Life has been awfully serious at U.Va. as of late — there’s been a lot of fear and a lot of hate. Angry women’s marches, broken windows at Arch’s, long awaited searches for the University president, Honor Committee reformists shouting about “voter participation percent,” anti-Semitic graffiti covering the wall, a smear letter for Kelsey Kilgore and a Student Council election that leaves us all wanting more.
Life’s rough right now and no amount of Seuss-fying our troubles will make them go away. We should stand tall, take bold dramatic action, using our youth and our agency and demand that the world be better. We should demand that Collier’s towing get new, non-satan worshipping management. We should demand that someone explain to us humanities majors, using simple pictures and graphs, how lowering from a 60 percent to a 55 percent would actually mean more people would end up voting. We should demand that Starbucks think of something worthwhile to put in our chai latte other than tea and milk, cause I feel guilty spending money on one right now.
But all that demanding and yelling sounds like hard work. A lot of hard work. It’s February, I’m really tired and sad. So instead of doing anything productive to affect real positive change, I have a superior proposal.
Let’s burn it all to the ground. It isn’t that hard to do. Every modern iconic breakdown in social order started with one person suggesting we could and should go against the existing establishment. The Arab Spring, the Prague Spring or the Umbrella Revolution all started when someone stood up and said “enough.”
So, enough normalcy. Enough pretending that we are living in typical times. Let’s really dig deep and steer into the skid of the nightmare. Let’s pause and think of cool dystopias we could emulate and the weird Mad Max-esque ways we could post-apocalyptic-fy our school.
Just picture it. We could stop pretending. Everyone could stop pretending StudCo could accomplish anything impactful. We could acknowledge University Guides are just tour guides who are only sometimes good at actually giving tours. We could admit that Boylan’s burgers are only okay and kind of secondary to their amazing bar selection. We could admit beer doesn’t taste as good as a fruity cocktail. We could all just collective declare that the bougie application based humanities majors (guilty) are still a billion times less employable than the worst Commerce student.
We could even take it a step further, not just rejecting the stuff we all know to be true, but actively running against the grain. You can rebel! Wear tie-dye every day, go to the AFC for the hot tub, streak at noon and actually attend your classes. In this new world Brown College Residents will be worshipped as kings and will have their pick of the best vapes and electronic accordions that money can buy. Sad first-year boys who didn’t get bids will still be sad and sober, but no one will care about what frat they’re in anymore!
Screw it, that’s not even far enough, lets just start rioting. Everyone get the one wrench you brought from home to fix your toilet and start trying to dislodge columns from The Lawn. Everyone demand that Trump be made president of the University when he’s inevitably impeached. Everyone threaten to light Carr’s Hill on fire unless Homer is melted down and replaced with a Golden Cow for us to worship. Form tribes. Roam the Grounds. Raid Frat houses. Turn Lambeth into a fortress. Paint your faces to show your allegiance. Wage war on other dorms and clubs. Give the parkour club the opportunity they’ve been waiting on for years. Give me a use for my nerf guns and Batman paraphernalia. Unleash the new world order.
If you’re reading this, stock up on canned food and ramen. If this article works, it’s going to be a long march to the end of U.Va.
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