For the Love of Dear Old Fountainhead U.
posted by Eric Muller
The University of North Carolina Board of Governors is considering the establishment of a college based on the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Proposals for a college slogan, mascot, and fight song are welcome. Leave a comment.
June 14, 2006 at 3:56 pm
Posted in: Current Events
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Responses (14)
Eh Nonymous - June 14, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Ayn Rand U: Devil take the hindmost.
Graduate from Ayn Rand: Never contribute anything to society for philanthropic reasons again.
ARU: Where “public service” is considered an oxymoron.
ARU: No, we don’t accept married students with kids.
Fight song? Anything by Rush, see The Spirit of Rand
jw - June 14, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Given that this appears to be a proposal for a state-sponsored school, the only fitting mascot would be a parasite, no?
Miriam Cherry - June 14, 2006 at 5:33 pm
The fight song would be an “Anthem.”
Belle Lettre - June 14, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Fight Song: “Shrug, Atlas, Shrug!”
Mascot: John Galt, or a guy wearing a t-shirt with a big question mark on it.
Favored half-time show: John Galt and co-mascot Roark beating up FDR and LBJ dummies.
Miriam Cherry - June 14, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Mascot: Lone wolf.
Jojo - June 14, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Mascot: Alan Greenspan.
Motto: “A predictable book is a great book.”
Fight Song: The music of “Ride of the Valkyries” with the lyrics of “We Are The Champions.”
Paul Gowder - June 15, 2006 at 10:51 am
Slogan: “[H]his ideal is death, his craving is to kill, his only satisfaction is to torture.”
Alternatively:
“[We] did not care to compete in terms of intelligence—[We] are now competing in terms of brutality.”
(Gotta love that John Galt nonsense.)
Mascot: A nestful of wasps.
Fight Song: Kill the Poor, by the Dead Kennedys. To wit:
Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the Neutron bomb
It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done
Away with excess enemy
But no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home:
The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight
Gonna
Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor tonight
Behold the sparkle of champagne
The crime rate’s gone
Feel free again
O’ life’s a dream with you, Miss Lily White
Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals it’s okay
So let’s get dressed and dance away the night
While they:
Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor tonight
Paul Tassin - June 15, 2006 at 3:18 pm
I wonder if they plan to rely on gratuitous financial support from alumni …
Frank - June 15, 2006 at 4:03 pm
Whatever you think of Rand, you have to check out the 1954 movie based on the Fountainhead…several architectural suggestions could follow, as well as a great camp viewing experience.
My favorite moment: when the hero (Roark?) proposes his bold new design for an office building (a glass box) and the old fuddy duddy committee of the establishment says, “That’s fine, Howard….but just add this greek colonnade to the front”….and deftly plops a half-Pantheon like structure in front of Roark’s model. That should definitely be the design of the student center.
totallyanon - June 15, 2006 at 10:57 pm
i’m sorry, when did it become fashionable to bash ayn rand? did i miss that transitional period,…or is concurring opinions just more idealogically left leaning than i thought?
Paul Gowder - June 16, 2006 at 9:11 am
totallyanon: It became fashionable to bash Ayn Rand when Ayn Rand wrote a pile of unreadable novels in order to express her nonsense, antisocial “philosophy.”
james schmidt - June 16, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Paul is right. Rand is wrong. Productivity has its place, but so does leisure and emotion. I’d be more for Rand if we lived in a world of equal opportunity. Until then, to freeze the status quo of the haves and the have nots, ultimately, is counterproductive because it is unsustainable in the realistic long run. Also, her books are rather boring and much too verbose. She’d have been more rational to write shorter novels which more people would be inclined to read, and potentially follow. However philosophilcally appealing might Rand’s vision be, it is completely impractical given the reality of human nature. People are not and will never be, as they “ought” to be. As such, Rand remains a sci-fi author, and no more. And by the way, totallyanon, this has nothing to do with with or right. It has to do with (the lack of) feasibility of fantastic ideas about human nature. THIS is why the North Carolina Board’s idea, is, well, idiotic.
bill - June 18, 2006 at 1:04 am
“Simpsons did it.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/simpsons/episodeguide/season4/page3.shtml
totallyanon - June 22, 2006 at 3:36 pm
i haven’t read all her stuff, but i read fountainhead and enjoyed it. i thought howard roark was a stud. perhaps fountainhead alone doesn’t fully illustrate all aspects of her philosophy, but i enjoyed the philosophical aspect of the book. the fact that keating was ‘popular’, but roark was ‘right’–i dig that aspect of it.
maybe rand’s philosophies aren’t implementable–i’d have to read more to intelligently answer that question. but i don’t think that her philosophy is “wrong” as james schmidt puts it.
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