Despite extensive Y2K preparations, imagine our civilization ending on Dec. 31.

Iowa State’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has secured one lifeboat for three professors from the five main departments to establish a new civilization based on their knowledge — that was the scenario acted out in LAS 101 this week.

On Tuesday and Thursday, students in the class had the opportunity to make their choices for who deserved the three spots in the lifeboat, based on the pleas heard from five professors representing their disciplines.

Peter Orazem, interim associate dean of liberal arts and sciences, moderated the event. Communications and natural sciences were selected to be passengers on “The Good Ship LAS” both days. The students in the Tuesday class voted to save the arts and humanities, and Thursday’s class chose the mathematical disciplines as a survivor.

“In the beginning there was the word — not the mathematical formula, not the scientific discovery, but the word,” said Fern Kupfer, associate professor of English, as part of her plea to save communications, during Thursday’s presentation.

“I believe that word is the way that human beings communicate, that can change our hearts and mind, and can set us free,” she said.

The most influential person of this millennium was not a philosopher such as Freud, a scientist like Newton nor a negative historical influence like Hitler, she said. It was Johannes Gutenberg, who invented metal movable type.

“Type gave us the opportunity to spread the word,” she said.

The second two-day winner was natural sciences, represented by Eugenia Farrar, associate professor of zoology and genetics.

“I really think that we all deserve to be in the boat,” she said.

But the natural sciences should be on board because the rest of the passengers need them, she said.

For instance, Farrar, as a scientist, could use her global positioning unit to keep the survivors from getting lost. She also could purify the water supply, administer injections to the sick, and botanists with the scientific fields could tell which seeds and nuts are edible.

Thursday’s third survivor was the mathematical disciplines, represented by W. Robert Stephenson, professor of statistics.

Stephenson said mathematics are analogous to the message in a commercial for BASF: “We don’t make the carpet; we make the carpet better.”

“You may associate the product with a particular college, but behind them stands the mathematical sciences,” he said.

Stephenson gave examples of how math made areas such as computers, agronomy and flight “stronger, higher and faster.”

Robert Hollinger, associate professor of philosophy and religious studies, convinced Tuesday’s class to save the arts and humanities. Hal Pepinsky, professor of sociology at Indiana University, spoke for the social sciences both days, and neither class choose to save his field.