Mnookin Announces It’s Time to “Get Over” Flint, Michigan

Following a brief yet inconvenient encounter with artistic expression and freedom of speech, UW Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin has announced that the university has officially reached its “empathy quota” regarding the Flint water crisis.

The announcement comes on the heels of the University Theatre’s production of cullud wattah, a play that explores the generational impact of the water crisis on a Black family in Michigan. Sources say that the Chancellor found the play “deeply moving” for the first half hour or so, before wondering why the characters couldn’t “pivot to a more optimistic brand identity.”

Standing in front of a “Sift & Winnow” banner, a longstanding principle of academic freedom at UW Madison (though sifting has recently been outsourced to a consulting firm), Mnookin clarified her position.

“We watched the play, we did the empathy, we checked the diversity box for the year,” Mnookin said as she adjusted her collar with the poise of a leader who hasn’t drank tap water since 1994. “It was all so…..loud. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves: isn’t this all just a distraction? Why are we talking about protestors in Michigan when we have perfectly good protestors to delegitimize and unnecessarily jail right here in Madison? It’s time to stop dwelling on the present and start focusing on important things, like luxury housing and sending money to Israel.”

Mnookin, who has spent much of her tenure navigating the complexities of campus protest with the grace of a bulldozer in the West Bank, suggested that the residents of Flint should “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”

Scrapping previous plans for community outreach, the Chancellor’s office announced a series of “Security and Innovation” protocols designed to “reframe” the conversation on campus. This includes a wide array of Flock security cameras installed in every dorm, and any student found to be discussing Flint, MI or the lack of clean water will have their dorm room rezoned as an “Administrative Territory”. They’ve also begun accepting applications for the Birthright Bascom Program, allowing Native (white) Wisconsities, or “student leaders”, as they call them, to visit the Chancellor’s Office, learn about the hotline to the police chief’s personal number in case of another protest or encampment, and learn about how “genocide” is just a fancy word for “urban redevelopment”. 

“The characters in the play kept talking about ‘settling’ for unclean water,” a spokesperson for the university said. “The Chancellor and the university prefer to focus on settling in a much more… proactive sense.”

When a reporter asked if ignoring the plight of those afflicted by the Flint water crisis might alienate black students and faculty, Mnookin immediately signaled to her aides to “take care of” the reporter after the briefing, before leaning into the microphone.

“Security is the foundation of a great countr…of a great university,” she sneered as she aggressively glared at the reporter. “And security gives us the freedom to ignore what doesn’t fit our narrative. We’re not just getting over Flint, we want to occupy the very concept of its suffering into a more profitable and streamlined future.” 

As the press conference concluded, Mnookin seemed to disappear into a localized cloud of dark red mist, leaving behind only a faint scent of burning hair and a lingering, spine-chilling feeling. She then headed to Library Mall, where the iconic Hagenah fountain will be replaced with the Fickell Fountain, with built-in state of the art Flock surveillance cameras. The changes Mnookin has made and will continue to make before her tenure at UW Madison ends will not only hurt, but hinders real change for minorities and other disadvantaged groups on campus, but why would she care about that?