An Open Letter to the Students at My Small, Pointless School
Look, by now you all know that our campus is well on its way to becoming non-Greek, non-alcoholic, and utterly unsocial. And I was willing to stand by passively while that happened, because I’m just one student (and the bar outside campus still serves us), but now The Administration has pulled my last chain. They have riled every bit of school spirit I never had but always yearned for while watching state schools play College Bowl Week on ESPN. That’s right, if you haven’t heard it already, the rumor is true: Last week, The Giant Evil Campus Administration, out to destroy all 1,047 of us, announced their intentions to make us a “non-campus campus.” And I am taking a stand, goddammit.
Not only would a “non-campus campus” send our campus into a state of self-denial, it would also reduce student unity, threaten undergraduate housing, and tear apart traditions. I mean, wake up! There would be no more Homecoming Ball! How many “non-campus campuses” do you know of that still have a Homecoming Ball? That’s right, none. We must hold on to our campus, if nothing else, to show The Administration that there may not be a lot of us, but we’re MOTIVATED! You guys? Are you even listening?! Hey, who’s smoking pot in here?! This is YOUR Homecoming Ball I’m talking about, NOT MINE! …..Well whatever, that’s not the point.
We simply CANNOT allow This Administration to threaten the very definition of our campus itself! I mean, what is a campus without itself to support it? It’s kind of like this one time, when my mom told me that if I didn’t quit biting my nails, she would think of me as less of a person. But then, when I didn’t stop, I TOTALLY didn’t get the impression that she was starting to think of me as a “non-person”! And frankly, I don’t know if our campus could live with that kind of doubt in its mind. It’s our job as students, to try to like, do something about it…I mean, as long as you don’t have any big tests or papers coming up.
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Anyway, like I was saying, other important traditions, such as “going to class,” “eating at the cafeteria,” and “using campus facilities” would all be destroyed as well. Like this one time, I was eating at the dining hall, and I saw this kid that reminded me of our mascot in a really weird way and I thought, “Man, I might never eat here again!” OUR MASCOT IS A DOLPHIN, DO YOU KNOW HOW WEIRD THAT IS? What I’m saying is, we must fight for these facilities if we’re ever going to get a chance to see that kid again. Hey, get off your cell phone and listen to one of your fellow students’ ideas for once, goddamnit!
By taking away the very essence of our campus, namely, the campus itself, the University would be cutting right into the heart of our college experience. What once was a Quad would now just be a rectangle, visible only by the precise, imaginary lines that we struggle daily to see, called latitude and longitude. What once were the buildings surrounding the Quad would now be one thick, rectangular patch of dead grass, visible only by, well…because it’s DEAD! Like our campus would be! Like this one time, when I saw my friend’s grandmother in an open casket and it TOTALLY freaked me out because she was dead and everything. And after that, I don’t know if I can bear to see anything die again. More or less our campus!
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Plus, without a campus, there would be no more classes. And you never know how much you’ll miss writing papers, taking exams, and studying for countless hours until it’s taken away from you, believe me…I’ve been kicked out of school before. In fact, this one time, I was kicked out of public high school, and all my friends thought it was TOTALLY cool, but it wasn’t. I just sat around and surfed the Internet, watched MTV Road Rules, and ate junk food all day. Believe me, the grass is always greener on the other side my friends, and if we don’t fight to save our campus, you’re gonna find out it’s actually DEAD grass!
And I won’t just sit here and do nothing about it. In fact, I’ll probably write an email to our school president, as soon as I find his name in this god-awful excuse for a school website. That’s what all my friends told me to do and I TOTALLY believe them because this girl across the hall had a class with him and she told me he’s a really cool professor, as well as a benevolent president. Like this one time, I was walking through the campus park and I saw a HUGE mansion. Some of my friends were like, “That’s the president’s house! He lives like a King while we suffer in jail cells!” Then I got really mad because I started thinking about how small my dorm room really is compared to the president’s house. But I don’t think that’s really his house, my friends are usually stupid anyway. I doubt our president is the kind of guy who would just go around accepting big, expensive things. How else would he get such a well-known reputation for sacrificing everything for the students and standing up to Our Administration’s hidden agendas? Yeah, it’s definitely places like this, “The President’s Backyard,” which we as students must fight for. And then we’ll change the name ‘cause it’s not even his backyard. I just don’t get this campus sometimes.
But now is not the time for griping, it is a time for unity—something we have never known as a group: Fellow students, 25 percent of whom I could have addressed by standing up in Econ 101, we must come together as one, or at least several different cultural groups, and face the real danger of becoming a “non-campus campus.” Now is the time to step up and show that you refuse to let this happen, or at least be like, TOTALLY against it. Almost every university that has gone down this road in the past has failed, and by failed, I mean shutdown…except for DeVry University, which turned out to be very profitable at marketing online courses. And if that’s what you want, then so be it. But don’t turn my campus against itself unless you’re willing to let it go. HEY, THAT'S NOT A THINKING QUESTION, IT'S A RHETORICAL STATEMENT!