I came across a notice in the Collegian last Wednesday advertising a seven-hour long "Flak Catcher's workshop."

"Now what the hell," you might ask, "is a flak catcher, much less a workshop that teaches me to become one?"

Simple. A flak catcher is a sacrificial lamb, a hard-core professional bureaucrat who listens and says no to whomever wants whatever, regardless of how angry whoever is.

In the words of the advertisement, the "flak catcher's workshop is designed for persons who come under fire from customers or the public. Participants explore strategies for dealing with flak."

Tom Wolfe, author of "Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers," writes that the flak catcher's job ... is to catch flak for the number one man ... It doesn't matter what bureau they put him in.

"It's all the same. Poverty, Japanese imports, valley fever, tomato- crop parity ... G.I. alimony, the Pakistani quota, cinch mites, Tularemic Loa loa ... whatever you're angry about, it doesn't matter, he's there to catch the flak."

Penn State creates these people -- for an $85 fee, of course. Perhaps you're familiar with them.

In April of this year, for instance, police officers at Old Main locked out a group of African-American students who were seeking access to administrators. Some flak developed.

Catching it was then Director of University Safety David Stormer. He explained, that when University officials know the size and timing of a group's arrival there is considerably less concern about the situation's outcome and communication is more likely.(Collegian, 4/21/89)

In English, "Make an appointment."

If your need is a little less urgent, say, if you merely need a signature to add a class, you meet a secretary who, after listening to your request, sends you to a different office. On this secretary's wall hangs a poster which says, "I have one nerve left, and you're getting on it."

If you listen to flak-catchers, you're in for a hard time. You will never get an answer to your question, or worse, you will be sent to Shields.

Shields Building is the flak catcher's home turf. It's safe, like home base. There can be no arguments there, no harangues. A plastic shield has been erected between the flak-catcher and the person in need of help, preventing any kind of human interaction.

This is not the type of socialization we need at this University. What we need here is mau-mauing.

Pardon?

Mau-mauing. In his article, Wolfe used this term to describe how inner- city youths literally scared money out of City Hall bureaucrats in the late 1960s. If these gang members mau-maued well enough -- terrifying the flak catcher to the point that his face involuntarily twitched -- they received a government grant.

This was true, Wolfe claimed, because some folks in Washington D.C. believed the angriest, most terrifying ghetto youths had to be the ghetto leaders. And because they were ghetto leaders, they would know how to spend money to improve the "impoverished sector."

"The Blackstone Rangers," writes Wolfe, "were so bad, the Rangers so terrified the whole youth welfare poverty establishment, that in one year, 1968, they got a $937,000 grant from the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington."

Now, if mau-mauing is good enough to get your average terrifying street gang one million bucks, we shouldn't be teaching "flak catching" here at Penn State. We should be learning how to mau-mau.

Imagine ... Penn State turning out thousands of graduates every year who are so bad, so outrageously hot and dangerous, they can cut through the red tape of politics, business, world hunger, drug wars, anything they want, because they can mau-mau. They can scare any brainless, clueless, bonehead bureaucrat from here to Hawaii and back.

That graduate would be in high demand.

If Bryce Jordan knew how to mau-mau, he could squeeze dollars out of Harrisburg he never dreamed of.

The administration may quake at the idea of producing a generation of mau-mauing yuppie terrorists, and I understand that. It might be scary to have a bunch of mau-mauing students around during class-scheduling time, or when the Board of Trustees wants to discuss tuition increases, building classrooms on Pollock Fields, etc.

Regardless, I am a little amazed that Penn State is in the business of creating more flak catchers. We have enough of them already.