We Bombed Water Ballooned in New Haven

Oh, if only Virginia Tech had a ban on stage props, too! Or so goes the thinking at Yale, where the Dean of Student Affairs has now prohibited the use of realistic looking stage weapons in theatrical productions. One current production has thus been forced to replace metal swords with wooden ones. (Hat tip to The Volokh Conspiracy.)

So much for responsible, effective in loco parentis policies at the nation’s third oldest university. Perhaps Dean Trachtenberg is not much of a theater buff and so misunderstood such hoary stage clichés as “We killed them tonight,” “The audience was a bunch of stiffs,” and, of course, “The play bombed on opening night.” If there is any justice, however, and not least to the Virginia Tech real-life tragedy this decision trivializes, she will be “hoist with [her] owne petar” or at least with derisive roars of protest over such mindless, knee-jerk nonsense.