This is a work of satire.
Over 130,000 years ago, an ancient cousin to modern humanity swam across the ocean and found themselves in what is referred to in modern times as America. This America, however, was not full of people driving on the right side of the road, nor was it populated by staunch opponents of the metric system. As a matter of fact, America was not even America back then. It was simply land.
And so, the first thing these people did when arriving was what any intelligent being would do: bury all of the dead bodies they carried with them during the journey. They dug holes in massive dirt circles, stowing the bodies inside for their ancient gods to watch over, protect and read stories to.
This massive circle of a burial ground is now called Hilltop Circle — home to our dear UMBC. At first, the gods of the deceased cousins of humanity welcomed the Honors University, for it offered them a sense of amusement. With time, the amusement turned to sorrow and then to anger, for the gods had no idea how students could show such contempt for their own selves through their abundant binging on both Netflix and alcohol.
Using the campus’s necromancer, we managed to secure an interview with Chilithroat, the ancient god of sound decision making. “It’s disgusting,” he said in his guttural and booming voice. “These students act out these rituals of downing copious amounts of some mystical drink. It calls in wicked spirits who cause them to make bad choices towards others and themselves, then regurgitate their body juices.” At this point, he simply shook his head and sighed. “Spirits aren’t what they used to be,” he said.
To take revenge on the pesky students, the gods of these people have struck plagues on campus. These plagues mainly take on the form of power outages and burst water pipes. A horde of zombies, risen from the dead by the ritual circle beside the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, recently dressed up as RAC maintenance workers and destroyed various pipes.
Similarly, other corpses of the undead have been found snipping the wires to campus power supplies for three weeks in a row. However, they did not understand the basic concepts of electricity. The broken wires proceeded to electrocute them back to death once again. Chilithroat refused to answer whether or not these new deaths were the result of sound decision-making. “At least they’re not massacring their time by watching dumb TV shows under the guise of ‘rest,'” he spat back. At this point, the necromancer banished him as the lights began to flicker and the lightning started to strike. The last thing the campus needed was another plague.
Unfortunately for the students, some of the undead can be found attending classes. They take on the appearance of extremely fatigued and sleep-deprived individuals. Students can take solace, though: with so few students on campus who get insufficient sleep, it should prove to be no issue at all spotting which students are millennia-old zombies and which ones are not.
Administration is working overtime now to appease these ancient gods and convince them that the copious amounts of time, money and lives spent on drinking and Netflix is a normal, healthy activity. As of writing this article, these ancient deities are not convinced and the plagues will continue on.
