{"id":262,"date":"2017-12-07T15:33:26","date_gmt":"2017-12-07T15:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/?p=262"},"modified":"2018-01-05T15:47:46","modified_gmt":"2018-01-05T15:47:46","slug":"school-of-missing-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2017\/12\/07\/school-of-missing-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"SCHOOL OF MISSING LETTERS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coming off the night shift at the subtext warehouse our drones were intrigued by the new sign at the entrance to Bowland North. Not the blaring adverts for Subway and Blackwell’s, but the cool, chunky, brushed steel lettering proclaiming something called ‘law school’. The fact that it was all in lowercase suggested that the infamous Capital Letter Thieves were again at large. Readers will recall how in recent times the Learning Zone and the Ruskin Centre suffered from their depredations, with letters disappearing overnight to sometimes comic effect. Were they up to their old tricks again?<\/span>
\nAs we tucked into our post-shift sweet tea and dripping sandwiches, we pondered on the identity of the missing letter. Could the sign be indicating the ‘Flaw school’, an extension of PPR containing a new Department of Refutations, dedicated to exposing the faulty reasoning behind current university policies (UA92 springs to mind)? Perhaps it’s the ‘Claw school’, suggesting a concentration of the university’s mushrooming enterprise units, slavering to compete in the cut-and-thrust world of marketised HE. Maybe a fearfully symmetrical twin is planned for next-door Bowland Main, the ‘Tooth school’.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another suggestion was the rather esoteric ‘Glaw school’, which had the more unlettered members of the collective tapping into their search engines to find a meaning. ‘Glaw’, according to the Urban Dictionary, is ‘a word with no meaning, used as a response to a question to annoy someone’. Clearly, any modern university worth its salt needs this function but as it was already admirably fulfilled by the Human Resources Division, it was deemed to be superfluous.<\/span><\/p>\n

After much discussion, a consensus was eventually reached. A search of the subtext archives revealed that the place we now know as Bowland North was originally called ‘Lonsdale’, famous for the sybaritic lives of its inhabitants and known to all as ‘The Party College’. According to legend, the gods got so angered by their debauchery that one night they scooped up all the inhabitants and deposited them in the remotest region of Hades known as Alexandra Park, where they remain to this day. And it is in their memory that, employing the Glasgow street slang for cannabis (and other things), the space shall henceforth be known as… the ‘Blaw school’.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming off the night shift at the subtext warehouse our drones were intrigued by the new sign at the entrance to Bowland North. Not the blaring adverts for Subway and Blackwell’s, but the cool, chunky, brushed steel lettering proclaiming something … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[178,169,168],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-issue-170","tag-law-school","tag-signs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99sHo-4e","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":260,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2017\/12\/07\/immovable-type\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":0},"title":"IMMOVABLE TYPE","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"December 7 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"And another thing about that lowercase Law School sign... Lancaster seems to have long had an unwritten rule (see what we did there?) that buildings should not have department names engraved on them, not least because there seems to be a tip in the 'Modern VC's Playbook for Keeping Departments\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "news"","block_context":{"text":"news","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1224,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2020\/03\/27\/letters-28\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":1},"title":"LETTERS","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"March 27 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear subtext, As the most recent Head of Department of the late School of Independent Studies, I am assuming I can consider inviting myself to authorise my own access to the University's IT and email? John Wakeford *** Dear subtext, Reading the letters in subtext 192, I was struck by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "letters"","block_context":{"text":"letters","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/letters\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":919,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2019\/03\/01\/letter\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":2},"title":"LETTER","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"March 1 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear subtext, Roger Kemp is right. Please use a font that can be read. Michael Heale","rel":"","context":"In "letters"","block_context":{"text":"letters","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/letters\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":578,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2018\/05\/24\/letters-13\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":3},"title":"LETTER","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"May 24 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear subtext, Xin ch\u00fac m\u1eebng, to the writer of the Saigon evacuation piece!\u00a0 Actually stayed at my desk to finish reading it, guffawing all the way! Keep it up, colleagues Jackie H","rel":"","context":"In "letters"","block_context":{"text":"letters","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/letters\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1504,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2021\/11\/11\/letters-32\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":4},"title":"Letters","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"November 11 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear subtext, In response to the letter at the end of the recent subtext, I googled the Lancaster list. Many of the more recent names I had never heard of. It would be helpful if they put 'Dead' by the name of those who had died. Who has currently held\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "letters"","block_context":{"text":"letters","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/letters\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":744,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2018\/09\/13\/subtext-annual-review-2017-18\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":5},"title":"SUBTEXT ANNUAL REVIEW: 2017-18","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"September 13 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Letters, contributions, & comments: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk Back issues: http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/about 'Like' us on Facebook: www.facebook.com\/lusubtext To receive subtext via email, subscribe at wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/about In this issue: hello again, appeal for volunteers, reflections and predictions including: printers, Gary Neville, legal action, University Court, attendance monitoring, power grabs, fascism, disabilities, assistant deans, working at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "editorial"","block_context":{"text":"editorial","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/editorial\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions\/263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}