"Stand up against the man!" second-year College student Andrew Starner yelled at a random student walking down the sidewalk from Monroe Hall.
As he ran after the student, Starner nearly tripped over the full-size American flag he had draped over his body.
The student shot back a look of bewilderment and walked more briskly in the direction of Alderman Library.
"This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen since coming to college," said onlooker Hillary Bourne, a second-year College student.
Alongside Starner were 10 other American Studies majors from Prof. Jennifer Wicke's 'American Literature from 1865 to Present' (ENAM 312) class, all committed to achieving the same lofty endeavor: to levitate Monroe Hall, the main building of the McIntire School of Commerce.
According to third-year American Studies major Rudy Morgan, the Commerce School is the embodiment of the "aimless greed and ignorance of humanity."
Donning bandanas and bright clothing, the students chanted incantations invoking everything from the spirit of Gaia and the Egyptian goddess Isis to recitations of random passages from Allen Ginsberg's Howl.
"Rise, rise," they chanted, legs crossed and sitting in a circle, hoping Monroe would levitate into the sky from its foundations.
"Isis, save us," they chanted.
"Isis?" an onlooker asked in bewilderment.
For most University students, Isis likely evokes thoughts of electronic course enrollment and final registration. But apparently not for American Studies majors.
"We're only hoping to raise it a few feet," said third-year College student Molly Voss.
Raising it a few feet hopefully would induce "the demons to leave" from the foundations of the building, said Starner.
According to the students staging the levitation, the Commerce School "sucks off" the students and administration at the University.
To them, the Commerce School represents corruption and capitalism at its worst, they said.
"The Commerce School saps the creativity out of the University. The administration has to slave to the Comm School," Morgan said, suggesting that the Commerce School is considered more important than the University's other schools.
Voss and another student gave out paper money to anyone they saw walking to and from Alderman Library while dancing around to the beat of a drum and the strum of a guitar in a dreamy, hip-gyrating manner.
"We give out paper money to symbolize what people want. We're symbolizing greed," Voss said.
English Prof. Frannie Nudelman stood nearby, recording everything on a mini-camcorder.
"I'm recording it for posterity," Nudelman said, smiling slyly.
She said the event was a re-enactment of a political protest in Washington D.C. in the late 1960s, during which a group of liberal proponents of socialism gathered in a circle in front of the Pentagon. The group hoped their efforts would make it rise above the ground.
To the protesters, "the Pentagon was like the Comm School of the 1960s," she said.
"We are ants," the circle of American Studies majors chanted during their protest.
"And that is our anthill," yelled Starner.
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