northwest Florida, and neither have most other students.

   Dr. Horton cited this as well as the election (did you know that Precinct 110, where PCC resides, is the second-strongest Republican* precinct in all of Florida?) as our reason for getting tomorrow (Tuesday) off. [[One of my friends suggested that perhaps Dr. Mullenix has inculcated his personal policy into Dr. Horton at long last. Dr. Mullenix is one of the faculty/administration who makes it a practice to adjourn all of his classes on election days for those who have not yet gotten to vote and are registered to vote in Escambia County.]] One definitely has no excuse for not voting around here. Whatever party you happen to support, you are all but ordered to act on your beliefs.

   Even with all the benefits of Presidential Prerogative, there are still some few who deem it necessary to grip, complain, whine, murmer, et cetera. You see, PCC has what some would consider to be strict discipline — though none would have found it strange in the academic halls of only fifty years ago — so of course a privilege such as the one just granted of necessity carries with it certain regulations.

   The first, and most complained-about regulation, is that on Presidential Prerogative days, there is no leaving campus for other than previously-scheduled activities (work, doctors’ appointments, &c.) until three in the afternoon. Logically, of course, it makes perfect sense. There is no sense in granting a catch-up study day if half the student body would spend it at the beach. However, rather than looking at the day as time granted which would not have otherwise been theirs, many students look at it as beach time stolen from them. Hmmmm . . . If they would have been in class^† anyway, and now they have that time to spend, not in class, but anywhere on campus they please, how is beach time that they never have somehow stolen from them? “Don’t give me one hundred dollars. I want two hundred!” is the attitude I sense.

   “As for me and my house . . .”^◊ we will sleep in and play the piano until our fingers fall off and write lab reports and read textbooks and in general study our brains out. Our diligent procrastination on Saturday has been rewarded. We have Saturday, observed tomorrow. Eat drink and get married, for the day after tomorrow we die.

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* While I am still a registered Republican, I am drifting more and more to the Libertarian shore. ‘Tis a pity, but we don’t even have what I would consider a true Republican party in this country any more. Except for its position on the necessity of war, our current GOP would have passed for Democratic fifty years ago.

Vote Bush: Not as bad as the other guy.

† At PCC, attendance to all class sessions is required except in the case of illness or emergency, in the which cases the requirement will be administratively waived. You may laugh at that, but it’s what keeps our academics so strong here. We regularly get students placed into such institutions as Columbia, Harvard, Mayo, Loma Linda, and other medical schools (my department, so I am most familiar with those), law schools, organizations such as the Secret Service (two PCC grads on the Secret Service right now, I think) — and that’s with us not accepting accredition (not that it hasn’t been offered).Specifically, a friend of mine, Anastasia Spencer, was commended by Columbia Medical School last year, as was PCC, for her being their strongest applicant of the year.

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“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

—Joshua 24:14–16

Crosspost: Harbour and Academic Musings