'AU's Panicked Response Team’ Rolls Out COVID-19 Plans
by Bennett Nuss
As I am sure will be big news to all of you, the world is currently experiencing a widespread pandemic on a scale not seen since, well, the last big one. I didn’t pay much attention in history class.
In response to this pandemic, the American University administration has made it their mission to change their pandemic response policy as often as they can in order to keep up with running developments.
The first iteration of these plans came down the pipeline with an email from the newly formed American University Panicked Response Team, stating the following:
“We at the administration are proud to announce that, in service of bureaucratic sadism, we will be doing something called hybrid classes, and that only freshmen will be living on campus, making life socially distanced as well as insufferable… because they’re freshmen.”
When The Rival reached out to the Panicked Response Team for comment about their expectations for upperclassmen housing, they responded, “We see the integration of the AU students into incredibly expensive apartments across the city, where they will be living with multiple roommates in close proximity, as a chance to foster close and personal bonds with the people around them.”
Just a few weeks after the announcement, there was another meeting of the AU Panicked Response team. They concluded that if the University has people in the dorms, they may have to eat on campus, socialize on campus, be sick on campus, and leave conspicuous stains on the MGC couches.
As a result, they reversed course and kicked everyone off campus with the following statement:
“In order to shore up budgetary concerns, mitigating the risk to our underpaid support staff, and keeping freshmen off campus, we have decided to not have any on-campus housing for the semester. Furthermore, we will not have any more on campus services beyond the bare minimum. But don’t worry, we will still have some form of hybrid class, we promise…we think…probably...we’re pretty sure. Also, we’re considering paying adjuncts. Maybe.”
In response to this, the freshman deferment rate increased exponentially.
But the University wasn’t done yet. Even as the case rate started to decrease across the Atlantic North-East, AU decided to pull the plug on in-person classes entirely. Realizing that there may be outrage at this decision, President Burwell sent the following statement to The Rival, mostly because she knows that all of her emails go to spam for most of the student body.
“I want all our Eagles to know that I care so much about their concerns, and that everything we are doing is in the best interests of the student body and our beloved, laid off staff, and definitely not to milk all of the tuition money out of the student body for subpar classes. We also think that this troubling time teaches an important lesson. It is the policy of the University for our students to understand that they will, from time to time, be yanked around by bureaucracy, and we are glad that we were able to complete that mission even under such extreme circumstances.”
This story will be updated when the Panicked Response Team inevitably decides to close down campus for the Spring semester.