In response to the overall kerfuffle that has been the BUDLITE-19 virus outbreak, as well as the cessation of physical classes, the school’s administration has decided to enact an optional pass/fail grading for students to opt into if they feel that their grades would otherwise suffer due to the outbreak. This has led to an outbreak of happiness among the students, as over 83% of them have agreed to stop focusing on class entirely due to the fact that they only need to pass their classes this semester.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with all of this free time,” said one student molding a lump of clay into a poorly-shaped pot. “I’ve taken up a bunch of hobbies: knitting, badminton, interpretive dance, professional toasting. It’s really freeing! Oh, sorry, you’ll have to excuse me, it’s time for my lesson.” The student then pulled out a tuba and began blaring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, causing the sad pot they were making to collapse into an even sadder lump of clay.
Meanwhile, the administration has been wearing their arms down to nubs from all of their patting themselves on the back for the amazing job they’re doing in handling the current crisis. “This new pass/fail ruling is only the latest in a long string of excellent decisions Snevets has made to stifle the spread of the dastardly budlitevirus and keep its students safe,” said a spokesperson wearing a yellow hazmat suit from behind a bulletproof glass barrier separating them from the presumably infectious media personnel. “It was only due to our quick thinking and classic ingenuity that a majority of our students are still alive out there somewhere, just begging to be let back into class to start learning again! To them we can only say—” It was at this point that the impractically-large respirator attached to the spokesperson’s mouth began to malfunction, releasing a high-pitched screeching noise that rendered their speech incomprehensible and caused Margarita, President Narfarvar’s beloved doggo, to come bounding into the conference room going absolutely wild. The president, wearing four different hazmat suits of his own, waddled into the room in some distress, having been walking Margarita in their special Walking Bubble when the beloved pupster ran off.
The new grade ruling has not gone unchallenged, however. There are some students who believe that pass-fail is not enough to make up for the agony and emotional trauma that they are experiencing due to the evil and yet dashing budlitevirus and the similarly evil but significantly uglier outbreak of online classes. A movement to push the school to adopt A/A- grading has started within the more optimistic students among campus, as they urge the school to properly make up for the unending injustices they have experienced at the uncaring glycoprotein projections of the virus. “There is a common myth going around that A/A- grading inflates grades,” said a helpful notice sent by the pro-A/A- camp. “This is actually not the case. The actual truth is: don’t question it, shut up.”
In an effort to show solidarity that would be comical if it weren’t so useless, the SGA has naively put forward a resolution pushing the administration to enact A/A- grading. “WHEREAS,” the proclamation reads, “The Snevets Government Association asks the Snevets administration to pretty-please with cherries on top make every student get either an A or A- in their courses, and we’d be so stoked if you did that, like it’d be the coolest thing ever.” According to inside sources, when the proclamation reached Narfarvar’s desk, he read it over for a grand total of 12 seconds before laughing so hard that people could actually hear him through the two feet of steel and concrete that outlined his specially-enforced Office Bunker.
Although it remains to be seen whether Narfarvar will calm down from his hilarity enough to respond to the petition, tensions are running high throughout the loose conglomerate of Zoom sessions that make up campus right now. Whatever side of the grading debate you may happen to fall on, Off the Press will continue to pump out quality articles no matter what, mainly because our articles are graded normally and we don’t want our GPA to drop.
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