by emmaburns
Anyone out for a walk who passes by the big white tent by Davis on a Wednesday morning at around 3 am will have a strong chance of noticing bright flashing lights, loud chants, and pitiful moans of pain. If you have, that’s because the UVM administration holds a weekly fight club there, where the most powerful and paid of the bunch get together to absolutely fuck each other up. Having experienced this myself I was understandably intrigued. After the second time of passing, I stopped by to investigate and at the front door was greeted by none other than President Suresh Garimella himself. “Sure it’s fun to think about how much stress and confusion we cause in the abstract, like not letting students form pods but encouraging them to eat maskless together in crowded dining rooms,” Garimella told me when I asked about the formation of the club “but there’s nothing as satisfying as personally witnessing the total demolition of a person’s spirit and I believe this offers the perfect opportunity for that”. After some probing he was willing to provide a tour, eventually boasting about the 50 metal folding chairs, 12 bowling balls, and several meat pounders made available to any interested party, as well as the special gladiator-style fights offered by various UVM athletic coaches every month. “We have to pay them so much so that they’ll keep fighting the lions.”
After a few more minutes of the enlightening tour, President Garimella had to excuse himself in order to start hyping up the crowd for the first fight. Left to my own devices I was taken aback by the sheer number of people in attendance who hold administrative positions, many of whom were practically frothing at the mouth with bloodthirst. When Patricia Prelock and Gary Derr stepped into the ring to kick things off, the volume in the tent reached ungodly levels and I was sure my eardrums were on the verge of bursting. As the two fighters began, Bill Falls, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, wandered over in order to give his two cents.
“When I started cutting funding for departments and laying off professors and then turned around to blame them for the shortcomings I facilitated, it felt pretty good,” said Falls. “But that pleasure faded pretty quickly, so I decided to just eliminate those departments and majors all together which gave me a colossal rush at first but unfortunately that lost its edge as well. Coming to this club was the best thing I ever did because the misery is non-stop! Every week there’s a new way to wreak havoc and revel in pain.” Falls continued to praise the benefits of the fight club for his mental health but at that point, it was too loud to hear him because Patricia Prelock was repeatedly bashing a folding chair over Gary Derr’s head- who had assumed fetal position.
With Prelock declared the official winner and the crowd still clearly hungry for more, I began to feel overwhelmed and decided to call it a night. Before heading out, I did notice the Rally-Cat suit (which apparently had become fully sentient due to the power of sheer hate) in the corner furiously beating the shit out of a lone Geology major as a group of Business and Econ majors looked on in glee. When I inquired about the future of the club, several people were happy to inform me that as soon as construction was completed they would be moving their operation to a specially designed room in the new sports arena.
Categories: April 6 2021, around town, emma burns