The Aries Club, Part II

Serious Matters, a new opinion series, will take on a variety of the University’s most pressing issues, real and imagined. As Oscar Wilde so wisely pointed out, “It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously.”

Faculty and alumni alike have responded with enthusiasm to new developments in the Aries Club’s plans for the Carolina Faculty-Athlete Center for Excellence, details of which were unveiled earlier this week.

The blueprint for the center includes a 13,600 square-foot Strength and Conditioning Center, featuring weight and cardio equipment, a massage therapy studio, and — at the request of classics department faculty, Carolina’s truest Olympians — a discus patch and a stadium for chariot-racing.

“I can’t think of a better way to bring the literature and culture of ancient Greece to life for our students,” said Chris McMahon, chairman of the classics department.

“Students will have the opportunity to come watch us engage in a pankration, anoint ourselves with olive oil and even scrape it off with a strigil.”

Charles James and Arthur Goldberg, both professors of religious studies, agreed that faculty-on-faculty competition will help solve intellectual problems within their department by providing faculty with an outlet for frustrations.

“In such a small department, it’s all too easy for simmering resentments to build up. A few good take-downs and chokes could solve a lot of problems,” James said.

Goldberg also sees opportunity for reconciliation through athletic competition.

“It would certainly settle the debate I’ve been having for years with this schmuck in the department who’s an incompatibilist and thinks indeterminism holds no hope of free action,” Goldberg explained.

No expense will be spared in outfitting the new facility, whose plans also boast a 30,000-square-foot Academic Support Center. This wing of the center will house classrooms for private tutoring, a state-of-the-art computer lab and extra office space.

Sharon Goodwin, associate professor of English, was especially pleased to learn of the new offices.

“I’m pretty sure my office has asbestos in it, and the ceiling leaks when it rains. Now I’ll have an attractive, non-carcinogenic place to meet students,” Goodwin said, adding that she is “also really excited about the free Xerox machines … I thought I was going to have to format my final exams in six-point typeface.”

In the center’s new Blue Zone, the Aries Club’s most devoted patrons will be as close to faculty-athlete action as they can get without actually wearing a helmet. Prices for suites and loges range from $2,500 to $50,000 per year, not including the cost of tickets to individual sporting events.

“Given their long-winded lectures, I always suspected my econ professors would do well in an endurance sport like track and field,” remarked donor Dusty Dibbert, a 1981 UNC graduate who oversees the Charlotte offices of Fraternitas Partners, LLC, a New York-based hedge fund.

Now, Dibbert and other generous sponsors of the center will be able to watch the competition from the comfort of the climate-controlled Premium Blue Zone.

“I have a feeling my old profs will cream the poli sci department,” Dibbert said. “Especially in the long-distance races.”