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Oct. 17, 2017
Upon arriving on campus this O-Week, first-year students were thrust into a magical fantasyland without their knowledge. Following years of planning, buckets of money, and countless tests from the Decision Research LabCenter for Decision Research, tThe TAPS, English, and Sociology departments teamed up to pull the ultimate prank: getting college students to talk to each other and work on a collaborative project.
Throughout O-Week, and even before, incoming students were faced with a mystical secret society, cryptic codes and puzzles, costumed red monks, and a search for a portal to another dimension. While it may seem like something out of a fantasy novel, it also doesn’t veer too far from the kind of activities one can expect UChicago students to conceive of on their own.
“Oh yeah that weird game thing? I just thought it was something a bunch of students here had decided to do. It never occurred to me that a group of professors would have fostered and encouraged it,.” sSaid first-year Violet Ricola. When told that the university spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the project, funding dozens of Metcalf internships, she added “That’s neat, I i guess.”
“Even though there were clues about it as far back as my acceptance letter, I first caught on to the fact that something was up when I noticed several students in sweatshirts and backpacks with a logo that I can only describe as an anatomically correct anus. I was intrigued, learned it was a LARP thing, and lost interest,” added first-year Benny Cepacol.
The game, known only as “B.S.”,S,” was revealed to stand for “Bull Shit” at the culmination of the hoax, which took place at the Museum of Science and Industry on the last night of O-Week. Upon arriving on campus this O-Week, first-year students were thrust into a magical fantasyland without their knowledge. Following years of planning, buckets of money, and countless tests from the Center for Decision Research, the TAPS, English, and Sociology departments teamed up to pull the ultimate prank: getting college students to talk to each other and work on a collaborative project.Throughout O-Week, and even before, incoming students were faced with a mystical secret society, cryptic codes and puzzles, costumed red monks, and a search for a portal to another dimension. While it may seem like something out of a fantasy novel, it also doesn’t veer too far from the kind of activities one can expect UChicago students to conceive of on their own. “Oh yeah that weird game thing? I just thought it was something a bunch of students here had decided to do. It never occurred to me that a group of professors would have fostered and encouraged it,” said first-year Violet Ricola. When told that the university spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the project, funding dozens of Metcalf internships, she added “That’s neat, I guess.”“Even though there were clues about it as far back as my acceptance letter, I first caught on to the fact that something was up when I noticed several students in sweatshirts and backpacks with a logo that I can only describe as an anatomically correct anus. I was intrigued, learned it was a LARP thing, and lost interest,” added first-year Benny Cepacol.There, the three students who were somehow committbaffled enough to follow the game to its completion were met with an MFA in creative thinking. We were told it had something to do with magic mushrooms or myco-futurism, we’re not really sure.
The Dealer would like to apologize for abandoning its reporting on this matter without getting to the bottom of it; our reporter for this story dropped it after throwing up her hands and eporter xxxxsaying, “After I saw these people scrabble around the quad in gasmasks I was disturbed and puzzled, and not in a way that made me want to solve the puzzle.”on the last night of O-Week at the Museum of Science and Industry. There, the three students baffled enough to follow the game to its completion were met with an MFA in creative thinking. We were told it had something to do with magic mushrooms or myco-futurism, we’re not really sure. The Dealer would like to apologize for abandoning its reporting on this matter without getting to the bottom of it, reporter xxxx said “After I saw these folk scrawl around the quad in gasmasks I was distrubed and puzzled, and not in a way that made me want to solve the puzzle.
