Osler's Razor

Imperative Four of Baylor's Vision 1930, encouraging the development of mediocre academic programs in selected areas, failed miserably. The areas of study chosen for further development in 1918 were (1) the study of squirrels, grackles and crickets; (2) an interdisciplinary degree in “Human People and Thinking,” which was specially designed to appeal to dimmer-witted students; and (3) a “Super-Smart!” program for the brightest students, children of Baylor donors and those whose names sounded similar to those of large donors.

The first program was abandoned after a period of three months. At that time, Waco had an abundance of squirrels, but Grackles and Crickets were unknown in central Texas. The first semester, three mandatory classes were offered in the fledgling program: The first involved rounding up wild squirrels to be caged within the Feral Center, the second involved the importation of grackles to the community for further study, and the third required students to trap large numbers of crickets in Kansas and Oklahoma and bring them to Waco. On their face, all three were successful. Within a month, resourceful students had filled the Feral Center with nearly 400,000 wild squirrels, an unprecedent zoological event which wreaked havoc with basketball practices. Unfortunately, no provision had been made for containing the squirrels once they were in the arena, nor for cleaning up after their voluminous waste. The resulting disaster was especially ruinous for the basketball team, which lost every home game save an unusual contest against Ohio State, whose uniforms at the time featured a large and appealing (to squirrels) Buckeye.

Similarly, the plan to bring in grackles and crickets led to disaster. Baylor had no biology department, and the Professors of Fashion Merchandising put in charge of the program had theorized that the grackles would eat the crickets, the crickets would eat the squirrels, and the squirrels would eat the grackles, creating a closed ecosystem. This plan contained several miscalculations (for example, there was no basis for the conclusion that crickets would be capable of killing and eating a squirrel), and the grackle and cricket populations quickly grew out of control in the complete absence of natural predators. For months, the citizens of Waco were besieged from above and below by the birds and bugs. The crickets quickly consumed nearly all plant life in the area, while the grackle birds destroyed everything else.

Many techniques were attempted to relieve the city of its newfound critter problems. Sharpshooters were hired at first. While they had some success in thinning out the birds, they were much less successful at killing crickets, even with very small gauge ammunition. Next, the river was allowed to flood the area, but this too failed to do much more than cause additional damage, and it was found that squirrels are actually quite talented swimmers.

Finally, men in gigantic grackle costumes were hired to lead the birds out of town, but this had no hope of success and only resulted in the publication of embarrassing photographs being published in the Dallas Morning News.

The crisis was finally averted by the swift action of Governor Bill Daniel. Though not technically the governor of the State of Texas, Daniel possessed a military uniform and a white horse which he used to convey the appearance of great authority. Hearing of the Cricket/Grackle problem, he rushed to Waco in his trademark white hat. For four days Governor Bill negotiated with the leaders of the crickets and the grackles, finally coming to a compromise which would be amenable to all involved: The grackles and the crickets would be allowed to reside unmolested in Waco for two months a year, provided that the crickets and grackles did not choose the same time period. This compromise still holds today, and the influx of crickets and grackles thankfully do not overlap.

The Human People and Thinking and Super-Smart programs were equally unsuccessful. The Human People and Thinking program, which included classes in “Thinking,” “Moving Around,” and “Drinking” was never accredited by the Southern Association of Baptist Schools, Colleges & Universities. The underlying problem was that the skills taught proved difficult to test other than through observation by the instructor, making the provision of final exams nearly impossible. Similarly, the “Super-Smart!” program was a disaster. Its first director, former scholarship winner Barg Argthorn, refused to leave his home in Santa Fe and purported to run the program through a series of directions sent to underlings through the mail. These directions quickly revealed Argthorn to be in possession of a severe drinking problem, and the program was suspended when word filtered back to the administration that the students in the “Super-Smart!” program were spending the majority of their time working on a marijuana farm located on the campus of the University of Texas—Austin.