FREDONIA – This Monday, April 21, 2025, the State University of New York at Fredonia released a statement about associate professor, Elmer Ploetz.

This statement was in collaboration with NASA, who also released a statement on Mars.

“There is life on Mars! In the form of one professor.”

The statement revealed that the real Elmer Ploetz is in space, and has been there since November 8th, 2016. His real self has been hard at work on his nonprofit, The Buffalo Hive.

Ploetz, in a Facebook post, in Mars, said, “I guess the jig is up. It’s true, I’ve been up here in space for some time now. I like it up here a lot better than I assume I would down there.”

Ploetz’s departure from Earth aligns perfectly with the 2016 Presidential Elections. Somehow, sources do confirm that he voted from space in 2020 and 2024.

So, if Elmer Ploetz is in space, who has been teaching this whole time?

“Some of my students may be wondering who they’ve been listening to, and the answer is, AI.” Ploetz said in his statement.

Ploetz revealed that artificial intelligence has been teaching in his absence since 2016.

“I’m usually against AI taking our jobs, but in this case, I don’t mind!”

He said that Fredonia shutting down in 2020 and continuing classes remotely made his life harder at the time.

“I had to start actually Zoom-ing with the students until I learned how to get AI to do it for me. I don’t think everyone realizes how inconvenient that was.”

Many students have expressed their opinions on AI Ploetz.

John Arbuckle, a sophomore at Fredonia, said in an Instagram comment, “I always had my suspicions. The only thing that threw me off was the fact that I thought AI would be faster at grading assignments.”

This news, while extremely shocking, brings up an ethical dilemma. Is it ethical for institutions that expell students for using AI to have AI teaching classes?

Whatever the answer may be, Ploetz has no plans to come back down to earth anytime soon.

In his statement, he wrote, “I left for good reason in 2016, stayed away for good reason in 2020, and even if I had gone back, I would have come back up by November 5th of 2024.”

This has left many students wondering, is Ploetz exempt from the tariffs?

This news has not been great for SUNY Fredonia. Students are outraged at the fact that they now attend a school that cuts its major and minor programs, doesn’t listen to students, AND has artificial intelligence teaching in replacement of a real professor.

Ploetz ended his statement by saying, “I’m happy up here, and I have no desire to leave. I do apologize to my students, whoever the hell they are, for being fooled by my amazingly designed AI, though. I hope to clone myself soon, so that a real human can teach my students instead of a robot. Until then, please support The Buffalo Hive to see what kind of work the real Elmer Ploetz can do!”

So, there’s really nothing to be done about Ploetz secretly being in space this whole time. SUNY Fredonia is refusing to refund students who attended and were taught by Ploetz in the past 9 years, and his current students have all flocked to bothering Mike Igoe, another journalism professor at Fredonia, instead.

The real Ploetz’s previous students have also given statements about the professor.

Sylvana Dussan, from the class of 2014, said on Facebook, “I’m glad I was one of the last graduating classes to be taught by the REAL Elmer Ploetz. From what I’ve heard from his current students, his AI was very inaccurate. The real Elmer takes MUCH longer to grade homework.”

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