Ah, liberal arts colleges. So the authors of a Reed "humor" publication called the Pamphlette recently published an article accusing Lewis and Clark staff of "rounding up and gassing all the Jews on their Portland, OR, campus," reports Inside Higher Ed. Cue the most absurd round of hand-wringing about whether or not the Pamphlette should be censored, and whether it matters that Lewis and Clark recently had to deal with swastikas in the bathrooms. There was even a huge discussion session of the incident, reportedly.

One editor, answering for the group, said that the intent of the article was to satirize a column in Reed's student newspaper that "argued that satirical Holocaust denial enables real genocide. We found this claim ridiculous, and that the goal of our article was to satirize this notion by driving it to its logical extreme."

Meh. I'll buy that. But I'm not sure I buy the editor's repeated argument that the publication was "never supposed to leave the campus." If that's the case, then one might question its point. Ah. I see...

Perhaps the saddest quote in the whole article is the conclusion, expecting a "higher standard of intellectualism" from Reed. I totally understand the need to express outrage, but really? If anything, this story will probably help with fund raising from ex-Reedies who celebrate the college as a place to push boundaries, albeit in this case, in a rather unimaginative and self-satisfied way.