Punctuation out the door in wake of online midterm snafus

Check your inboxes, Medill freshmen. Steve Duke is coming to the rescue.

"All,Relax.Clearly, there has been a system problem with the midterm. I'll talk to Academic Technologies tosee what went wrong and we'll reschedule this whole thing.
Steve Duke. [sic]"

This, the first of two e-mails Duke sent out after students couldn't complete Friday's Blackboard-administered midterm, was dashed off in such a flash at 2:27:01 p.m. that the defective spacebar key on his BlackBerry clearly was no concern next to the need of his anxious students.

"Oh my God, I hate you, Steven Duke. Like, I stayed in last night to get an A, not a B!" wailed Medill freshmen after the e-mails arrived.

Some, it so happens, had successfully completed the online midterm and gotten good scores.

In his second e-mail, evidently one written with the use of a keyboard endowed with a spacebar, Duke says he isn't sure how he'll reconcile the wishes of students who scored well and don't want to retake the exam with those who couldn't take it at all.

Let's not even think about the inundation of e-mails deluging Duke's inbox. But the controversy is sure to touch off a battle royale among students dissatisfied with 94% scores who want to retake it and those who cakewalked their way to a perfect 100.

Hopefully all this will be resolved when next week's guest, or perhaps professor replacement, Dean John Lavine decides that since we're all really "Medill consumers," we should be satiated with perfect scores.