The Back-to-School Wars: A Dispatch from Occupied Academia
A satirical look at back to school shopping from the front lines of the culture war
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Welcome to edition 2 of the satirical fiction series based on today’s reality. For further context, and to help me stay in the top 100 rising health politics Substacks, you can read edition 1. It’s based on bonkers truth, too.
Today’s post is inspired by CNN reports, this handy dandy handout from the Institute of Education Sciences (it claims to be non-partisan on its website-our tax dollars hard at work), and the Whitelash “study” I’ve been reading and writing about.
Dispatch from Occupied Academia - The Battle of the Backpacks, A Report from the Front
Date: 22 Aug 2025
Location: The teacher’s table in the cafeteria at the Kimberlé Crenshaw DiAngelo Kendi Definitely the Most Extra Anti-Racist High School Ever and Spike Lee Joint
Reporter: [Redacted for Security]
Status: Still locked in the Consensus Trap, but the walls are cracking.
On the Front Lines
The situation here remains tense. With the Trump administration’s recent measures draining supply lines for the Diversity (tentatively rebranding to Belonging) Curriculum, morale among the faculty has taken a sharp decline. Transgender athletes, once paraded as vanguard heroes of the New Equity Order, are now under sustained fire from Washington. The officers—Diversity (Belonging) Officers, that is—are rattled, and their once-confident proclamations of “progress” have been reduced to hurried whispers over oat milk lattes, generating considerable high velocity spittle.
Perhaps most destabilizing of all is the recent discovery that Conservative parents have established their own supply chain. At great personal risk, they are parachuting in contraband backpacks filled with illicit materials: yellow No. 2 pencils, spiral notebooks without equity disclaimers, and—most dangerously of all—a pocket Constitution for every child.
The teachers continue to refer to the pupils as “their children,” but the word is being used in the colonial sense. Parents are spoken of only as a nuisance to be managed, like weeds intruding on a carefully landscaped DEI garden. The arrival of outside supplies has predictably struck directly at this sense of ownership, causing panic and recriminations among the rank and file.
I managed to acquire copies of both competing supply lists before administrators declared them “classified.”
Conservative Parent Supply Drop (Operation Back-to-Basics):
1 Pocket Constitution per student, dog-eared at the First Amendment
A calculator unmodified by “equity adjustments”
Three-ring binders (rings not yet dismantled as symbols of systemic oppression)
Ballpoint pens (blue, black, or red—red to be deployed only when correcting)
Yellow No. 2 pencils representing “toxic optimism” and filled with “problematic carbon,” insurgent’s tool and weapon of mass correction.
A healthy lunch, free from gluten-free ideological constraints
Diversity (Belonging) Office Supply List (Operation Rainbow Bastion):
1 Equity Tracker Notebook for daily microaggression logs
3 packs of rainbow markers plus a reparations surcharge pack
A collapsible safe space tent (for deployment during lunchtime debates or tactical encirclements.)
Digital passcodes granting access to the New Vocabulary (parents barred)
Emergency tissues for exposure to “problematic” ideas
Meanwhile, new rulebooks are being issued to maintain ideological order. The old student handbook has been replaced with a 400-page glossary of permitted and forbidden terms. “Homework” is now “self-directed decolonial praxis.” “Parents” must be referred to as “Community Stakeholders, Class II.” “Boys” and “girls” have been struck through entirely, replaced with “competitive hormonal clusters.”
Special Meeting: Tactical Response
This morning, the deputy deputy principal Juniper “Junie” Mandate convened an emergency assembly of Diversity Officers, teachers, and select cafeteria monitors in the multipurpose room. The mood was grave. The agenda was clear: how to repel the constitutional insurgency of the interloping “community stakeholders class II.”
I observed the proceedings from a concealed position behind a stack of confiscated Dr. Seuss books.
The plan, as outlined by the deputy deputy principal Junie Mandate, was threefold:
Verbal Suppression Squads – Teams of teachers are to intercept students before they can open their pocket Constitutions, flooding them with rapid-fire DEI (Belonging) jargon, designed to blur vision and overwhelm comprehension.
Safe Space Encirclement – Mobile collapsible safe-space tents will be deployed to encircle any child attempting to reference the Bill of Rights. Once encircled, the child must recite their gender identity until “reintegrated” into consensus.
Operation Unicorn Pen – Any contraband school supplies marked with “problematic” language (e.g., “manila folders,” “master notebooks”) will be seized and ritually corrected with rainbow ink, thereby neutralizing their ideological threat.
Finally, the deputy deputy principal Mandate announced the formation of a new elite unit: The Anti-Community Stakeholders, Class II Resistance Brigade—staff trained to issue prolonged sighs, call emergency assemblies, and demand restorative justice circles whenever a parent dares attend a school board meeting armed with evidence, logic, or God forbid, a copy of the Constitution.
The staff responded with muted applause, though several appeared shaken. Rumors swirl that some teachers secretly covet the forbidden pencils, attracted by their sharpness and the illicit thrill of graphite.
Overall, faculty morale is low. Administrators have doubled down with mandatory lunchtime chants and pre-class “identity acknowledgments,” but the crack in the façade widens daily. The arrival of outside supplies—unsanctioned, un-woke, and decidedly constitutional—threatens to embolden the young.
We remain in enemy territory, but for the first time, whispers of rebellion echo through the hallways. The Consensus Trap is faltering. The occupation is not as secure as once believed.
God willing, the pencils will hold.
The pencils are sharp, the consensus is cracking, and rebellion is in the air. Subscribe to join our front-line coverage of education under siege.
Housekeeping
It’s back-to-school time all around. Legislators have been contacted about sponsoring accreditation reform, but it will be next month when it’s time to pick up speed.
Recent dog walking turned up another box turtle. It has been a banner year for these reptiles. This one was not so pretty as the last one.
We have also seen many fairy rings of mushrooms and more butterflies than you can shake a stick at. We even managed to get close to a pair of pipevine swallowtails. They didn’t seem to mind Poppet’s sniffing at all.
On the Bookshelf
Reading has again happened, but not as much as I would have liked. More frustrating is that the time for serious note-taking is not presenting itself. I have listened to several of these books more than once, but I don’t want to take them off the list until I’ve fully marked them for notes! I might be getting in my own way here, but if no one else is going to do it, I guess I have to, right?! right?
Accreditation on the Edge: Challenging Quality Assurance in Higher Education by Susan D. Phillips
The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan
The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong by Rebecca Haw Allensworth
Moral Calculations: Game Theory, Logic and Human Frailty by Laszlo Mero
The New Know-nothings: The Political Foes of the Scientific Study of Human Nature by Morton Hunt
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard by Marc Brettler, Carol Newsom, Pheme Perkins
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of the New Elite by Musa al-Gharbi
“Whatever It Is, I’m Against It”: Resistance to Change in Higher Education by Brian Rosenberg
Your Consent Is Not Required by Rob Wipond. ←— READ THIS BOOK!
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About
Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of Tennessee. What I found instead was a program saturated in Critical Theories ideology—where my Buddhist practice was treated as invalidating and where dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy was met with hostility. After witnessing how this ideology undermined both ethics and the foundations of good clinical practice, I made the difficult decision to walk away.
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to exposing the ideological capture of psychology, higher education, and related institutions. My investigative writing has appeared in Real Clear Education, Minding the Campus, The College Fix, and has been republished by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. I also speak and consult on policy reform to help rebuild public trust in once-respected professions.
Occasionally, I’m accused of being funny.
When I’m not writing or digging into documents, you’ll find me in the garden, making art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.