Area Student Explains ILR Major in Only 97 Words, Shattering Former Record

CARPENTER HALL—Mechanical Engineering student Jon Morrison ‘21 has shattered all previous recorded attempts to describe the undergraduate major in “Industrial and Labor Relations” by explaining it in under 100 words.

In an email sent to his younger cousin considering applying to ILR, Morrison outlined the various aspects of the universally confusing degree.

“ILR is all over the place. It stands for Industrial and Labor Relations, I think. It was established to support unions and labor in the 1940s, but undergrads don’t care about that too much anymore. If you are interested in finance, you call it an ‘applied social sciences degree’ and spin your business minor to sound impressive. If you are interested in HR, you don’t really explain it. If you’re actually interested in labor, you complain about the corporate agendas of everyone else in the school. Kids who actually do the course readings go to law school.”
(J. Morrison email)

The question of what ILR is has been stumping employers, alumni, and current students alike since the school’s founding in 1945. The previous shortest answer to this question came in 1967 when Government major Robert Tully ’68 managed to explain the major in just 149 words.

In a press conference Monday morning, the ILR school announced that it would officially adopt Morrison’s description of the major. “The Morrison email changed the game around here,” stated Professor Marcus Reynolds, the ILR School’s Associate Dean for External Relations. “We’re finally starting to understand it.”

The new description has already replaced the actual real-life seven-minute video previously used to explain the major on the official ILR website.

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