On the road to eccentricity

Yesterday one of my senior colleagues was decrying the dearth of notably eccentric professors on campus. "Gone are the days when the campus eccentric could be counted on daily to stash his pipe in his pocket while it was still burning," he said. "Where have all the eccentric characters gone?"

He suggested that the provost seek out eccentricity in new hires, but it's hard to include that kind of requirement in an advertisement--and besides, why look outside the campus when we have plenty of potential characters already here? This campus could be crawling with potential eccentrics; we just need to find a way to encourage the formation of eccentricity.

To increase the campus Eccentricity Quotient (EQ), I propose that the provost promote a multi-phase Eccentricity Encouragement Program (EEP) involving Personal Eccentricity Reinforcement Grants (PERP), an annual Professorial Eccentricity Prize (PEP), workshops on Boosting Your Eccentricity (BYE), and visits to other campuses to observe professorial eccentricity in the wild (You want another acronym? Write it yourself!).

Once that's all in place, we'll just need a few professors to step up and respond to the Eccentricity Challenge--and I can think of no better test case than the senior colleague who sparked the idea. He'd look pretty good smoking a pipe, and besides, on the road to eccentricity, he's already got a pretty good head start on the rest of us. So go for it, buddy! We'll be right behind you!