This is a work of satire.
In the never-ending pursuit of ingenuity and innovation, UMBC emerges as a truly avant-garde thinker in their approach to economic and environmental welfare. By shutting off the water supply to all students, they hope to save both time and money.
“It’s pretty clever,” said sophomore Lumpy McGee, who is studying psychology. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. What they don’t say is that if you don’t lead the horse to water, then it doesn’t even need to worry about drinking in the first place.” The hope is to reduce the time spent thinking about water and increase the amount of time thinking about other more important issues, like worrying about the grade of an already turned in assignment whose results are beyond the student’s control.
Some students are not as convinced as McGee about the benefits of this change. “I complain enough as is,” said Milky Breath, a junior who refused to state his major. “I can barely manage to fit in all of the complaints about my classes, my friends and my sleep deprivation. Throw thirst into the mix? No thank you.”
Despite this, Breath did begrudgingly admit that he was curious to see what it would be like to complain about a lack of water, and how fast it would take for his complaints masked as jokes to get worn out and downright irritating.
Students are not the only ones who are being denied water — trees, bushes, grass, flowers and anything with even the slightest trace of green in it will begin their strict no-water diet immediately. Coupling the onset of winter with this drought will likely lead to the death of anything bright or green on this campus.
Furthermore, the library pond will be drained, so students no longer need to suffer the presence of the adorable little goslings that brighten everyone’s day and distract them from other things they could be worrying about.
While it is nice to see UMBC intimately concerned with the students’ well-being, the economic motive is certainly in contention. It is easy to ask, “how much money could one save by eschewing life’s most intimately precious resource? Is water even that valuable?”
The truth? No, water is not that valuable, not in the slightest.
That forces us to confront the uncomfortable reality that perhaps there is no real financial motivation after all. Perhaps not much can be gained in terms of adding weight to UMBC’s wallet. But when we look at the facts, the university is ultimately a business and, like all businesses, their purpose is to strive for the betterment of the world.
While the feelings about this change are not altogether positive, it is certainly nice to see that UMBC is willing to take a risk and try new things for the students’ well-being. Mistakes do happen, but with the feedback from the students and a little bit of luck, this complete shut-down of the water system will not be one of those mistakes.