by b.s.

BURLINGTON, 2:30 AM, 31 October 2021

Nearing the witching hour in the early morning of Halloween, the entirety of the Burlington community was rattled by 50 metric tons of explosives being detonated. The epicenter of this explosion–traced by Burlington’s seismographic lab located at the corner of North Street and North Willard Street–was determined to be the middle of the Redstone Quad. The Quad is a large green space sheltered by the brick buildings housing the Holy Trinity of LLCs (Wellness, Outdoor Experience, and Innovation and Entrepreneurship). The three powers of the Redstone Quad have long held tensions over the shared turf, and since the Sledding Massacre of 1979 the quad has operated as a DMZ (shorthand for: Don’t have guns here but Maybe sometimes we do but probably not because we signed an agreement wait no we didn’t sign anything have you heard of the band Zonkey). The explosion marks the end of a more than 40 year agreement by the three powers not to show feats of military strength on the shared quad. The 180 decibel disruption was at first mistaken as routine landscaping, but when students realized that most University landscaping doesn’t begin until 3AM, they began to worry. Students took to YikYak to report the incident because ACAB. Due to the anonymity of YikYak I have taken the liberty to not ask permission to use quotes from students who shared their grievances during the event. I have unethically selected the following quotes to describe the feeling of UVM students:

“Bruh what the fuck dude who tf doing that its like 6am or sumn”

“Okay can whoever is setting off fireworks rn literally shut tf up”

“Fireworks on redstone quad:)”

“Je ne sais pas pourquois je suis dans le rayon UVM, j’habite dans le nord de la france”

“Lol you hearing this rn” (one comment below this Yak read “yeah”)

While the sentiments above were representative of the affective diagnosis, the diagnosis of explosive substance was completely incorrect (which is very surprising considering the credentials necessary to post on YikYak). As the seismographs would go to show, the explosion that was seen on the quad that Hallows’morn was not an innocent firework display. Rather, a feat of unmitigated military power, expressed by the Innovation and Entrepreneurship students as a means of establishing dominance in a long dormant turf war. 

The conflict between Wellness Environment, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Outdoor Experience began in 1858, and has been rumored to be the initial trigger of the Civil War. On 11 May of the same year Minnesota was officially declared a state. Commencement was slated to take place the following week, and the school’s anti-Minnesota student organization was preparing to protest at commencement. Afraid of disruption at the ceremony, the administration told the relatively small anti-Minnesota club that they were uninvited to commencement. In addition to uninviting the anti-Minnesota club, the University also withdrew the commencement invitation of the pro-Minnesota club, as a matter of equality. The morning of commencement, 20 May, 1858, at approximately 06:25, the anti-Minnesota club (here referred to as AMC) stormed the residence of the pro-Minnesota club (here referred to as PMC). This was not any extraordinary feat, all houses in Burlington during the Buchanan era were built exclusively from straw and duct tape, [interestingly, rent was exactly the same as it is now]. The PMC had been granted access to the Student Government Association cannon and bayonet artillery on the condition that they returned it by the next SGA meeting. With their school sanctioned weapons, the PMC and AMC (sans school sanctioned weapons) fought nearly to the demise of their own organizations. When a truce was called around 4:20pm for a smoke break—what would become the first recorded mention of 4:20—only two PMC members and one AMC member remained. The three agreed to stop the physical battles, for the summer at least, and resort to more of a dirty game of arson, hostage taking, wife-fucking, and rumormongering. The same night as the agreement, the two remaining members of PMC found themselves at odds regarding whether or not to make true on their promise of returning SGA’s arms, and ultimately partitioned into pro-Minnesota club for arms, and pro-Minnesota club against arms. The three clubs, AMC, PMCFA and PMCAA are now contemporarily known as Wellness, Innovation, and Outdoor, respectively. 

Flash forward to today’s date. The three feuding powers all cohesively watch over the Redstone quad, like three guardian angels, except all three hate each other and if one of the angels were to let his guard down for so much as a second he would be killed so brutally and so quickly that his insides would be outsides before he could even damn the state of Minnesota. Henry Kissinger helped to negotiate the conditions of armistice following the ‘79 massacre, one of the conditions being:

S.VII.85. “No party is to possess any content referring to the state of Minnesota, be it negative nor positive”

On 30 October 2021 the Redstone Unlimited Dining Hall made the fatal mistake of preparing tofu made from Minnesotan soy, as clearly marked on the packaging. The packaging was then thrown away, put into the dumpster behind the building, and then discovered by a Wellness student rifling through the garbage looking for “none of your business”. The student brought the packaging to current anti-Minnesota club leader Jeff Rettew, and Jeff immediately rallied nearly 400 students from his Living and Laughing Commune to undertake a retaliation scheme. The Wellness kids made the only cocktail they know, the Molotov, and the rest was history.

Categories: Audrey ashdown, b.s., nov. 9, vol 25