Total Stranger Can Definitely Watch Your Stuff
A recent survey found that 86% of Texas A&M University students have asked total strangers to watch their stuff while they used the restroom or otherwise left their belongings unattended. The survey was conducted by the University Police Department as part of their efforts to reduce theft on campus.
“This study confirmed what we already knew: students idiotically leave their expensive laptops in the care of random strangers just because it’s convenient,” said University Police Chief Michael Ragan. “I’m all for reducing theft, but it’s kind of hard to accomplish that when students are practically handing over their devices to criminals.”
Similarly, 55% of students reported that strangers have asked them to watch their stuff on campus. “Oh yeah, people ask me all the time,” said sophomore entomology major Brenda Hartey. “I usually look up for a few seconds and then get distracted by my phone again.”
The discrepancy in the two figures reported by the study illustrates a dark underside to the phenomenon: students profile those around them to decide who is safest to ask to watch their stuff. “I usually look for a girl who is wearing an oversized t-shirt and has cutesy stickers on her laptop,” said senior construction science major Charles Whitmey. “She won’t want my crappy Dell if she already has a rose gold Macbook Air, right?”
—Heldenfalls
Once an average student eons ago, Heldenfalls committed some unknown sin against the Aggie gods and has since been burdened with a strange punishment: She is forced to carry her backpack to the top of the infamous Heldenfels stairs only to fall back to the bottom again over and over for all eternity. Though this may seem like a horrible fate, the philosophy department argues that Heldenfalls’ endless task represents the absurd heroism of the human condition. Each atom of that backpack, each mineral flake of those concrete stairs, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a woman’s heart. One must imagine Heldenfalls happy.