On Wednesday night, the next four years of our great nation will truly begin to take shape as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney square off at the University of Denver in the first of four major debates leading up to the 2012 election. After months of campaigning and questionable statements, the two candidates will finally go face to face.

Too bad it’s all a giant sham.

As you were probably told about 62 times on your tour when you visited here for the first time, Washington University has hosted presidential or vice presidential debates in four out of the past five elections. This year? We’re an alternate. Neglected in favor of Denver (where they’re all probably still distracted by Peyton Manning’s forehead), Centre College (where they can’t even spell “Center” right), Hofstra University (on Long Island, where they’d classify Romney’s botox as “merely average”) and Lynn University (…who?).

Naturally, this is unacceptable to several groups of people. First, to the fine folks of St. Louis. As you’ve likely been told by news sources such as Gawker, The Onion and the National Enquirer, St. Louis is a horrible, racist, dangerous death trap of a city. While those are all incredibly reliable news sources, we’re going to have to disagree with them. There are certainly worse places, even in nearby states, to hold a debate (*cough* Detroit *cough*), and besides, it’s not that unsafe. We know of only four people who have been mugged or shanked in their time here, and 75 percent survived. Way better odds than Afghanistan.

Speaking of, it’s also a shame for the students here at Wash. U. As we’ve alluded to already, the only reason the country knows who the hell we are is because of those debates here four years ago between the old dude from Delaware and that Tina Fey impersonator. Without more debates here involving crazy hotties (here’s looking at you, Joe Biden.), no one will know who we are, our application pool will worsen substantially and we’ll start having to take kids with SAT scores below 2390. That’s a slippery slope no one wants to start down. (Though maybe we can just get some other nutso to debate Chancellor Wrighton about glow sticks or something. Anyone know what Michele Bachmann is doing next week?)

Obviously, not having a debate here is an atrocity. Fortunately, we have a plan. Even though we are an alternate, we still have a chance to get the debates here if one of the other places is unable to host, which one of them will be once we prove that they’re incapable of hosting the debate.

So let’s just send a ton of drugs to the University of Denver. After all, we can send drugs through the mailroom—we just can’t receive them, right?

If we overnight them, they should arrive the morning of the debate. Colorado’s drug laws are pretty liberal, but Romney can’t go anywhere near the place if there’s a mother lode of narcotics in their mailroom.

And hey, if all else fails, we’ll just resort to bribes. Tell Barack that we’ve got an original Pi pizza here with his name on it—because everyone knows the St. Louis pizza establishment is his favorite in America (take that, other “safe” cities!), and all he has to do to get it is have a debate here. Relevance restored. You’re welcome, St. Louis.