Change has not been this dumb since Scarlett Johansson decided it was her responsibility to educate everyone about the Obama campaign. Maybe this isn’t quite on the same level as Scarlett crooning “Yes we can!” all over YouTube, but last fall’s grad school restructuring plan seemed a little, well, unnecessary.

Maybe Provost Paul DeLuca, Jr. had just been sitting on radical revolutionary urges for one too many years, or maybe he’s just having a senior moment, but after code violations were found in the university’s research facilities, DeLuca decided it was time to “change the system, man” (note: this is not a direct quote from DeLuca, but it’s totally what he was thinking).

Anyway, like we discussed in January, DeLuca went all Che on us and decided the only way to fix grad school compliance issues was to add a new position and new office to oversee research management (yea, Che totally wanted that too, only in Guam or something). And, like we said in January, there was little reason to believe the proposed additions were necessary or justified, especially since the Academic Staff Ad Hoc Committee stated that the grad school could address research department issues without changing its basic structure.

Despite the fact that this call for change was kind of a fake-out, the Faculty Senate has now approved the addition of a vice chancellor for research, as well as the placement of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs outside of its previous location within the grad school.

So, it looks like you’ve swiftly destroyed the enemy (the evil power of the current grad school structure) and got yourself some brand spankin-new, revolutionary changes, Mr. DeLuca. Never mind that all you really did was move the school three inches to the left and rename someone’s title. It’s still change, dammit, and we’d just get bored if we didn’t switch things up once in a while, right?