Steve Nolt actually three different people

by  Elmer Triple on April 16, 2008

Professor of history Steve Nolt was discovered to be not one, but three different people Monday. This revelation helps explain the impossible productivity that he has displayed.

Goshen junior Nathan Graber uncovered this shocking truth when he paid an unannounced visit to Nolt’s Goshen residence. Graber knocked a bit too quietly on his front door and stepped into Nolt’s living room. Graber was shocked to find three identical Steves hunched over a calendar, planning their public appearances for the next month.

Graber realized the gravity of the situation and called Anita Stalter, Academic Dean. In minutes the President’s Council arrived on the scene and took action, non-resistance style.

Stalter verbally accosted the Nolt brothers, accusing them of reverse plagiarism – attributing one’s own work to someone else. “We don’t get many cases of this,” she added, speaking in a firm voice, “but when we do it gets ugly.”

Goshen College President James Brenneman went old school and threw down Proverbs 10:9, declaiming with fiery Menno conviction, “The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out.”

Will Jones, Vice President for Institutional Advancement, looked disapprovingly at the guilty brothers, and added, “That just ain’t right.”

Remembering the confrontation, Graber is still awestruck. “It was weird to see the President’s Council use its special powers. They were a little like the Power Rangers. One of the Steves tried to make a run for it, but John Yordy just looked at him with those cold, steely eyes and he sort of froze up.”

After interrogating the Nolt look-alikes, the President’s Council discovered that the three were actually identical triplets. Stuart, Eli and Vernon Nolt are visually indistinguishable from each other and have been masquerading as one person for years.

A special convocation was quickly added Wednesday morning, in order to explain to students the situation and give the triplets an opportunity to answer questions and to apologize for their malicious deception.

During the convocation, the Nolt brothers discussed what led them to such drastic measures. “After being joked about, frequently mistaken for one another and annoyingly compared, we felt something needed to change,” said Stuart.

“We each wanted to make a splash in the academic world, but we couldn’t break out from our identity as triplets,” he continued. “No one took us seriously.” “I proposed the idea: take the first letter or two from our names, create a mysterious alias and assume a single identity. We became…Steve, the all-knowing Mennonite trivia warrior.”

Many disillusioned students looked on as Stuart spoke, horrified. Sophomore Liz Nussbaum, looking somewhat forlorn, posed a question: com“Is this how you wrote all those books so fast?”

“Yes, Liz,” Eli said. “I’m sorry to say it, but more than one person writes the so-called Steve Nolt’s books. I wrote A History of the Amish. Stuart wrote Amish Grace.”

When asked what books Vernon has written, Eli paused and said, “Actually, Vernon doesn’t really write much. He’s not that smart. He’s pretty much just really good at Rubik’s Cube.”

In an attempt to save face, Vernon interjected that he, too, had written a book. Vernon’s is a children’s book entitled “Why Don’t the Amish Play Video Games?” It has not been published.

“Where were we?” asked Eli, but at this point students and faculty were leaving the convocation, grumbling and looking disgusted.

In the following days, students slowly recovered from the shock the Nolt crisis caused.

Junior Gary Johnson cited a rumor that had been circling recently about the former professor. “I heard that sometimes, on exam days, Vernon’s brothers would send him in instead of one of them, and he’d just sit behind the desk. No wonder he’d never help me when I went up with a question. He didn’t know a thing. I just figured he was strict.”

President Brenneman tried to lend some closure to the controversy in a press release, which stated: “We live in a culture that is so used to associating good things with the number three – Star Wars movies, RD’s, inspirational trifolds, a triune God. The Nolt brothers simply pushed this too far. Their selfish decisions gave an inaccurate impression to students of how much a single person can actually know, and that’s just unhealthy.”

A concern has been raised as to how to address this unfortunate news to the Amish communities in the Goshen area. When asked, Brenneman looked a bit uncomfortable and stared at his feet.

“I don’t think we’re going to tell the Amish,” he said. “They’d forgive them anyway, right?”