This past Monday marked the hallowed "first day of classes" for many colleges across the country. Here at CU Boulder, the estimated 2,700 undergraduate population reconvened across the red-roofed campus at the base of the Flatirons for another year of academia and folly. New to the scene was the freshman class, clocking in at just under 6,000 students. Like gentle fawns, the freshman coyly poked around the campus to find their first of many courses to come in their undergraduate careers. Many of these classes were held in the basement of the infamous Engineering Center. Invariably, the number of freshman that entered the building early Monday morning was reportedly higher than those who made it back to their dorms that night. But this year, CU officials looked closely to find the silver lining in the situation. This reporter had the opportunity to sit down with CU President Bruce Benson to talk about the matter.
In President Benson’s office, adorned with Grateful Dead flags and littered with Cosmo’s pizza boxes, I asked him about the gravity of the situation. He had this to say:
“This year we’re happy to report an all-time low 27 freshman trapped in the basement of the Engineering Center on the first day of class. I feel safe in boasting our drop in trapped students from the reported 63 students just last semester. But the road to this record breaking low number was not easy. This has been an issue we’ve been well aware of for the past decade. We’ve put efforts into preventative measures, but have found alternative methods to have the best results. In typical CU fashion, we’ve pumped some serious unnecessary funding into the problem by researching the situation. We hid cameras, placed decoys, built swimming pools, and provided food and supplies for these weary new students, the whole nine yards! We used to go and do the whole rescue thing, but found it to be a waste of school expenses, since whatever freshman we rescued would be replaced by a whole new wave just a day later. We found it better to just let nature take its course. The majority of them are non-declared anyway, and by the time they find their way out, usually towards the end of the semester, we find that they’ve all decided to become engineers. It's basically like Stockholm syndrome.
"What we’ve found in combing over collected data from the past years is that these lost freshmen create a whole functioning micro-society modeled after the hunter-gatherer archetype of our ancient ancestors. Its our Darwinian nature, to adapt to survive, whether it be for the students in the Engineering classes above, adapting study habits to be successful in the classroom, or the slightly more barbaric iteration of the freshmen trapped a story below adapting for literal survival. Those who adapt do well here at CU.”
On the matter of whether or not it might be more prudent to put up some basic signage to help the poor students out of the concrete hell, President Benson had this to say:
“Meh.”
Adding the reported losses of students in the stacks at Norlin library, the reported missing Freshman class for the first day of Fall 2015 came in at a record low 248.
The day in numbers came to the following:
# of Freshmen trapped in buildings -- 275
# of incidents involving long boards -- 134
# of parking citations given -- data still being collected