PRINCETON – In accordance with University equal opportunity regulations, Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan has temporarily suspended the Princeton “Swordfight-by-Night” Shakespeare troupe that until now has practiced in the New Butler amphitheatre and pissed the living shit out of about all of the four-year college’s residents. After weeks of contentious allegations of leadership misconduct, one undergraduate brought his story of blatant discrimination to Dean Deignan’s attention.
Ricardo Francesco, an Italian Varsity wrestler and engineer, was told by the leader of the theatre organization to “go do a problem set or something” after inquiring as to the odds of his successful acceptance into the group.
“He asked me, ‘Why the fuck would I ever let a lame MAE major into the most irritating Glee Club on the damn Eastern seaboard?’”
Francesco, who regularly reps 275 on the bench and can whip up a mean Cherries Jubilee, professed a passionate interest in the group’s upcoming production, “How to Make More Noise Than Previously Believed Humanly Possible” (loosely based on Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Corolianus). The anonymous chairman of the troupe was not fooled.
“I have never seen an engineer who enjoys wasting huge quantities of time for no purpose. What makes you think that’ll change now?”
This statement was cited by ODUS as a reason to cut the club’s funding. During his interview Francesco alleged that he was referred to repeatedly as a “nerd”, “athlete”, and “regular kid”. These startling revelations come on the heels of several other unconfirmed claims of unbridled discrimination.
Kim Wu, an Electrical Engineer from China, also believes “Swordfight-by-Night” wrongfully turned her away.
“I just mentioned I had class some days between 11:00 AM and 4:30 PM. Apparently that meant I would miss hundreds of practice hours every week. I also had this weird feeling that everyone got a little too into their method acting to be tolerable in real life. I saw this one English major try to pay for a burrito in the C-store with plastic Roman denarii; this other girl asked me how many ohms there were in a gallon of milk. And when I got the last slice of cheese pizza at Late Meal this dude said to me “Et tu, Brute?” This play was taking over their lives, and as an engineer, there’s really nothing more I value than my social life.”
Wu, along with fellow engineers and COS majors Hu, Wang, Li, and Xi, agree that their collective dismissal was unjust. Another disgruntled BSE student, Li-How Pang, spoke out against unfair tryout practices.
“Yeah so this weird lookin[g] guy in a dress asked what classes everyone was taking after the usual name, residential college, where are you from stuff. The chick next to me mentioned Introduction to the Study of Gender and Feminist Poetry, and she didn’t even have to recite any lines before getting a part. Then this tall skinny kid with a goatee talked about his Comp Lit classes for 10 minutes, said something about “all’s well that ends well,” and went straight to make up. I recited the entirety of Acts II and III of Othello from memory, but as soon as I was done some kid with a cigarette in the back said he saw me by the science library last night while he was on his way to Terrace. They told me to “clear the fuck out”.
Dean Deignan was appalled upon hearing these tales of Princeton-on-Princeton discrimination.
“Never in all my many, many, years of existence have I witnessed such a brash, snotty display of intellectual pride. The students we at Princeton are so proud to talk about in our admissions brochures seem to have violated Princeton’s fairness policies. Dean Malkiel recommended their immediate execution without trial, but I thought expulsion would be sufficient. That, and a moratorium on talking about the meaning of life, juxtaposition of abstract stuff in pre-1960s foreign films, and growth of impressive facial hair for the 60 days following expulsion. We believe this is a reasonable punishment.”
The discovery of small pink notebook listing the “Rules of the Stage” sealed the group’s fate. Written in a bizarre combination of electric colors with the occasional dollop of glitter, the micro-tome lays out the acceptable majors, activities and drug abuses of any member. Some students have pointed out it reads remarkably similar to the Tribe’s international bestseller “How to Make Well-Connected Friends and Influence Lax Bros”. Deignan concluded her assessment with a brief analysis of the discriminatory practices in question.
“To most administrators, it looks like the possession of actual academic talent or friends prohibits membership. Going even further, we cannot allow any student group to exist that forces its constituents to participate in either the Theater, Dance, or Women’s and Gender Studies programs. Those were just a joke anyways to appease the feminist block. We value education, leadership, and physical competency at Princeton; fucking around in the dark with swords all the time just won’t fly”.
