As an audio tape recording of Donald Trump making lewd remarks threatens to throw the Republican campaign into chaos, Jeb Bush was seen smiling contentedly from his gilded dog kennel inside the Koch Brothers’ family compound.

“He’s really doing a lot better these days.  We’ve been feeding him wet food from a can; hell, I’m even thinking of taking him for a walk on Saturday. Yep…I think we’ll get a few more good years out of little Jebby yet,” Charles Koch chided while instructing a tuxedoed Reince Priebus to refill Jeb’s water bowl.

“Sometimes we make him eat a page of the Wolfowitz Doctrine. He’s a purebred you know. It’s good for his joints,” David added.

“My name’s Jeb Bush! I’m a good little boy who likes to protect this country! The bad orange man hurt my feelings but now he’s in biiiiiiig trouble! I cut taxes three times in Florida! That mean man with tiny hands makes all the most repugnant noises with his mouth hole! Now he’ll never take the big desk my daddy promised me! My name is Jeb Bush,” Jeb exclaimed, breaking almost six months of incoherent mumbling since losing the New Hampshire primary to a reality television personality.

Paul Ryan could not be reached for comment but instead quivered silently in the fetal position, his pale, sickly flesh gyrating on the cold mahogany of Charles’ cigar lounge.

As soon as he started looking at colleges, Tanner Ackerman knew Whitman was for him. However, after ironically quaffing one too many mang-o-ritas from a mason jar the night before, Tanner found that standardized testing did not reflect his full academic potential. In our parents’ day, Tanner would be at Linfield. Now, he lives in Tamarac.

It’s official. Whitman admissions will now consider extensive vinyl collections as an effective substitute for both the SAT and ACT. Speaking in support of the new policy, Dean of Admissions Cony Tabasco said this on Sunday:

Illustration by Taylor Penner-Ash

“This is one of the most important achievements of the Whitman College admissions team to date. I mean, in what kind of world does a 1500 on the SAT preclude a decent education for someone who owns Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’? Anybody could see we were passing up huge amounts of potential by weighting standardized test scores so heavily. Why, it’s a god damn miracle this institution has anything decent to light doobs to these days. All you can muster sometimes is the Beastie Boys’ ‘Licensed to Ill’ or even Barry Manilow. This isn’t the Whitman I want to leave my children.  And that change starts with the admissions process.”

–Cony Tabasco, Whitman College Dean of Admissions and Recent Begrudging Tribal Tramp Stamp Recipient

Twelve o’clock descends upon the sweltering lawn as my attention is caught by a large sign with “Rick for President” written in large red and blue font. The activities fair is in full swing and my fraternity obligates me to sit sweaty and disgruntled behind a large folding table on the Cordiner side lawn. The first years I’m supposed to be schmoozing look equally discontent with their surroundings, shuffling awkwardly from booth to booth in small tight-knit packs.

My gaze is drawn again to the large American flag strewn across a booth manned by two polo-clad twenty-somethings. Boredom and curiosity overtake me and I abandon my post to experience one of Whitman’s most bizarre and reclusive sub-cultures: the Young Republicans.

They are cautious when I make first contact, correctly assuming that I, like most who visit their stand, am there ironically.  A jovial, “Hi, how’s it going?” seems to put the young Trumpophiles at ease while I pour over the vast wealth of Santorum propaganda on the table. I hold up a bumper sticker with a photo of the Rickster gesticulating wildly and say, “Can I have this?” Taken aback, one of the combovered youths responds with a hasty, “Sure!” The other, still justifiably skeptical about my intentions furrows his brow and asks, “So, do you like Santorum?”

Now ordinarily I’m not prone to vulgarity or one to break social decorum for the sake of a laugh. However, a setup like this one comes once in a lifetime. I screw my courage to the sticking place and quip, “Yeah, I mean like of course I do. It’s just that the cleanup is a real bitch.”

Confusion, incredulity, disappointment and rage wash over their faces in that order. One of them snaps back saying, “Why did you even come here?” I ponder his question for a while and eventually decide that I am in too deep to stop digging. “Well, I was just walking by your stand, and then I thought to myself, ‘You know what, I do hate poor people,’” escapes my lips before I have a chance to reconsider. I abscond shortly after with my life, Santorum bumper sticker and the knowledge that campus Republicans have very little sense of humor.

Illustration by Taylor Penner-Ash

We all knew you could do it, Macklemore!  Way to go!  In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, hip-hop recording artist Ben Haggerty obliterated growing tension between the Judeo-Christian West and Muslim east, singlehandedly ushering in an era of prosperity and understanding which will surely last for centuries.  His new billboard-topping single “Same Affinity for Ridiculous Hats” is now the national anthem for Israel, Palestine and Persia Super Friends Coalition (formerly known as the Islamic Republic of Iran). The pope commented on the song last Tuesday saying that “this shit is bangin,” and will “definitely bring some honeys to the papal chamber.”  Other notable reactions include:

“What can I say? The man spits bars. We’re reconsidering like a ton of stuff right now.”

–Ayatollah Khamenei, supreme leader and self-described “head brochacho” of the Persia Super Friends Coalition

“I can’t even remember what we were fighting about.”

–Benjamin Netanyahu immediately before French kissing Mahmoud Abbas. Sources can confirm tongue.

“I feel like such an asshole right now.”

–Rick Santorum

When hearing news of his song’s wide reaching appeal, Macklemore was humble saying only “Well, damn! I guess I’m rap Bono now,” before boarding a cargo plane on its way to distribute Birkenstocks to Bengali orphans. In equally astounding news, Rya Lewis was asked for an autograph yesterday.

Illustration by Claire Revere. 

Market analysts were able to confirm today that this has indeed been the most precipitous decline in white guilt on campus since George Bridges claimed to “have one black friend.” Whitman’s new mascot, The Fightin’ Ivory Towers, is rapidly gaining popularity with the student body.

“I feel that the mascot change was a necessary one and did much to confront the systemic racism running rampant in our society. I mean, I’m a Seahawks fan who grew up in San Francisco. I know what it is like to feel the unbearable sting of discrimination,” shouted first year Todd Ingle while atop his father’s convertible. Other praise included, “What was our mascot again?,” “Does Whitman have sports teams?” and “Who are you? How did you get in here? Why are you asking me about mascots during my colonoscopy?”

The mascot change has, however, not garnered universal approval amongst the student body. “I think that the reference to towers is extremely offensive. Think about it, they are basically just large phallic tributes to a male-dominated society. The ivory part I also take issue with because of elephants or something,” said sophomore and proud owner of at least three Nalgene bottles, Leah Doppleman.

The administration also felt the need to comment on this momentous occasion. Pat Spencer, who recently emerged from his subterranean lair to bring forth a thousand years of darkness and academic exceptionalism, said that, “We the administration condone the mascot change orchestrated by you puny mortals. It is important that we not celebrate a history of oppression, as havoc rains down from the heavens and my invincible army of deans overruns your pathetic defenses.” It certainly would seem that, love it or hate it, the Fightin’ Ivory Towers are here to stay.

Did you know that somewhere on a liberal arts college campus every day, a hipster is forced to decide between donning the footwear of his choice and purchasing yet another pair of electric blue corduroy pants? This is not the America I want to live in. We here at Whitman’s newest social activism group, “Birkenstock the Marginally Less Fortunate,” dream of a country where no one must make that choice.

Wake Up Sheeple!!! We all know that douchey twenty-somethings in Somalia or Cuba or whatever have difficulty procuring even the most basic collection of ironic beanies. However, did you realize that a mere 300 miles away. on the campus of UPS, over 20 percent of bookstore and coffee shop employees must pass off their bare feet as an attempted return to pastoral naturalism, when really they lack the means to purchase Birkenstocks? This is unacceptable and it’s about time we did something about it.

For only around 30 dollars, or maybe more, or possibly less (Chad in Accounting nobly refuses to use his math knowledge privilege to advantage himself over the arithmetically impaired), you can provide Birkenstocks for a hipster whose feet would otherwise go bare, or worse yet, in Toms. There is no excuse for the economic disparity between the upper and lower classes of the top decile of our society. Come on Whitman, lets re-distribute our absurd prosperity amongst the slightly less absurdly prosperous. We need to overcome this capitalism bullshit and get back to what’s really important; smoking American Spirits, pretending we’ve read Infinite Jest and vehemently disagreeing over whose vinyl collection is better (mine is).

Please place your donations, which may include currency (either U.S. or that funny pink money Devon came back from his snorkeling trip to Belize with), old Birkenstocks, really progressive thoughts (like Nelson Mandela world-changingly progressive, not shitty Michael Moore documentary progressive), a three hour long DVD that’s just Johnny Depp deciding what scarf to wear, longboards, those 1920’s gangster fedoras which for some reason we all wear, Frolfing “gear,” plaid in any of its glorious forms or your parents’ seething disdain in a large plastic bin near Tamarac. We’ve pointlessly covered it in rock climbing merchandise logos, Nepalese prayer flags and “coexist” bumper stickers, so it should be pretty difficult to find amongst everything else in Tamarac.

So please donate today, and help make the world slightly more equal in its inequality. We leave you with a William Faulkner nonsense quote that we memorized but don’t understand: “Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.”