There are all kinds of gods. Wrathful gods, envious gods, jealous gods, virtuous gods, omniscient gods--whatever the trait, you can find a god who has it.
In ancient Rome, each family had its own penates or household gods, who oversaw the activities of household life and ensured happiness and prosperity for the family. Unfortunately, we of family Dukiana seem to have been assigned a collection of penatium ambiguorum.
Duke household life is lorded over by the indecisive and uncertain gods Larrius Monetus and Billus Burigus among others. Despite being imbued with immense and far reaching power to affect positive change in the University, they lack the clarity of vision to execute any meaningful decree. Instead of blessing the student body with their singular and infallible vision of household life, the penates Dukianae demonstrate a typical weakness of Roman deities: they waste their time embroiled in the conflicts of trifling mortal students--Greek students no less!
Didn't anyone tell them that Romans are destined to conquer Greeks?
Monetus and Burigus must stop dancing around their responsibilities. Their actions thus far clearly show their enmity for the Greek way of life and their constant negotiating only serves to cloud their revelations. Constant bickering between the heavens and earth has rendered Duke a barely inhabitable world where no one is sure who has power, what the law is, when we can celebrate and where the hell the kegs are! Please, penates, let this suffering end! I entreat you; borrow a page from your colleague in godhood, Jehovah. In Genesis 6, when the whole world was diverting from his vision, Jehovah washed away the haters and reasserted his power in an orgy of hope and rage. The time has come for you to take such drastic action: cast the Greeks from your household, and remake the world in your image!
With the conflict ended, and the Greeks safely delivered to new and fertile off-household lands, you, Monetus and Burigus, will be able to concentrate your attentions completely on developing a fulfilling and sustainable social world for generations of family Dukiana to come. No longer competing with rival civilizations, you will be able to look with favor on your subjects and supply them with the happiness and prosperity that have long been lacking from their lives. Housing restrictions will be lifted so that the expatriate Greeks may live with their brothers. Lavish celebrations will be held out in the open, finally released from the secret world of dorm-room catacombs. Bacchus will be welcomed back to campus at last, and with him a long train of exotic spirit-lifting libations flowing freely for all those who wish to partake, all under the guiding hand of your benevolent supervision.
Fellow students: fear not the reckoning that must come to pass! Imagine the world as it would be with continued conflict between gods and students. With the Greeks constantly exerting pressure on the heavens, challenging their indecisive decrees and keeping the world in a frenzy of embattled confusion, social life has no prospect for improvement. The penates fear and mistrust the social world as long as they cannot control it, and thus they trend towards the conservative. They restrict our ability to live out of household. They take away our alcohol and send legions of devoted personnel to patrol our social functions which we keep hidden deep in the bowels of the University. Non-Greeks are scattered and disorganized. The Greek parties keep them complacent enough that they do not organize or plan social events, but ultimately, all are left unfulfilled by the state of affairs. If we allow the penates this one chance, perhaps it will forge a new era of family Dukiana where we finally develop a unified social identity that is uniquely Duke.
But woe unto you, penates, if you should cast out the Greeks and fail to invigorate the household spirit! Though the Greeks prohibit you from fulfilling your vision now, if you remove them and fail to deliver to the students housing options, social opportunities and lenient alcohol policy, you will quickly lose even the few supporters you have! Not only will the people of the household lose faith in your reign, but your superior deities will lose patience with your ineffectiveness. And while you have proven an ability to stand against student dissention and conflict, you will be wholly incapable of preventing the wrath of all-powerful President Brodheadus.
Andrew Waugh is a Trinity junior. His column appears every other Tuesday.
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