Dear Margaret Wente,
We understand that you may be having a hard time at work these days. Even though we will never know the details of your punishment , surely it must be a bit awkward around the office. Are the unpaid interns who serve you coffee more chipper than usual? Have you walked into the lunchroom lately, only to find that everyone stops whatever conversation they were having as you quickly grab a Perrier from the fridge?
The point we’re trying to make is that we – and indeed, Canada – would totally understand if you were considering moving your column to another publication. And if that is the case, then have we got an offer for you.
Please, please join the law faculty and become a columnist for Ultra Vires. We would help you register for classes and everything. Our audience would read your every word. Our work environment and professional standards are absolutely perfect for a columnist of your bent and stature.
The first advantage of working with Ultra Vires in our musty, mold-ridden basement office is that you would be close to law students. Law students play an important role in your column. We are simultaneously the people you smugly mock and the people who obsessively read your column, become outraged by it, share it with our friends, and thereby generate the thousands of clicks and page views that prove your value to society.
Take John, for example, who’s pursuing a degree in environmental law . He was infuriated by your column criticizing organic food and posted it on his Facebook wall with a snide quote for all of his friends to see. Is John a real person? Did we just make him up to make a convenient point? Was John at the Occupy protests? These are just some of the questions our Editorial Board will never bother you with.
Let’s be real. Most of your columns are misinformed pseudo book-reviews that take a contrarian stance on some fad, fashion, or emerging moral norm. We get that. And lucky for you, law students engage in all sorts of activities that you regularly pass judgment on. Most of us eat quite badly and many of us have even smoke marijuana . A startling number of us struggle with mental health problems that you would enjoy trivializing.
You’ve written a lot of things about those scary Muslims over the years – might it interest you to know that there are, in fact, Muslims at our school? If you can’t spin that into a xenophobic column about creeping Sharia law, no one can.
The second advantage of working for Ultra Vires is that we have a far more civilized understanding of “plagiarism” and “journalistic integrity” than your colleagues in the Globe. Ultra Vires’ fact-checking policy consists of two words: honour system.
With little oversight and even lower standards, we think UV would be a perfect lateral move from The Globe and Mail. At a school newspaper, forgetting to put quotation marks around someone else’s words isn’t a big deal. Just blame it on the layout editor!
There is one last thing. While UV’s standards are pretty lax, don’t try the same thing in your classes. By becoming a student at U of T, you would have to abide by the Student Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters . You’re probably used to the professional standards of the Globe and Mail, Canada’s Paper of Record. Here at a university consisting mostly of teenagers, however, plagiarism is a big deal.
The administration takes plagiarism pretty seriously and, historically, the “at least I’m not a serial plagiarist” defence does not have the best record of success. On the plus side, should you find yourself in hot water, as a U of T student you would qualify for free legal representation from Downtown Legal Services.
So, Maggs (we can call you Maggs, right?), it looks like we could definitely get something going on here. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
Sincerely,
Josh Stark, Cary Ferguson, Patrick Hartford, and some other people whose ideas we took notes on and then accidentally copied into this article.
