“University Vice-Chancellor Roy Crawford is expected to make the announcement official next week, but he said he wanted to “let the students know first”
BREAKING the NEWS: Waikato University Sold to Saudi Arabia! by special reporter Ira Lastic
In a late-breaking story, Nexus has learned that the University of Waikato has secretly been sold to Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the King of Saudi Arabia. University Vice-Chancellor Roy Crawford is expected to make the announcement official next week, but he said he wanted to “let the students know first.” “It’s about having the best possible campus facilities for students,” Crawford said. “Selling the university gives us a much-needed cash injection, as well as firmly establishing our future as New Zealand’s leading university.” Nexus understands that secret negotiations to sell the University were afoot as far back as 2008, when University Council staff went on a quiet junket to the oil-rich nation. The terms have been hammered out in backroom deals ever since. Tertiary Education Minister Anne Tolley said the deal was a wonderful example of the free market delivering educational demands, and that she would have appreciated such an opportunity when she was at University. “Ever since National came to power, we’ve been exploring our tertiary privatisation avenues, to help take the debt load off the Government,” she said. “This is the first in
8
what we hope will be a series of successful private-public partnerships.” Crawford said that the University’s new owners’ first priority would be axing “unproductive” courses. “Under the new regime, only the Management school can be expected to go unchanged,” he said. The first step, he said, was disbanding the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and having the staff employed by other departments, or made redundant. “Sadly, there will be a number of voluntary redundancies. His Highness wishes to advise that he is ‘not made of money,” Crawford said. In addition to the structural changes, Nexus has learned that the entirety of Waikato University’s two campuses will become a de facto part of the Saudi state, and that full Saudi Sharia law will apply. “Obviously, the King is a gracious King, and he doesn’t expect us to make the full change immediately,” said Crawford. “We will be given until the end of the academic year to implement full Sharia, which is quite convenient, given it’s nearly winter. They only people likely to suffer are girls who insist on wearing inappropriate clothing, and they will be dealt to quite mercifully.”
Other changes will be the immediate segregation of the campus into single-sex schools, and the punishment of thievery and the like by amputation. Additionally, “blasphemous” subjects like Psychology and Religious Studies are to be immediately purged from the curriculum. Couples will only be allowed on campus if they are married, and women will have to wear full burquas and stay five feet behind men at all times. Members of other religions have been respectfully asked to “stay away from Saudi territory,” unless they convert to Islam. Christians will have an easier deal – they will be allowed to remain operating on campus as “dhimmi” organisations, subject to the condition of not being allowed to try and convert anyone. The administration of the student newsmagazine, Nexus, has also been revamped, with the former editorial staff leaving peacefully to be replaced by those approved by the Saudi Crown. The staff have since voluntarily relocated to re-education camps. The new staff, led by Managing Editor Ira Lastic, have sworn solemnly to bring in a “new era” of honest, reporting firmly based in Islamic religious principles of truth and justice.