MIT is famous for the wide variety of experimental courses, programs, and initiatives on offer during its annual Independent Activities Period (IAP). This January has been no exception as social science researchers set out to answer the burning question:

Can MIT’s janitors do a better job creating a harmonious community of Inclusion and Belonging compared to MIT’s flailing DEI ideological complex? And can MIT’s DEI staffers at least keep the bathrooms clean?

The idea of asking hard working janitors and overpaid DEI apparatchiks to swap jobs for a month came up when members of the ICEO office were hiding out during the pro-Hamas demonstrations watching I Love Lucy reruns.

“I’ve got a swell idea,” said the Deputy Assistant Dean of Not-My-Fault. “If folks aren’t happy with the job we’re doing just because students are at each other’s throats and we’ve driven MIT’s reputation into the toilet, how about we give some other smarty-pants group a shot?”

To make it a fair test they asked Chat-GPT to search through MIT’s employment records to see which department was staffed with employees that had the most comparable IQs and career accomplishments. It came back suggesting the cleaning staff.

MIT’s janitors jumped at the chance to put their feet up on their desks and spout platitudes for a month, as long as the DEI staff took over their lavatory purification duties. Nobel Prize winning experimental economist Esther Duflo was invited to judge the results and will report her findings in early February.

Story suggested by the Famous Potato