Karol J¢zef WojtylaDear Reader: This article appears as part of Student Life’s annual April Fool’s issue. Please don’t think anything in it is true. It’s all made up.
With students abuzz over housing, a new housing option is underway. The Catholic Student Center (CSC) is currently developing a convent option for Wash. U. women.
“We just wanted to provide young women with a residence where they could feel secure,” said one CSC representative.
The new dorm will resemble a convent without actually requiring its residents to be qualified nuns. The option is particularly enticing to parents who aren’t quite ready to let their darling daughters fraternize with the opposite sex in the co-ed living quarters currently offered by the school.
“I was so worried about sending my daughter to Wash. U. when I learned of the co-ed dorms on one of the tours,” said one concerned parent. “We were going to send her to Wellesley until the convent housing option became available.”
Students applying for this housing option need not be Catholic, but admission is not dogma-blind and Catholic women have a much better chance of being accepted.
The dorms also appeal to Wash. U. women fed up with the school’s less-than-stellar dating scene.
“I got so tired of guys on my floor hitting on me because they couldn’t find girls anywhere else,” said one fed-up freshman female. “I feel like I can meet guys elsewhere, so why live with them?”
Despite the speculation of many Wash. U. males that the single-sex dorm will just be the setting of “toe nail painting parties and pillow fights,” as alluded to by one junior, the convent dormitories will be strictly run and overseen by a nun to be flown in directly from Italy. While her identity has not been released by the CSC, she is being hired and transported as a result of the University’s recent tuition hike and funding cut from student groups such as Campus Programming Council (CPC), Anime Exploration, Students for Choice and Suspicious of Whistlers.
“Well, with CPC, we figured that there’s really only one letter difference and no one would notice when we process the Treasury statements,” said Student Union treasurer Ed Banti. “And Suspicious of Whistlers just isn’t funny.”
The convent dorm was developed in large part due to parental concern and empty nest syndrome, despite the sky rocketing sales of Karen Levin Coburn and Madge Lawrence Treeger’s Wash. U. parents classic, “Letting Go,” found in large quantities in the bookstore during freshmen move-in and parent orientation.
The new housing option is also the result of the encroaching influence of Hillel on campus.
“We heard a rumor that the Jewish Student Union was developing plans for a kibbutz or sukkah dorm system for Jewish students,” said one CSC representative. “We couldn’t lose our influence, especially within the notably Catholic St. Louis area.”
Though not Catholic himself, former chancellor William H. Danforth has already funded the project and, in an effort to gain hegemonic control over the entire University, has requested that the convent bear his name.