By Josh Emrys Payong

JOE ROSENFIELD ‘25 CENTER – You saunter out of D-Hall, satisfied with your nutritious meal of baby carrots on a baby carrot purée topped with baby carrot oil and delicately arranged baby carrot skins with a side of iced milk and ooey gooey baby carrot cake. You’ve licked the plate clean. Not a single morsel of orange survived the assault. You’d love to turn back and grab some more, but unfortunately, you’re on the new Dubai Chocolate diet, so you can’t eat too many vegetables if you’re set on that minion JD Vance physique. But on your way past the abandoned bagel station, you see one. Dressed in blood-soaked crimson, armed with a nametag and a smile…you can’t help but notice something’s off. Nobody’s this happy. Nobody’s this kind. No. Not at Grinnell. And you’d be right.

The Phillips Andover D-Hall Baby Academy is not the only nefariously dystopian structure found beneath the sacred halls of The Marketplace. Far from it. Among these houses of gloom and desolation are the Spencer Grill Lattice Chip Sogger and the Grinnell Water Hardening Plant, where they dump excess calcium and magnesium from the chemistry department potluck to make our water hard by…hehe…well, let’s justr say…trace remineralization and reverse osmosis.

But if you’re asking where the pancakes really get flipped…where the eggs really get scrambled…where the sausage really gets made…where they really stuff those sausages…mmfghh…well, that’d be at the Chalfont Chapelwood Cheery Checker Churnery Chamber. Those aware of the D-Hall deep state call it the Cha-Cha Chamber for short.

What occurs at the Cha-Cha Chamber is no less than harrowing. Reports from spies and survivors suggest that it functions as a sort of boot camp for synthetically produced elderly individuals that have been genetically modified to feel only joy and whimsy. But don’t let their smile fool you. Their indoctrination is not something an ordinary individual could handle on a physical or emotional level, much less you, dear reader. In short, it’s a police academy of sorts, except with enough training hours to actually justify being trusted with weapons and authority. 

They begin with a fittingly demonic daily drilling regime consisting of (but not limited to) 8 x 10 reps of “Have A Good Day”, 4 x 12 reps of “What does that cat on your shirt say? ‘We Go Gym’? That’s delightful!”, and of course, three grueling sets of “Remind me where you were last semester? Oh, that is so sweet. I bet you just had the best time.” to failure. Such training teaches them how to feign warmth and tenderness. A Grinnellian – given the emotional neglect required to push them all the way into Bumfuck Nowhere, IA – wouldn’t be able to see past the facade. By the time they leave D-Hall, the deception is complete: they believe they are happy. So vile. So wicked. But, given what they’ve been doing to D-Hall babies, we can only expect the worst.

But there’s more! Top trainees are selected to participate in high-stakes trivia nights – a program designed to stuff as many ‘fun’ facts into their heads as possible. Giving out these facts to students once they are granted the right to work on the surface helps prime these poor undergrads for actual learning in class instead of putting their energy where it really matters: getting to Fashion Goddess rank on Dress to Impress. The winners of these trivia nights will be granted a taste of the outside world through the greasy tunnels under the Roller Grill, but losers are sent to The Dish Room Deluxe™, and you don’t wanna know what they have to clean down there…

The next time you see a Cheery Checker, smile and wave. But know what they’ve gone through. Know who they work for. Trust no one. But if you knew what I knew, you’d avoid D-Hall altogether. There’s more beneath the surface than you could possibly imagine. Come with me, and together we’ll subsist off the turkey vulture droppings by the commencement stage. At least until we find out how to fight back.