By Josh Emrys Payong

The nation finds itself in the midst of waves upon waves of budget cuts to essential research funding. Nowhere have these cuts hit harder than Grinnell College’s MAP program, wherein projects across all departments have had to leave students just as unemployed as they would have been if they didn’t kiss their professor’s ass while taking up all of the class’ discussion time. Now they have to learn to chud out by spending a full work week unlocking the new Druid Paragon on BTD6 like the rest of us.

These cuts, however, mean we have had to say goodbye to projects like that of the biochemistry chair, Professor Snugglepuff’s, research into “making the most delicious and nutritious treat that will keep all dogs happy forever” (why the fuck would they do that? It’s so cartoonishly evil). Other projects that have been ripped from the government’s fiscal teat include…

  • A GWSS MAP analyzing the mesosexual hyposectional intertextual interplay between the male gaze and “the male gays”
  • An anthropology MAP dedicated to uncovering the origins of the Binstonian Deepstate hidden beneath Grinnell
  • Projects related to the Film & Media Center, which had to resort to using Belmer’s Glue (we saw how that went)
  • An economics MAP investigating how demand for certain ingredients at the Stir Fry and Saute stations evolves in correlation with Yikyak hornyposting
  • And, most tragically, the interdisciplinary Center for Applied Bullshit, whose researchers were just one grant cycle away from proving that the writing abilities of any humanities major can be matched by a sufficiently angry Twitter influencer responding to what is clearly ragebait

Such deep blows to academia and the world at large. What a travesty.

However, dear reader, some departments have been left in better condition than others. The CS department, in a desperate bid to outpace obsolescence, have accepted contracts from certain corporations to implement surveillance technology across campus. The new, sleek, futuristic TP dispensers? CAMERAS. D-Hall being open until 10PM? That’s because there are CAMERAS on each plate. From your bowel movements to the weird shit you slap onto your Stir Fry Station noodles (like, really? pineapples?) – nothing is sacred anymore. Even our beloved turkey vultures, with whom I have found a family, have been replaced with robots carrying CAMERAS. Terry no longer violently shits when I hold up a freshly caught bunny to the roosting tree. Fred can no longer be found aura farming atop the HSSC. My family has been replaced with cyborg facsimiles, but Anne Harris does not respond to my grieving prayers. Perhaps she, too, has fallen victim to the dark cloud of technologia looming above us all.

But do not fret! We cannot speak for the other publications, but the B&S refuses to bend the knee to the techno-authority without a reasonable offer. Like, say, three free months of Grammarly Pro…heck, even four! Wowza, we’re really daring to dream today. If only, if only…