I feel it is my duty as a member of the award-winning — myself not included — College Heights Herald staff to quest for higher education reform.

My target for this Valentine’s Day Special Section: physical education. It seems Western Kentucky University lags a little behind the times.

Oh sure, the Preston Center offers a slew of classes designed to get lazy people — myself included — off their rears. They come with flashy titles like “Butts and Guts,” “Kick Boxing” and “Extreme Cycling.”

But America is on the verge of another exercise movement… strip aerobics. That’s right. Exotic dancing is the new trendy way to lose weight, tone muscles and do whatever else fit people do.

According to an online magazine article by exotic dance instructor Fawnia Mondey, this “strip clothing and shed pounds” movement began in Los Angeles in the summer of 1999. Strip aerobics consist of medium-intensity workouts with little to no impact. Whatever that means.

Clearly, this Sexercise is the panacea for America’s growing obesity, and Western should add it to its general education requirements under the health and wellness category.

The trend has caught on overseas already. The Basement, a dance club in London, is offering two tracts of exotic dance classes: dancing and pole-dancing.

The London firms’ classes offer students this promise: “Build up your self esteem.” After all, what’s more beneficial to a woman’s ego than an exercise program based on a career that’s scientifically proven to encourage balding, overweight 45-year-old men to stuff sweaty dollar bills down her clothes?

Think about the possibilities. President Ransdell could take Western’s strip teasing students with him to the General Assembly the next time he needs to beg funding. No state representative or senator would cut funding to such an exhibitionist school, unless they were seeking reelection.

Sweetheart Pick O’ the Week

•The WKU Horticulture Club will be selling roses today and Friday in the Environmental Science and Technology Building. They’re $2 for a single rose and $20 a dozen.

What would Hollan Holm, at [email protected], do if he had a million dollars? Two columns at the same time, man.