By Nathan Schmidt
[This transcript has been obtained through a combination of public record and divination magic.]
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for hearing me today. I come to you today not only as a lawyer, but as an ambassador of the human species.
The facts of the case are not in dispute. The evidence has shown, beyond any reasonable doubt, that on 12:32 AM last Friday, my client did transform into a sentient mist that possessed both statues of the Standing Couple outside the Quick Center. And no one would dispute that the pair of welded steel statues crushed six parked automobiles on their way to perform the dance known as the Macarena on top of the Barone Campus Center.
But I ask you this: Do we, as human beings, have any authority over Christian poltergeists? There is no Biblical or eccleisastical law against possessing statues and trampling cars. So long as the ghosts of the Society of Jesus have the support of the Pope, they will be a part of campus life. This, too, is indisputable. Fairfield University is a Jesuit institution. It is inhabited by approximately 4,100 undergraduate students, 440 graduate students, and upwards of 50 Jesuit ghosts. We must learn to live with their ways, not reject them out of hand. They are a part of our institution and our lives.
I know that you are bound to consider what a ‘reasonable person’ would have done in my client’s situation. And furthermore, I recognize that many of you have been personally affected by the campus ghosts in the past. Why, just last week, I stopped on campus to consult my client, and his acquaintance Horatio Langley Esquire threw a live turkey at my head. But what we are discussing is greater than any of us. It is a reckoning between species. Do we have the spiritual strength, the resilience and adaptability to new situations, that our ancestors had when they brought the Society of Jesus to greatness? Or is that legacy of fortitude and intellect a ghost of the past, like those ancestors have repeatedly shown us that they themselves are? The decision is ours.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we are only human. And it is not up to us to decide what constitutes rightful behavior for a centuries-old spirit of the Jesuit tradition. With that in mind, I believe the only sentence that you can reasonably give my client, Saint Aloysius Gonzaga of the Macarena Statues, is not guilty.
Stagnation 