Off-Third: De Blasio’s NYU course to investigate the art of falling short

Start spreading the news! Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that he will teach at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service in the spring.

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Jemina McEvoy

FIle photo: Bill de Blasio at an NYU event on April 26, 2017. (Jemima McEvoy for WSN)

Benjamin Meppen, Contributing Writer

Off-Third is WSN’s satire column.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, now 61 years young, is fresh off of a failed congressional race and a steaming hot pile of New York City garbage of a mayoral run. We know him as an outsider, a politician, a City Hall bigwig who doesn’t know the plights of us Greenwich-Village-native NYU students. He doesn’t understand the problems we have with living in New York City, primarily because he created most of these problems just during his time as mayor.

Upon hearing of his teaching stint New Yorkers began to laugh, one saying, “He can’t even keep his own campaign promises, how is he going to grade papers and cancel classes every week like the rest of the faculty?”

It is no secret that de Blasio has a stained reputation. He famously had an approval rating of just over 3% — data per WikiLeaks — at the end of his last mayoral term and reportedly ran for congress last summer “just because he wanted to wear his suits again” and “missed saying big words in front of a microphone.” All of these quotes come from his former chief of staff, a Gallatin first-year majoring in dog training and Semitic studies.

It has been reported that NYU reached out to de Blasio to teach the courses “Pandering for Idiots 101” and “How to Lose an Election in One Easy Step” but those courses have since been reserved for famed adjunct, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He was thrilled to step aside and let Clinton take the job, stating, “Anything I can do, she can do better, please don’t whack me!”

All of this aside, the question of how de Blasio will find his place in the NYU community remains. Coming off of an exhilarating seven-year term of allowing crime to spike, the number of unhoused individuals to rise and New York City school systems to plummet, how will he improve our school? The answer is simple. He will need to use his Big Bird-esque stature to win over the affection of his students and the NYU community as a whole.

The former mayor has the unique ability to point to an issue on the street or in City Hall and say, “I did that!” or, “Yeah, sorry about that one, I never got around to it.” These unique qualities make up the man who will soon be a titan in the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

There is already a waitlist to get into de Blasio’s classes, meaning that there are lists of people waiting to get into the classroom and protest de Blasio’s presence at NYU.

Even though the overwhelming majority of students do not know who the former mayor is, they reportedly don’t want him on campus “just because of his face, I mean look at it. Ugh.”

Regardless of how NYU students feel, de Blasio is coming to campus and coming soon. Get ready everyone, because just like Santa, he’s coming to town and he’s going to bring presents. (And by presents, I mean an unbelievably unlikeable face and personality.)

Off-Third is WSN’s satire column. WSN’s Opinion section strives to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented in the Opinion section are solely the views of the writer.

Contact Benjamin Meppen at [email protected].