An EPIIC waste of time

This leap-day weekend marked the umpteenth annual EPIIC symposium, and seated somewhere in the back row, to the left of a man wearing J.Lo Glo, was yours truly. This was less than pleasant, but the crux of this viewpoint rests not with the admiral or his taste in fragrance, nor with EPIIC as a course, but with the symposium in general. It stunk. Granted, panels are an inherently flawed form of discussion, but those I went to this year were so far below bad that they moved me to write this viewpoint in spite my own laziness.

The panels failed on three fronts: the topics were never even remotely addressed, even tangentially; the panelists never listened to each other; and, if questions are any indication, the audience didn't listen either.

Let's begin at the bottom with the questions. Here is a sample edited for space, universality, b.s., and to avoid putting you to sleep: "Hello Dr. So-and-So, I'm Mr. X and I'm a member of this year's EPIIC colloquium. What I think is wrong with the situation in blah is...as I saw in the documentary... Jamaicans spilling milk...but enough about how smart I am, how smart do you think I am?"

I'm not joking (much).

Most questions were either rhetorical or just general assertions; none of the askers seemed genuinely curious. And never, in all my years of education, have I seen so much ingratiation. Mr. X might as well have skipped the microphone and headed straight for Sherman's feet so that if you looked at them from far enough away you would not know where one ended and the other began. It reflected so poorly on the course (for which I have mixed respect), that I began to think EPIIC was a sick anthropologists joke where they put sixty grade-grubbers in a classroom just to see who can eat their way to the top.

Even worse than the questions were the panelists. Here is an example from Friday's America and Economic Hegemony panel: Panelist A talked about Canada; Panelist B talked about transparency in business (he seemed to realize he was a complete idiot midway through his speech and stopped, but I must thank him for stopping); Panelist C talked about Enron and did not stop; Panelist D bla bla; and Panelist E clarified terms, albeit with humor. Never, in all their incoherent ramblings, did any of them come close to the thesis, and the only consensus was that old truism, "if you don't have anything to say, make fun of Canada and everything will be swell." And swell it turned out. The panelists' pride (an overrated sin, but sin nonetheless) prevented them from discussion, or even civility. One fake-slept, the others sat in pain when anyone else spoke, like brats or brats sitting on broken glass. Worse still, they brought speeches made for other events and referred to their web sites for further discussion. I take back calling them brats: these people were not even human.

There is a Chinese proverb that reads, "Never trust something that blows its own horn, and trust it less if it's an acronym." Like that kid in junior high who insisted everyone call him Maverick, EPIIC deserves the most painful of swirlies. There is something so pompous about an event that is more concerned with its own documentation than with the content held within. It seemed like everyone in the audience had a camera of sorts and was not afraid to use it. At times, if one squinted, they could mistake the event for a less glamorous/much more boring Oscars (which is an award show for American movies put on by the MPAA). Further blurring the line was the constant giving and receiving of awards such that an award became more party-favor than honor. I call on next year's EPIIC students to try and breathe some life into their symposium and create an event that is less self-important and more interested in exploration and new understanding.

Geoff Mansfield is a senior majoring in English with a minor in film studies.