ATLANTA (RPT) - Grappling with challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, several universities have informed professors that they are no longer allowed to have children while being professors. “It’s become clear to us that it’s just not viable for professors to have children,” one university administrator told RPT, “Really, we are just formalizing what has been an informal policy for decades.” University administrators claim that this policy is responsive to the challenges professors are facing in the time of COVID-19, “they complained about how hard it is to homeschool while teaching remotely, and this solves that problem,” said one department chair.
Professors are confused and upset by the new policy. “I have 2 kids and another on the way,” an Assistant Professor told RPT, “when I asked my chair what I was supposed to about my kids, he told me to ‘figure something out’ if I wanted to keep my job.”
The new restrictions against professors having children were born from a growing need to provide individual attention to students who are feeling anxious and uncertain during this difficult time. “If you decide to become a university professor, your students are your children,” said the president of a prominent American university, “Professors are the new clergy, it’s like being a nun or monk - except you’re allowed to have sex. Just not for procreation. And not with your students; that would be incest.”
“Really the choice is up to them,” the university president continued, “We’re not telling professors that they can’t have kids, we’re just saying that if they do have kids then they can’t keep their jobs.” He went on to explain, “if they don’t like this policy, there are hundreds of asexual and lesbian tiktokers on #darkacademia fantasizing about being childless professors who would take their jobs in a heartbeat.”
