It is a sad week on campus as the Gatehouse, the last vestige of the great Castle Stevens that once ruled the local countryside with an iron fist, has been taken down for repairs. This massive loss is the result of a truck colliding with the historical artifact over the summer, creating a safety hazard as loose rocks would fall comically onto unsuspecting passersby. After toying with the idea of giving everyone hardhats, leading historians and gate scientists determined that the best course of action was to just scrap the whole thing altogether. “After all,” one official said during the deconstruction commencement, “the Gatehouse can’t hurt anyone if it isn’t there.” In other news, due to some graffiti found on the back wall of Davis Hall, dynamite crews have been contracted to blow up the whole building within the week. If you are currently living in Davis, Off the Press formally wishes you the best of luck.
Although the school is reeling from the loss of this enduring monument, we are reassured that the Gatehouse is not being destroyed, but merely disassembled to be put back together at a later date, like a set of Legos created before the invention of toilet paper. “The biggest problem was making sure we would be able to put the Gatehouse back together later,” confided one construction manager. “I took a picture before we started, but I’m not sure if that’ll be enough.” To remedy this, each individual stone that makes up the Gatehouse will be given a unique code name to aid in the eventual reconstruction. For example, the medium-sized rock three from the bottom and four from the right is codenamed “Daryl,” the one above that “Tina,” and the classic heart-shaped stone is named, of course, “Johnathan.” These unorthodox names have been specially crafted for maximum memory retention. “If we named them something boring, no one would be bothered to remember, y’know,” the manager explained, picking up a loose rock. “But this little guy here is obviously a Bobby, so we’d take care to know where he’s supposed to go.” Officials assure us that these codenames are scientifically based and accurately reflect the individual personality of each rock. “It is vital that no stone is left unaccounted for. If even one rock is lost, the Gatehouse would most likely collapse under its own weight, which several people have assured me is a very bad thing.”
This is why it is with great sorrow that we are announcing that a quite important stone, affectionately named “Toby,” has somehow gone missing during the deconstruction of the Gatehouse. “We’ve scoured the entire area, and we haven’t found any trace of Toby,” one construction worker said sadly. “I thought I found him once, but it turned out to be just a random pebble. Kept the pebble, though.”
Newly-reinstated President Farvardin (see last issue) has declared a state of emergency on campus, forbidding all rocks, stones, and pebbles from entering or exiting school grounds until Toby can be located. “We need to use every resource at our disposal to find Toby as soon as possible,” he said in a conference this week. The president seemed noticeably impassioned during his speech, even fighting back tears at one point. “Just think of what he must be going through: away from his home, in the cold and the rain. I can hardly sleep at night thinking about him.” After this, Farvardin had to be escorted off stage, visibly weeping.
We’re sure everyone on campus is with us when we say, “Toby, please come home.”
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