Satire

With the semester halfway over, a lot of Vandy freshman have expressed worry over the lack of cheap, convenient options for storing their microwaves, fridges, TVs, and other unwieldy appliances over summer break. What they don’t realize is that there’s an abundance of easy solutions out there to choose from, and some of them even have a 50% chance of keeping your stuff safe until next fall. And your risk of getting arrested is even lower! Without further ado, here are the top five ways Vandy students can take care of their microwaves, fridges, and other appliances over break.

1. Rent a unit at a storage facility

This is the go-to, it seems. Sure, if you choose the wrong facility it might cost you an arm and a leg. Sure, the storage unit next to yours may well contain an arm and a leg. As long as you never open it, you’ll never have to know, so what’s the big deal? Unless the guy renting the storage unit next to yours happens to be checking on his arm and leg collection when you go to drop off your mini fridge. We recommend accessing your storage unit during daylight hours.

2. Drive it home with you

No trunk space? Too many suitcases on the seats? No problem! Keep the fridge on your lap for the whole drive, all five to forty-five hours on average. For entertainment and blackmail purposes, you can even keep track of the number of times your parents refuse to stop at the next 7-Eleven so you can restore blood flow to your metatarsals. As for the people who are driving home by themselves, well, if that lady in the next lane can drive while slugging a 16-oz americano and putting on eyeliner in her rear view mirror, then you can definitely drive with a microwave and mini fridge in your lap. If you were a wiser freshman than I was and didn’t pack enough clothing to overflow a medium-sized sedan, you can stack your appliances in the passenger seat with a beanie and a mask and use them to sneak into the carpool lane.

3. Fly with it

In this case either your fridge and microwave will need to be packed, or you can buy them a ticket and treat them as a fellow passenger, perhaps utilizing the carpool lane disguise again. If you choose to pack them, since they’re electronics you’ll have to take them out of your luggage to go through the x-rays, which may raise a few eyebrows with the TSA. As such, however you choose to fly with your mini fridge, we recommend adding a few extra hours to your estimated travel time in case of delays.

4. Make gullible friends in the Nashville area

Heyyy, Jerry! It’s so great to see you again! How’s the kids? Say, didn’t I hear you mention the other day that you could really use a mini fridge for the boat? Take a nice cold beer out on the lake for when the fish aren’t biting? No? Really? I could’ve sworn you were–well, shoot, now I don’t know what to do, because I rented this spiffy little mini fridge just for you. The whole summer, yeah. Gosh, I don’t know what I was thinking! Well, I guess I’ll just have to find somewhere to put it. I can’t just take it back, but you know I have to fly home tomorrow and I’m–you’ll take it? Really? Aww, gosh, Jerry, what would I do without you?

5. Hide it in the bushes behind Towers

Tape a few branches to your microwave, maybe creatively utilize a tarp, and we guarantee you, no one will find it until either the fall semester starts or, possibly, they get around to demolishing Towers. Correct us if we’re wrong, Towers kids, but it seems statistically unlikely anyone will be willingly hanging out there over summer break. If Towers isn’t up your alley, there are definitely parts of Stevenson that haven’t been witnessed by mortal eyes in over a decade. You could easily stash your flatscreen there. (For more information on the Thing Beneath Stevenson see MCL’s Top 5 Vanderbilt Conspiracy Theories.) And if you’re extra paranoid, all you need to do is schedule in a few free hours before your departure, roll up your sleeves, and grab a shovel. And maybe do some extra research on where those gravesites are on campus. Just in case.

(Please, Cornelius, I would totally pay to be able to store my appliances on campus. I’ll sign whatever waivers you need me to, I know how you feel about commitment! You’ve got to make back the revenue from the free washing machines somehow, Cornelius. I understand it’d be a logistical nightmare and you’d probably lose more money than you made, but isn’t there even one basement with a deadbolt you could toss just my fridge in? Do it for me?)

Of all the Vanderbilt student media groups, only MyCommonsLife’s intrepid reporters dare delve into the true depths of Vanderbilt’s seedy underbelly. Without further ado, here are the top five ways in which mysterious forces are manipulating our campus society toward agendas malevolent and unknown.

1. The Vanderbilt squirrels are trained to eavesdrop on student conversations.

We all know birds aren’t real, but you might be surprised to learn they aren’t the only ubiquitous small animals that can be trained/programmed to spy for the state and other authorities. The Vanderbilt squirrels report directly to Chancellor Diermeier about student dissent, allowing him and the rest of the administration to take immediate and extreme disciplinary action. While past headmasters had to utilize an extensive system of signals and tiny whiteboards to understand the squirrels’ defamatory reports and security recommendations, Diermeier’s training in the dark arts allows him to understand their chittering like a Disney princess, which has significantly streamlined the process.

The more experienced squirrels tend to conduct their surveillance from inside trash cans, because not only is it unobtrusive, but that’s where they’re most likely to overhear students who’ve just finished their meals and are throwing away the cartons complaining about the dining halls. This is why you never hear anyone complain about the food at Vandy–it’s a capital offense, and anyone who makes a disparaging remark about the chicken in particular has been immediately disappeared.

2. Vanderbilt doesn’t offer a business major because it would make the student body too powerful to control.

Business majors are just too great. We already have our hands full with the magnificence of the econ and HOD majors, who, in a very “Harrison Bergeron”-like fashion, outshine the rest of the student body as the life-giving sun outshines the remote and ethereal stars; were Vanderbilt to allow the business-minded among us to achieve their full potential, our society would crumble under the force of their will. A private university is, after all, a type of business. This is also why the temperature in Branscomb is kept as low as possible at all times and the Munchie meal plan options have been drastically limited: The administration is keeping the econ majors weak and malnourished so that they lack the strength to realize their true, innate glory. (No, I don’t see what my business minor has to do with this theory. Journalism ethics are an invention of the lizard shadow government; I owe you nothing.)

3. The Covid-19 Testing Center is gathering DNA for mass cloning operations.

Think about it. Why is Vandy using the saliva test when everyone else seems to prefer the nasal swab? Because the saliva test is easier to perform and more stable in transport than the nasal swab? Don’t make us laugh. The saliva test collects way more DNA than the nasal swab, leaving plenty left over after cloning experiments gone wrong. The STEM departments run the actual cloning process, and they do in fact offer staff positions to students in the biomedical engineering program, so if that’s you and you’re looking for a good summer internship be sure to apply by walking three times around the FEL Center, whispering the password “Mr. C is my ideal life partner” into the nearest shrub, and finally folding your personal statement into a paper airplane and tossing it into traffic on the 440 south.

Our sources inform us the main goal of the operation is to create a clone army to sell to foreign militaries, though the STEM professors seem to be having some trouble marketing an army of scrawny, sleep-deprived college students to the North Korean security forces. All of these sources, of course, either received an email shortly afterward from the Office of Student Accountability and subsequently refused to speak with us beyond unintelligible deranged muttering, or in one case reported to Covid quarantine housing and were never seen again, so it’s difficult to corroborate their claims.

Alternatively, the Covid-19 Testing Center could just be dumping all our samples into the swimming pool-sized Saliva Vat located in the classified section of the tunnels under Branscomb, which is why there’s that weird smell in your dorm sometimes. The purpose of such an activity is unknown.

4. Students who get lost in Stevenson are fed to the demigod Groth’nag’leth.

What lies beneath Stevenson is beyond the descriptive Power of human language, for the Thing beneath Stevenson is a power unto Themself. What lies beneath Stevenson, specifically beneath the Suzies pickup area, is beyond mortal Terror, a surfeit of awe, a surfeit of Being that manifests as Hunger, a surfeit of Hunger that evades satisfaction, for if It were satisfied It would not be Groth’nag’leth. O, Dread Emanation of the engineering department, scourge of the Pre-meds with Your terrible gentleness, patience beyond measure, awful Mirror of the human condition, swoll’n with the despair of a thousand freshman chemistry students, accept these Offerings, led straying into Your merciful Grasp in the interminable tunnels of Medical Research Building III. Be nourished by the Center for Physics and Astronomy’s ample and beauteous bounty; in their last moments you will be as their Sun, and they will appreciate Your Awe. Consume now these Gifts, cunningly redirected to Medical Center North rather than Medical Center North II, doomed never to see the Joe and Howard Werthan Building except in the ecstatic and corrosive Omniscience that pools between Your ever-widening jaws.

Great Groth’nag’leth, Heir to the Unknowable, we offer Thee these youths, and in return all we ask is that You in your infinite Patience delay Your maddening Ascension until our fragile mortal bodies have naturally expired, and our spirits have left behind this plane that Thou art destined to Envelop. Give us leave never to look upon Thy dread Face, and we will show Thee all the reverence owed to Groth’nag’leth Steven’s Son, Fear-Brother, Labyrinthine, the One Which Contains Multitudes.

5. The Randwich is actually the exact same thing as the Commons Magnolia sandwich.

Okay, this one is a little far-fetched, even for us. But we feel obligated to at least inform you of this unlikely theory, which was posited to us in a whisper by an unknown source hiding behind a fake plant in the Office of Student Accountability. This source insisted that, if you compare the Randwich and Magnolia menus on the GET app, you will find them identical, or at least close enough that the difference becomes insignificant. Nor, they claimed, was the method used to prepare this sandwich in Rand in any way superior, or even distinct. Unfortunately, before this source could further substantiate their outlandish claim, our cameraman here at MCL was seized with an irrational rage and began screaming at them to stop saying these awful things, which unfortunately attracted the attention of the Office of Student Accountability. None of us remember what happened next, or in fact the name of our cameraman, whose existence we are only aware of now because he appears briefly in our archives speaking from out of frame. I, personally, first regained consciousness three days later, wandering around the Recreation Center gym covered in strange markings. My colleagues report similar experiences. Such are the hazards of journalism. But anyway, even we have to admit that this claim is preposterous, as the Randwich is clearly and undoubtedly superior to all other sandwiches served on Vanderbilt campus, in absolutely every way.