Each night, like a songbird salting the air with melodious din, a haunted voice punctures the thick film of silence that coats Smith College, words slick with intent. And we want her to shut the hell up.
Every community has its boy who cried wolf, and ours is Alexandra from your pre-calc class, who erupts into a fit of prophetic shrieks and howls as the moon rises above the Paradise Pond treeline.
“I thought having a street-facing room was the quieter choice in the quad,” says one Emerson resident. “I haven’t gone a single night where this chick wasn’t in the woods screaming herself hoarse about something called ‘Convocation Annex.’”
The Paradise Ponderer holds it on good authority that administration is not ending the long-storied, iconic tradition of Convocation, nor replacing it with ‘Convocation Annex’, 'Bacchanalia', or anything else with an awesome-sounding name. As always students are advised to alert Campus Safety of any concerning behavior displayed by their fellow students, which does include speaking in a voice long forgotten due to our transient mortality, manipulating pigeon corpses under the arch to augur future events, and criticizing members of ResLife faculty.
“I consider myself a pretty easy-going person,” says one Tyler resident. “But when it’s two minutes past quiet hours and you’re wailing false prophecies so loud my windowpane shakes, yeah—I’m gonna get a little upset.”
According to confidential reports from the Schacht Center posted to Moodle’s gossip channel, Alexandra was recently placed on medical leave following an incident in an intro philosophy class wherein she showed clear symptoms of long covid. Students present for the event say that Alexandra fell to the floor during a lecture on ethics and began expelling putrid smoke from her orifices and glowing a sickly emerald, all the while chanting:
Smith tradition to be cleaved
Professed by club none believed
Identity shorn, shucked to one
With parting blow meant to shun.
Twins alike, depart in bacchanalia:
One of the masses
And the other regalia.
To which her professor replied, “Please hold all questions until after the lecture, we have a lot of material to cover.” And to which her classmates all scooted their chairs a safe six feet from her convulsing body.
Alexandra has since been advised that any further facetious soothsaying is a direct violation of the Student Handbook, to which the punishment is a stern finger waggling from KMac herself. I for one hope she gets the electric chair.
Addendum by the editor: SGA did not choose the names I suggested despite them being very good. This not only makes me weep in agony, but it makes this article defunct. Great.
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