Satire: Harvard creates #Mesevenhundredfortyfive to remedy all social ills

This is a submission from Matthew Yang for the Shark Scholar Satire Competition 2018.

This submission won First Place in the Shark Scholar Satire Competition 2018.

As a result of the #MeToo movement, other movements like #MeThree and #MeFour sprung out to demand justice and condemn evil. It was believed that these movements were just limited to the scope of social media radicalism until Harvard University responded with #MeSevenHundredFortyFive.

Abiding by two main principles, #MeSevenHundredFortyFive believes that firstly, any sentence that contains an opinion is prejudiced and oppressive, and secondly, any sentence that doesn’t contain an opinion is purely apathetic towards the currently oppressed victims. As millions of reposts turned the spotlight on Harvard, these two principles had a devastating effect on Harvard’s reputation.

Harvard, a world-renowned university famous for promoting equality and social justice, conducted a three month long meeting to sort through every single book in its library.

The first category of books to be removed was ancient and modern classics. According to Leila Fair, the head of the executive board, “Classics, like the Kite Runner or Julius Caesar, demonstrate intolerable discrimination towards women. Similarly, books like To Kill a Mockingbird promote the racism that is currently ingrained in our society. The publishers must be stupid bigots to allow such books to be published.”

Harvard University, a center for intellectuals, has undoubtedly realized that the problem lies not just in ancient classics, so they removed children’s books as well. After receiving numerous protests and death threats from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), Harvard realized that The Three Little Pigs and Aesop’s Fables all demonstrated significant amounts of violence, humiliation, and inequality toward the animals.

People might have the misconception that nonfiction does not include any of the said problems, but that is entirely untrue. Most nonfiction written by male authors has been classified as patriarchal and mansplaining. Specific academic fields of nonfiction were also banned. High Physics and Biology were deemed disrespectful towards religions. Sociology and Psychology pose threats towards personal privacy. Economy promotes social inequality in the capitalist world and History creates controversy among ethnicities.

“There is no need to worry. The Harvard Library will still feature one [and the only remaining one] collection, namely the Encyclopedia Britannica,” the deputy president of Harvard Library remarked. “Of course, this will be a redacted version. All adjectives and adverbs will be removed from the book because they carry unacceptable bigoted opinions. Many sensitive and controversial entries such as “white”, “gender”, and “right” have been deleted as well.”

After witnessing Harvard’s decisive step towards maintaining social justice, the White House spokesperson proudly exclaimed, “There is nothing but an optimistic future that lies ahead.”

Featured image designed by Wesley Ding