By Nathan Schmidt
Today, in a freak accident of public safety design, over one hundred students unwittingly spent two hours standing in a marked pathway that looped back on itself. The pathway, marked with cordons and blue arrows like the others on campus, went on a complete clockwise circuit around the outside of the Barone Campus Center and Bannow. Originally intended simply to regulate traffic, the loop caused a foot traffic jam when students assumed that it went somewhere.
The first students who got in line were able to make it almost all the way around the circuit. However, as others got in line, the pace slowed as students tried to maintain social distancing. Eventually, the entire loop was filled with a completely backed-up line of students all standing six feet apart from their adjacent peers.
“I just saw everyone going down the path and I thought, ‘Well, I want some of what they’re having,’” said Zachariah Malthus ‘23, who started at the north entrance of BCC and made it as far as the fence between Barone and Bannow. “Then we all kind of stopped, and I thought — well, this isn’t right. So I took out my phone while I waited, and then before I knew it, I’d missed my biology class, my girlfriend was asking who I was with, and I’d forgotten how to get back to my dorm.”
Other students reported feeling similarly disoriented after the fact. The consensus by administrators is that after the students got in line, everyone was so happy to not be doing anything that they forgot to question why they were standing completely motionless.
Eventually, the traffic jam was broken up when a campus landscape worker on a ride-on lawnmower drove straight through the line, shocking the students nearby into dispersing. The remaining students left the line due to an unrelated incident involving reports of free giveaways at the food trucks.
When asked why the loop of arrows had been made in the first place, Dean Louiston said, “I did it for the vine,” before putting on a pair of sunglasses, dabbing in both directions, and saying, “Deal with it.”
Further reports pending on future traffic disasters.
Stagnation 