Apathy Sketchpad

(Title updated 20050502.)

Dave Gorman has been mentioned in two of the last three Columnists, and I feel I should get the rest of the story off my chest now. This last chapter concerns a student at my university called Dick Steele. (His name is actually Richard, but where’s the fun in that?) With only a week or two until Better World, all the tickets had naturally been snapped up. A fresher called Nadia (I don’t know her myself, but her breasts were the only things anyone seemed to talk about after the Physics Society party) hadn’t paid up. Dick wanted that ticket, and he wanted it bad. He figured that the best way to get hold of it would be to email Alisdair, who is president of the Physics Society, pretend to be Nadia, and suggest selling the ticket to him instead.

Not a dumb plan, you may think. However, you obviously haven’t taken into accout quite how dumb Dick can be. He wonders around looking like a gorilla in a zoo that doesn’t know what to do. He openly cheats in every exam he takes. He gets out notes and looks at them throughout. He actually tried to hide his equation sheet in exams it was allowed in. It has even been known for him to use a thousand-page textbook to help him in an exam. The only reason anyone can think of why he hasn’t been caught (other than the inexpert invigilation of a certain Dr. Brereton) is the fact that he fails the exams anyway.

He sent this email from his university account. It had his name, initials, department, and year of joining at the top.

Dick was not at Better World.

Alisdair, it appears, has an evil streak. He emailed ‘Nadia’ back to tell her that he wouldn’t feel comfortable, what with his inappropriate crush on Dick and everything.