The University plans on continuing its campaign to cleanse campus of explicit images and landmarks, according to University sources.
“Many people find several of our historic landmarks just plain offensive,” a university spokesman said in an emailed statement.
“Having so many phallic symbols on campus is not consistent with our goal of attracting the best and the brightest,” President Robert Witt said. “The new, more intelligent students will find this type of humor tasteless and beneath them.”
In June 2010, the University began its censorship campaign with the removal of the 240-foot-tall smokestack behind B.B. Comer.
“I feel so empty without that enormous chimney towering over us all,” Virginia Chastity said. “It made everyone feel so … confident and warm.”
Administrative officials say they won’t stop there.
“Next on our list is the sculpture on Woods quad,” a university spokeswoman said. “I mean, look at it, and tell me what you think that’s supposed to be.”
Some students and faculty, though, disagree with the censorship.
“That sculpture is a postmodern abstraction that captures the zeitgeist of the potential for reproduction,” UA art professor Guy Tucci said. “The artist behind it had a stroke of genius.”
“We tried to keep it up, but it just took too much effort,” said Richard Sachs, president of the University’s Students Against Censorship chapter, about the iconic smokestack.
Witt, though, said he’ll pay any price to reach his goal of a campus of high-brow, intellectual humor, even if it means annexing 60 acres adjacent to campus just to demolish one building.
“That big, white dome on top of the Bryce facility just looks too suggestive. Maybe that would have been funny when I was, like, 9,” Witt said. “We just have to get rid of it. So what if we had to kick a crucial state mental facility off the property?”
Ultimately, Witt said no campus landmark is safe.
“We’re building a giant black plywood box to put over Denny Chimes to censor it from every angle,” Witt said. “I’m just tired of looking out my window every morning and seeing a giant penis. We need to ensure we are practicing safe architecture.”
