To Tag - Poem by Raymond A. Foss

To tag, or not to tag: that is the problem:
Whether 'tis nobler in the whole to endure
The slings and arrows of disgruntled faculty,
Or to take steps against a claim of ownership,
And by refuting quell them? To dispose: to surplus;
No more; and by a disposal to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That equipment is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To dispose, to surplus;
To surplus: perchance to profit: ay, there's the rub;
For in that disposal process of purchase what revenue may come
When we have left Property Control,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of longevity;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The department's wrong, the faculty's contumely,
The pangs of despised control, the law's delay,
The insolence of staff and the spurns
That patient merit of the campus takes,
When they themselves might his quietus make
With a rusty key? who would workstudys bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after tagging,
The academic buildings from whose bourn
No tagging student returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than complain to management that we know not of?
Thus the inventory does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
Be all my property remember'd.

August 15, 2005 16:00 (with a whole lot of apologies to William Shakespeare… This is no Hamlet…)