Come backs

In the early eighties I was a member of the athletic policy board at Eastern Washington University. It was a particularly "contentious" committee on campus because we were investigating the possibility of joining the Big Sky Athletic conference. The student body was probably close to eighty percent in favor of joining the conference. The faculty and campus community, however, was divided pretty much fifty-fifty ~ for and against. I remember one particularly heated public meeting during which we were discussing the average attendance at each of the member schools home football games. For some reason the members of the committee and audience were "focused in" on the average attendance at Montana State University football games. In particular, no one believed the attendance figures for MSU ~ they thought them to be way overstated. Everyone knew I was a true Montanan and attended many MSU games as a youngster. Every face turned towards me as one of the faculty members in attendance said, "So, Chapman how do 'you guys' in Montana count attendance at football games, anyway??" ~ contempt dripping from his mouth. I replied, "Easy. After the game we count all the empty beer cans and divide by six. You 'guys' seriously over-estimate the average Montanan's ability to drink beer!" It broke the tension a little bit.

I also remember a great comeback comment made by my good friend Gordon Pirrong. It was during one of those contentious all campus faculty meetings . The Liberal Arts folks were hammering us and the college of education pretty hard about the intellectual content and rigor of our programs. One fellow went for what he thought was the knock out punch when he finally said, "So, do you know what the general public calls your graduates?" Gordon's one word response, "employed".

I'll add other come backs as I recall them.