The end is nigh

Ladies and Bros, this is the end. In a momentous decision, Congress has resorted to fixing our failing government by turning it off and back on again. Funding to national parks has been ceased, and Smokey the Bear, himself, has been seen scrounging for change in Washington, D.C. phone booths. Thousands of invaluable government workers have been furloughed, causing general anarchy. With all of the government’s most fundamental aspects relinquished, all hell has broken loose.

Fear not for our politicians, however. Good old Uncle Sam made sure that each and every member of Congress, the ones who could not agree on a budget in the first place, got their due pay. I mean, it’s not like cutting their budgets in the same way they did 700,000 government workers would prompt them to find a solution more quickly. We can all thank George W. Bush for this situation due to his controversial “No Child, No Adult Acting Like a Child, Left Behind” initiative. Unlike in the real world, where the government cannot do its job properly, we shut down everything until they can learn to do it better.

In the aftermath of one of the greatest American crises since Y2K and the Asia Prime scandal, Duke’s campus has fallen from grace and regressed into a post-apocalyptic wasteland that would make Katniss Everdeen cringe. While politicians disagree in the nation’s largest fiscal pissing contest, society as we know it has crumbled, reducing structure to chaos and ushering in a new era of anarchy.

The fall of government has induced rampant illegal activity at Duke. Students, now emboldened and with little or no regard for the law, have turned to campus-wide underage drinking and drug use. While, before, campus was a utopian community geared towards pure academic prowess, it now has alcoholic ragers Tuesday through Saturday. Other drugs like mary-ja-wana, an extremely dangerous Schedule 1 drug, run rampant across East, West and Central Campuses. With the police force currently at capacity fending off hordes of rowdy Durhamites, students continue to rage face in our dystopian home away from home.

Students have resorted to forming and living in gender-specific, tribe-like communities. Labeling themselves with an archaic Greek language, these tribes compete across campus to gain access to fertile mates. The men and women have found it beneficial to separate themselves into a social hierarchy, with the fastest, strongest and best individuals at the top. In this way, the best specimens only breed with members of comparative social rank, thus keeping the gene pool in line and the gays out of the good New Jersey families. The best genes stay at the top amidst the alphas, while the pitiful tribes consisting of lesser Betas commune only with other lower tribes of the opposite sex. In some rare cases, lower specimens with vast wealth and resources have been known to rise to top rank simply because of their money.

As with any post-apocalyptic world, there are terrorist organizations looking to attack what little stability remains. Thus far, multiple politically-oriented guerilla attacks have occurred around campus. The alleged organization DukeOpen has made it very clear that they are unhappy with the current Duke regime. Flying behind the flagship of budget transparency, they wrapped both the statues of James B. Duke and Benjamin N. Duke in black plastic and large signs saying DukeOpen, probably inscribed in blood. In a boast very similar to ripping down statues of Saddam Hussein after his fall from power, DukeOpen tried to create a rig to pull down the statues, realized they didn’t have any engineers or science majors among them and went home in defeat. After publicly displaying President Brodhead’s phone number on the plaza and urging enraged students to beleaguer him, it is clear that this organization will settle for no less than revolution.

For personal survival through this pandemic, I recommend proper use of the buddy system, drinking your own urine to stay hydrated and staying absolutely still when encountering a gaggle of bros. Their vision is based solely off movement, and they will quickly disregard those unfit for mating, even if you do have “such a great personality.”

As all form of government and administration around us crumbles, Duke culture has certainly adapted well to the end of the world. For now, all we can do is survive and hope that we remain safe from DukeOpen’s next attack, pondering the big questions such as “Why are they doing this?” “Will budget transparency actually do anything?” and “Once they finally achieve budget transparency, will they just continue attacking something else because they’re bored?” If we band together and don’t end up eating each other, we just may be able to survive the time Congress stood still.