In spite of Zackary Cope’s lengthy explanation of his bad joke, it still smacks of inappropriateness for a psychology student to use it.
Cope himself even admits the joke is in bad taste and then, in a most puzzling way, he goes on a paragraph-after- paragraph train wreck of an attempt to defend it. In doing so, Cope cites the fact that professional comedians get away with such jokes all the time. Of course, Cope is in school to become a mental health professional, not a comedian. Comedians say all kind of insensitive things that psychologists should not. Comedians are not charged with the same responsibilities mental health professionals are and the fact that Cope is a psychology graduate student who apparently fails to realize this is very troubling to me.
In his original reply Cope accuses me of “not doing research,” and then I do 10 seconds of it and he accuses me of only “doing so for mud slinging.” Of course the only mud to be slung here was what he brought to the party, and besides that, Cope himself boastfully signed his original reply to me as a “Graduate Student” and it’s not like his field of study is a big national secret. He then states “I never made mention that I was a psychology student, you pulled that into the discussion.” Well Cope, I never made mention that I was an art student yet you have tried repeat edly to beat me over the head with that idea in a derogatory way since your first letter (and for the last time, I am not an art student).
Cope also tries to claim that I have insulted a whole department by stating that he is a psychology student who said something inappropriate. Using that same leap of logic, what then could be said of Cope’s repeated attempts to use “art school” and “art students” as the lower end of an intelligence spectrum? Cope’s attitude appears to be something to the effect of “Well . any art student could tell you this but Villanueva is even more stupid than that .” Oh and by the way, “sarcasm is so pass and art school of you.”
Although slightly reworded, this faithfully represents Cope’s attitude toward the art department here.
The arrogance has to be astounding, in my opinion and to make that fictitious departmental attack a focal point in his letter is truly an example of intellectual dishonesty. All that happened here was that Mr. Cope went running for cover and tried to hide himself behind an entire department and pull the wool over everyone else’s eyes. I would have respected him more if he had simply said “it was probably a mistake to bring that joke up and I am sorry.” Instead Mr. Cope offered a pathetic attempt at whitewashing the joke to try and make it seem as though I took a shot at all of the psychology professors on campus. To say that his letter was a transparent farce would be charitable at best.
– James Villanueva

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