To the reader: This article originally appeared in Student Life’s annual April Fools’ issue. Please don’t take anything in it as fact. We made it all up.
In response to the February 11 attempted hot air balloon suicide attack on Brookings, Chancellor Mark Wrighton declared last night that Steve Fossett, Ben Smilowitz and the Bunny “constitute an axis of evil” that secretly supports militant Muslim terrorists in the St. Louis area.
“We must prevent dorks and hares that sponsor terror from threatening The Lou or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction,” Wrighton said in his State of the University address. Wrighton spoke to his audience in Brookings Quad, just feet from where Steve Fossett’s balloon crashed after bouncing off of South Brookings in last month’s tragic attacks.
“A terrorist underworld-including groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Jaish-e-Mohammed-operates in remote Starbuck’s and deserts and hides in the centers of large Subway lines,” Wrighton said.
Wrighton said that the rabbit-who was detained by WUPD intelligence officers in August after being found outside of Mallinckrodt carrying a map of Afghanistan, a copy of the Koran, a pair of box cutters, and an autographed copy of Osama bin Laden’s debut CD Jihad: Kickin’ It Hardcore-had divulged the details of this “axis” during his detainment in WU’s Tyson Research Center and Prison Complex.
“The depth of their hatred,” Wrighton said in describing the rabbit’s revelations, “is equaled by the madness of the destruction they design. We have found diagrams of St. Louis nuclear power plants and WU restroom facilities, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities, and thorough descriptions of landmarks in America and throughout the Delmar Loop.”
Wrighton then went on to describe the WUPD response to what he called “these moles of terror.”
“While the most visible military action is here on the Hilltop, WUPD is acting elsewhere,” he said. “We now have troops in the Philippines helping to train that country’s armed forces to go after terrorist cells that have executed a Career Center employee and still hold hostages. Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb the Jewish Bakery in Mallinckrodt. Our Navy is patrolling the coast of the Millbrook Pool to block the shipment of weapons and the establishment of terrorist camps in South County.”
The Bunny, Wrighton said, “aggressively pursues nuclear weapons and exports terror. He represses every student’s hope for freedom.”
He added, however, that Mr. Smilowitz, a WU junior, and Mr. Fossett, a millionaire balloon and yacht racer, are “way more evil than the rabbit.”
“Smilowitz has already used poison gas to murder thousands of his fellow Democratic party members, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children,” Wrighton said. “This is a man that agreed to international inspections of his dorm room then kicked out the inspectors. This is a man that has something to hide from the civilized world.”
Fossett, who Wrighton already deemed responsible for last month’s attack on Brookings, “has been pretty quiet since he crashed trying to circle the globe for the fifth time, but we know his true nature. He is a man arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving his own children.”
Fossett and Smilowitz have been linked to terrorist activity in the past, but never before have they been associated with each other or with the Rabbit.
Fossett is rumored to be the mastermind behind the February 11 attack on Brookings. He has also been accused of filling his hot air balloon “sandbags” with cocaine and heroin, airlifting members of al Qaeda and the Taliban from the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, and training terrorists in Australia to fly hot air balloons into buildings.
He eluded detection, authorities said, because he is a member of WU’s Board of Trustees, a contention that Wrighton denied. Wrighton also denied allegations by presidents of Ivy League universities that WU funded and even served as “Mission Control” for Fossett’s balloon activities in the late 1990s, when he allegedly developed terrorist training camps across the globe while stating that was actually just crashing in random places because of “bad weather.”
Smilowitz is the alleged mastermind of a terrorist support group in the St. Louis area that calls itself Southpaw.
“Smilowitz and the Southpaw call themselves members of the American Left and say they are anti-war, but we all know that means they support the terrorists,” said Wrighton.
Smilowitz was implicated in the assassination of former Republican Congressman Jim Talent, who was killed while teaching a class at WU last semester, which Smilowitz attended. He also was accused of planning an bombing attack on the WU ROTC Building and plotting the bloody coup in 2000 that ended in the assassination of former College Democrats president and Israeli spy Yoni Cohen.
Smilowitz and Fossett were outraged at Wrighton’s allegations and demanded proof.
“The Chancellor has tried to destroy me before,” said Smilowitz. “He will fail again, and again the glory of Allah will rain down upon him.”
Wrighton, however, remains confident that the world will believe him.
“Our cause is just, and it continues. Our discoveries in the Bunny’s body cavities confirmed our worst fears and showed us the true scope of the task ahead,” Wrighton said. “We have seen the depth of our enemies’ hatred in pornographic videos where they masturbate over the loss of innocent Top Care workers. Let’s roll.”