By Nathan Schmidt
This week, a new crisis engulfed Fairfield University, completely overshadowing the COVID-19 pandemic: students drinking hand sanitizer because it is pumpkin spice-flavored. The specially flavored hand sanitizer was distributed to students starting last week, in an effort to “celebrate the fall season while staving off the apocalyptic death-plague,” in the words of campus spokesperson Pam Basique. Unfortunately, students have decided that they would rather knock back the 60% alcohol solution than waste it on sanitizing their hands.
Stagnation reporters conducted a series of online interviews with students who have already consumed the hand sanitizer, and the results are in: No one is sorry. Garrett Langvin ‘24 even said, “Quote me on this. If you give me more of that pumpkin spice mojo, I’m drinking it. I don’t care if it makes my stomach hurt, or if it makes me wake up at 3 AM hearing colors. It’s hard enough for froshes to score any booze without the big ‘rona making everyone skittish.”
Later in the interview, Garrett added, “What do you mean, people only say ‘froshes’ in high school?”
This reaction of pure self-destructive debauchery has frustrated campus administration and faculty, who wanted to distribute hand sanitizer that people would actually use. This week, biology professor Martha Panama commented to one of her morning classes in an outdoor military surplus bivouac, “Hand sanitizer shouldn’t be your first choice — that’s washing hands. But if you’re going to use hand sanitizer, sanitize your hands! Don’t just chug it down like it’s a vodka shot. You kids shouldn’t be drinking alcohol at this time in your lives anyway!”
Dr. Panama no longer has any students in attendance of that course.
Distribution of pumpkin spice hand sanitizer has been halted until campus officials can figure out what to do with the remaining 13,600 half-liter bottles of the stuff that they have in storage. The top possibilities are to either distribute the sanitizer to faculty, or reflavor it to taste like Tully chicken.
Stagnation 