I invite you to read, without comment (I'm laughing too hard to write), the tragedy that ensues when college administrators try far, far too hard to be hip:
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) - A creative idea to make meetings between University of Iowa officials and students more fun quickly changed directions when jazzy nicknames chosen for top administrators were found to have undesirable multiple meanings.
The goal was to make Thursday night meetings between students and President David Skorton and Phillip Jones, vice president of student services, more interesting. The administrators and student government leaders came up with the idea of a reality show format. Nicknames were chosen for Skorton, who was called Pizzle, and Jones, known as Dizzle.
The names were meant to be a funny spinoff of the concept used by rapper Snoop Dogg, who creates words by adding an "izzle" ending to words. Skorton and Jones appeared at Thursday's meeting in hockey jerseys with the letters P and D on their chests, respectively.
By Friday, however, university officials were grabbing for their dictionaries to confirm rumors that the nicknames had other meanings. It turns out that pizzle is a term sometimes used to refer to a bull's sex organs and that dizzle - according to one dictionary on urban slang - refers to an alcoholic redneck.
"That's why we won't be emphasizing Pizzle and Dizzle anymore," said university spokesman Steve Parrott. "It'll just be P and D."
Jones said he was confident that no one intended to choose nicknames that would offend anyone. "I don't think the students meant to be offensive," he said. "They were trying to use contemporary terms that would attract the attention of other students."
Jones, 63, suggested that he and Skorton, 54, "have to do a better job of trying to keep up with the culture of today's youth."
Posted by kswygert at November 18, 2003 04:51 PM