Gorbert Brandon from the political science department at NMU introduced a new class in a public forum last week for the winter semester. 

“I’m very excited about this,” Brandon said. “I spent a lot of time developing this class, and I think it’ll bring students deeper into the field of political science than ever before.”

The class, which is now required for all political science majors and minors, will be at the 400 level and worth four credits. The course was described by Brandon as the department’s most ambitious class to date. He added that they had to work closely with the AV department in readying many of the materials. 

Students enrolled in the class should expect to take on a very unique type of learning. The class will meet once a week, running for three hours from 3 to 6 in the morning.

Every day students will watch a video collage of random natural disasters, the Vietnam war and previously unseen reels from the Russian Gulag as a 97-year-old man gives a lecture on why the human race is doomed to implode on itself either from global warming, nuclear warfare or every single person on the planet giving in to the overwhelming stress of existence and going insane. 

“We decided to have it start so early so students will be at their most emotionally vulnerable,” Brandon said. “They will then reenter society as dawn arises, making them ponder if the future will ever be as hopeful as the sunrise.”

Brandon went on to say that the class is graded on a pass-or-fail system, with students being failed and berated only if they begin to cry at any time during the three-hour period. In addition to these topics, Brandon will have one on one meetings with students where he tells them exactly how their entire world will be destroyed by nuclear warfare while making unblinking eye contact for the entire three hours, as well as reading about how nobody in history has convinced the world’s governing institutions to stop impaling the world with multi-million dollar drills just for the pleasure of seeing oil leak out of the earth like blood from a stab wound.

“What I’m really doing,” Brandon said, “is taking the ideas presented by Slavoj Zizek regarding ideology, Mark Fisher’s ideas about capitalist realism, and the blood-curdling fear I feel every day when I watch our world leaders play chicken with nightmare devices that could send us back to the stone age with the push of a button, and channeling them all into one class.”

Brandon went on to say that he worked with his therapist to dig through every struggle he has experienced in his life, and see how that relates to the stress felt from NATO interference in other countries, the continued failures of all nations to band together and create the best world for human beings and from listening to his friend try to argue that Ben Shapiro is a qualified political scientist.

“I hear a lot of students get into political science because they want to learn more about government or why their political views are cool,” Brandon said, “But then they get depressed when they learn how awful we are as a human race. They’re right. That’s exactly what political science is. I only smile now to hide the pain. I have literally no faith left in humanity.”