*Writer’s note: The following article is a work of satire, please do not take any of it as truthful. Any specific people mentioned in any of my articles were made aware of their inclusion in it prior to publishing. Please direct any complaints about the content of the article to cohen_benjamin@wheatoncollege.edu. *
This week, the Wheaton administration announced its plan to disrupt the life of every student on campus. During these recent weeks, students have been trying to prepare for midterms and attempting to come up with strategies to best cope with having to see their family and hometown friends again for a few days. Recognizing the need to disrupt this, the Wheaton administration read my mind and decided to have a fire alarm right in the middle of the creation of my ingenious plan to tell all my high school friends that my vacation hadn’t yet started and that I would text them when I got back.
Anyway, back to the fire alarm issue. I first noticed that the alarms were going off when I got the sh*t scared out of me by a siren going off at 10 p.m. on Monday night. I missed the floor meeting informing me that this event was going to happen, but luckily and quickly, I figured out that we are not living in the Cold War. I decided to follow my hallmates as we all filed out, like sheep, to the assigned meeting place outside of the hall.
I heard many other fire alarms in the distance during the week, multiple of which I am sure were being tested inside the dorm on lower campus that I shouldn’t even mention in this article if I want to keep my position as a columnist.
I was unfortunate enough to not have received advanced notice of the alarm. Though I had made no preparations for such a disruption in my daily routine, some of my smarter friends had thought ahead. They informed me that they might have to cut the meeting short. Their reasoning was that they might receive a text about their dorm having a fire alarm go off. The message would have been highly pertinent to that moment as they would need to, as they put it, “hide some stuff real quick.”
The irony of fire drills likely having more people running into dorms than out of them has fueled my desire for absurdity to the point at which I was inspired to prioritize writing these articles over getting classwork done.
However, the Wheaton administration has decided to hit the student populace with a classic “double-whammy” week in terms of disruption. It is also room checks week on campus, meaning my room will look like I care to have a clean living space for one and only one day this year.
My room check went totally fine. I may have hidden my lava lamp in a hiding place so good that I’m sure that I will forget its location. I was also able to take down some music posters off my wall to get under the 25% percent wall space cap (this is a real thing, seriously, check it on Wheaton’s website). Lastly, I was able to throw my very own infamous string lights into my dorm room closet.
With all of this in mind, I think we can all agree that Edward Snowden was correct in saying that “what is right is not always the same as what is legal.”