Jim Perley Roast

Welcome to the final seminar of the year.

This week Dr. Perley will be telling is about his trip to Africa but first I would like to take the opportunity to continue a tradition. Many Professors in this room may not have realized it but when we roasted then outgoing professor Dr. Floyd Downs at a student banquet, oh so long ago , that what we really started was a tradition. And since the department so graciously and perhaps mistakenly granted me tenure last year, I can now inflict upon each of them a little of the roasting they inflicted upon me as each one retires or otherwise departs our company.

As many of you know Dr. Perley is about to become a Dean. Having obtained that status rather early in my life I would like to offer Dr. Perley some words of wisdom from one Dean to another. First I feel it is appropriate to take stock of Dr. Perley and his illustrious, or rather is it boisterous career, while at the College so that we might better understand what he brings to this new position of responsibility .

Dr. Perley arrived at this College the very epitomy of the angry yound man or the idealistic revolutionary but heartbroken as shown in this first slide. I think that if there were to be a movie about Dr. Perley’s life there are two actors who come to mind who could really do justice to the part;

James Dean and that accomplished character actor, Taz.

Both capture the very essence of what it means to be Perley.

James Dean by being dead completely captures the “Over my Dead Body” attitude Dr. Perley can bring to an issue that he feels passionate about. He has not always won those issues and so one has to wonder if the Dr. Perley might have a few cat genes in him what with their nine lives and all. Indeed, I sometimes wonder given Dr. Perley’s sometimes ‘intense’ encounters with all things administration if perhaps his ‘conversion’ to an administrator is the academic equivalent of the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. Sheesh...The concept of Jim becoming an administrator has prompted me to ask Dr. Varga to use his sophisticated geological equipment to see if a certain portion of the earth’s core has frozen over.

I await confirmation but I think the evidence I see before me would indicate that Satan is sporting an large down jacket at this time.