Several weeks ago we covered possible picks by the WCC Student Life Office for women in the 2020-2021 prefect draft. Today we now cover men, with four picks open in men’s dorms to replace outgoing prefects Abel Cunningham, Joel Samec, Francis Langley and Mark Landry in St. Leo’s, Benedict’s, Scholastica’s and Isaac’s respectively.
As there are more spots opening up this coming year among men’s dorms than in women’s, IIT expects that picks from more than one class are likely, though, as usual, sophomores are the focus of the draft. As men’s dorms usually take a more active role than women’s in some aspects of WCC culture like dorm singing, for example, cultural characteristics are even more critical to the school’s decision in choosing a person to lead them.
However we’re also a little more unsure about who will even get picked at all, so we’re not even going to try covering all the possibilities. Instead, we’ll start with a few of the more, shall we say, interesting, choices.
William Albers
Let’s start with William Albers, also often known as Omnisicens. Most are pretty sure that he’s going to be made a Math tutor, like his roommate, or possibly a Latin tutor. But Sponny, his twin of sorts, first suggested him to us as a potential roommate last October and the idea was so incredibly interesting to our research staff that we launched a full investigation into the possibility.
Just imagine for the sake of it what dorm life would be like under William. Dorm singing for example. While William is both musical and occasionally risible by nature, it was the potential for dorm singing to be replaced by more academically invigorating “Dorm Euclid Nights” that really got us interested in him. Just imagine him saying this to his dorm: “Time for Euclid with our sister dorm kids. Who’s ready to demonstrate Proposition 17?”
Of course, there are some concerns that conversation would become too philosophical amidst his dorm for others to understand or that being in his dorm might provide an unfair advantage relative to others in any academic matter, but the IIT staff thinks this might rather aid a healthy competition and promote unity between the community life and academic life as everyone strives to catch up.
All in all we give William about a 40% chance of being picked, the actual probability being somewhat dependent on the school’s opinion of bowties, Dr. Grove of course recently having expressed doubts about his wearing them: “William has the amazing ability to think like Aristotle. Though I need to clarify: Aristotle never wore a bowtie.”
Theodore Benz
A Theo-run dorm would also be an interesting place, but with dorm knot-tying demonstrations instead of singing. We can only imagine it would be one of the strictest in existence, however, probably similar to a Jack Swindell militaristic dorm, but with the well-known Theoficiency in everything that goes on. Pushing the boundaries of curfew? Forget it! Checking out every other night? Better have a very good explanation. Know the dress code well as well, because you can bet that it’ll actually be enforced from now on.
It’s this fearlessness and initiative in upholding the rule of law that we think the school finds most interesting in Theo, but his practical knowledge, his being, well, Theo, that would make a Theo-run dorm even better than the “world’s best WCCLE”, the one, of course, he led as I.C. a year and a half ago. Administration, getting things done, getting rules followed, all will just smoothly → happen with Theo as a prefect and while some people might be concerned about the strictness of such a possibility, we think Theo is one of the school’s top candidates with around a 70% chance of being picked.
Jacob Zepp
We’ve already recounted Jacob Zepp’s life as published exclusively in the Compendium Andreii so we won’t give it all here. But his balanced life of culture, exercise, faith, and transcendent goods to link these all together which we discussed there place him as one of the most balanced of prefect candidates, someone you just would want to have on your team. Take a dorm raid, for instance. Imagine how fun it would be to have Jacob leading you on one. It would be a full-day event, starting out in the afternoon with watching a live Packers game, the only real football team, in the Grand Theatre, a pizza dinner, a discussion about culture, the real, and experiencing the real, and then a nice pump-up speech before you crush the enemy dorm and then go sing and join them in a true communitas around a campfire while the sister dorm looks on with a twinkle in all their eyes, and sings something in return.
Culture, pizza, and football are a way to summarize all this, and unless for some reason the Student Life office is under the control of factions and families this year unfriendly to the great Gleason clan of Wisconsin fame to which Jacob is currently allied, he should also be a near shoo-in for some dorm. For he was the one to finally bring civilization and culture to a previously barbarian Athanasius, to temper their passions by his reason (and watching football) and to feed their desire for community with pizza and philosophical discussion. Why would you not want Jacob Zepp, a man considered by most Church commentators as next in line to become the next Pope to be in charge of your dorm?
The only problem is that it seems Athanasius would be the dorm best fitting him, the one he would most want to be as he is currently residing there, but there isn’t likely to be an opening there for a prefect this coming year. Where exactly he would go then is a big open question, but with this we give him about a 50% chance of being picked given the conditions as they currently stand. Were John Henry to retire early for some reason, Jacob Zepp would be almost certainly picked, however, and would almost assuredly be placed over Athanasius.
Timothy Dominick
Timothy was present at one of our research staff sessions, so considering him a possible candidate already, just for his ease and fluent abilities with references to cultural and inter-class interactions, we asked him a few questions on the spot. The tone was set with the first. For when we asked him, seriously, “When would you enforce the rules?”, the response was quick, determined, and somewhat unexpected, just like Tim: “Which rules? I would enforce all the rubrics.”
These words might concern some people if Timothy were nominated as a prefect, as they might take them as further evidence of a suspected plan to make everyone at WCC Byzantine. But as IIT’s staff Average Muslim Liturgist reminded us, we shouldn’t be all that concerned as the Western Latin rite and even his KeeLite sect of Islam have rubrics to. All it shows is that Timothy has a cultured approach to the rules and the law, seeing them within a larger theological conceptualization, and will be unafraid to bring that understanding into practice within his rule as a prefect.
One other concern a few have quietly raised is Timothy’s possible connections to the Chicago mafia as Ernie Thee Bass wrote on last year. No one has yet disproven these original claims, and Timothy has not yet denied them as far as we know, but for some, these allegations could be a deal-breaker. Not for all of course, as some WCC students, feeling like we have a similar experience already here, might feel right at home with a more formalized criminal presence here at the school and jump as the chance for a dorm where there in “the family”.
We shall see. For now, we give him a 40% of being picked as we still, even though we interviewed him, know very little about what dorm life would be like under him, and he apparently wants it kept that way.
Everett Polinski
I have to embarrass our founder and president Everett here a little and declare him a candidate as well. Maybe he wouldn’t want the job though, given how busy he is running this website, our main business of ice trucking and all our other side businesses, but you have to think humor counts for something, right? Just think about it, please. Maybe a 20% chance but that’s more than 0, I think (unless Dr. Olsson knows differently).
IIT is looking into several other great candidates but for the interest of getting out this first look, we’ll have to stop here for the moment. Take our survey though and let’s see what you think about who would be the most interesting candidate, who would be your dream prefect, and who the school would in your opinion be most likely to choose:
Part III is coming soon about the selection process by which the school chooses prefects and some revelations about what power and knowledge prefects actually possess.