I respectfully declined an offer to write a column for last weekend’s family weekend section. I didn’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but give me another chance.

What would I say to NIU parents? I shudder to think. I’d like to let parents in on NIU’s other agenda. NIU would like students to leave the university with much more than a degree. I’m surprised the university doesn’t do a better job of promoting its efforts. Parents are getting much more for their buck than they bargained for.

If I were in charge of public relations for NIU the following would be a letter I’d write to parents.

Dear NIU Parent:

Welcome to Northern Illinois University in beautiful Bejing, I mean DeKalb.

We think you’d be pleased to know that NIU students are getting much more than a typical education in their respective fields.

We are very pleased that the NIU community is made up of a wide variety of students of different faiths, backgrounds, cultures and values. However, with much regret we feel it is our duty to identify a few problems, many of which are your fault.

Your son/daughter will naturally be assumed to be racist, sexist, homophobic and an otherwise narrow-minded individual. This unfortunate conclusion is based on several factors: education, social class, religion, etc. It’s probably largely due to the child-rearing methods you employed which produced these fascist, misogynist, anti-intellectual little thugs.

It is our moral duty to perform an educational lobotomy on the helpless little ruffians. We’ll have to start from scratch by removing any trace of traditional values left in your child.

Once this process is completed we’ll promptly begin the process of conforming your children into happy and productive little left-wingers.

Your son/daughter needs to be “re-educated” and “sensitized” to radical positions. Yes, these are euphemisms and not very good ones. Actually, we won’t rest until all NIU students think like us, intellectual and free-thinking individuals.

We have several methods of employing our goals. We’ll try the legal ones first.

In order to provide this brand of education we need employees who already “think like us.” This is a difficult task since a university is constantly hiring new employees. However, we can apply litmus tests to incoming employees to determine their political ideology, subjecting them to our standards.

Faculty tenure is a nasty little problem we face. It sometimes becomes difficult for us to censor those who don’t share our mindbending passion. However, we feel we’ve created a climate hostile enough to shut them up for the most part.

Students are easier to shut up; they need to play by our rules. The student press is another problem. It’s difficult to instill the same fears into the right-wing little cretins. They constantly bicker about the Constitution and freedom of speech, both of which we’re committed to as long as they support our views.

The best method for dealing with the press is by allowing uninformed students to carelessly throw around words like “racist” and “sexist” while we silently approve.

For African-American and Latino parents, we’d lie to warn you that your children have less than a 50 percent chance of graduating, but it’s not our fault. It must be upbringing again, but there’s no need to be dismayed. We have plenty of minority organizations for them to join coupled with a wide variety of cultural courses, so don’t come screaming to us if Junior doesn’t graduate.

Thank you for your time, (send money)

Northern Illinois University