Enough Pontificating- We Have Bought Ourselves a Boat
Ryleigh Johnson | April 1, 2026
The newly purchased research vessel “SS Tax Write-Off” sails down the Swannanoa River at the Warren Wilson College (WWC) campus in Swannanoa, N.C. on April 1, 2026.
The Fall of 2026 will mark the birth of a new program at Warren Wilson College (WWC): the Hurricane Studies major. Sparked by the college’s experience with modern climate disasters during Hurricane Helene, this new program will act as a cutting-edge laboratory for exploring extreme weather events and resilience. However, it comes at a cost: the dissolution of WWC’s Public Humanities major, home to both history and philosophy, and the phasing out of all history and philosophy classes.
“Look, there are only maybe 10 people in the Public Humanities major,” an anonymous member of the administration said. “Will they be sad to see it go? Probably, but we’re really trying to shift to be a new, experimental kind of liberal arts college that has not so much liberal arts, but plenty of STEM. Well, we cut the math major too, so plenty of STE.”
The money traditionally allocated to this programming will be dispersed to fit the needs of the new major, including covering the cost of buying what one science professor deemed “an absolute necessity”: a research vessel, or a boat specifically outfitted for scientific research.
“Some might say that the Swannanoa River is not deep enough to necessitate purchasing this kind of equipment,” the professor, who declined to be named for fear of “the vicious undergraduates”, said. “In actuality, it’s just as frivolous as sitting around and thinking all day. At least this means we can take cool pictures once we find a big enough lake. You can’t really make headlines for staring at the walls of Jensen while an 18-year-old drones on about capitalism.”
Students within the Public Humanities program were shocked at the announcement, which they received at the same time as the rest of the campus. After the student body was informed of the administration’s decision, students in the major were told that they could be ‘quickly onboarded’ into the Hurricane Studies major, with the majority of their credits automatically transferring.
“I’m just really confused,” junior philosophy major Clara Shirley said. “I have no interest in Hurricane Studies. That’s not a real major. It’s just a ploy for attention. And supposedly, now we won’t have any history or philosophy classes either. Why even call us a liberal arts college?”
The WWC website does, for the time being, claim that “Warren Wilson is an innovative, radically inclusive, experiential liberal arts and sciences college committed to excellence and access.”
Emily Cobb, a senior double-majoring in political science and communications, was also stunned by the decision, expressing disappointment in the college’s “lack of balls”.
“They already cut my actual major,” Cobb said. “Like, I’m in a Public Humanities capstone class right now because they don’t know what to do with me. Now I have to go on a boat or something? Where are we going to drive it? Has anyone thought about this for more than three seconds? I left Florida for a reason...”
Shirley re-emphasized their disappointment but admitted that she feared this day would come.
“When Wilson was in the process of hiring their one new history faculty member, who somehow was supposed to run the entire history part of the Public Humanities major because we ‘can’t afford’ to hire more faculty even though every week we’re announcing another science major, I was worried,” Shirley said. “One candidate’s research was specifically on the history of agriculture. We were only going to get one history person, and they were proposing that the one person should focus on science. It’s bullshit.”
The administration has since released a statement to address student concerns and frustrations. A portion of that statement is excerpted below, with some additional context added from our editorial team:
“At Warren Wilson College, we love being at the cutting edge. From our EcoDorm that made it into the pages of the New York Times [before falling into disrepair] to our integrated International and Social Justice studies department [that has no dedicated professors], we love innovation. Our return on investment is clear and compelling: students definitely know why they are doing what they are doing, and believe us when we tell them that we won’t dissolve the program they’ve invested years of their life into studying. The Hurricane Studies major represents a new horizon for Warren Wilson, along with the ability to draw in potential students [because if they’re looking at the boat, they won’t notice all the mold]. We hope that students will partner with us to continue to enrich our beautiful mountain community, and those with questions can direct them towards error_emailnotfound@warren-wilson.edu.
Excelsior!