Beet — Roger Rosenblatt

Why is Professor Peace Porterfield trying to save Beet College? His own wife, Livi, hates the place. The Board of Trustees, led by developer Joel Bollovate, has squandered the endowment. Debutante-cum-self-styled-poet Matha Polite, an indis-criminate radical with a four-student following, wants to bring the institution down. Akim Ben Ladin (ne Arthur Horowitz), a sweet-tempered terrorist hopeful and the college's only Homeland Security major (who lives in an off-campus cave), wants to blow up the school. Faculty members, when not concocting useless, trendy courses, fly at one another's throats. Not to mention that American higher education is already going down the tubes.

So why is Porterfield trying to save Beet?

Beats us.