The pep band’s cheery renditions of “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey echo across the empty stands of Francis field. Cheerleaders toting rubber slingshots launch free swag high into the crisp November air, only to have the T-shirts and towels softly thud off the brown plastic seats unclaimed. When the football team scores a touchdown on a 25-yard strike from Eyethrowinter Ceptions to Jebediah Stonehands on the first drive of the second half, there are no cheers, only the wind as it whistles towards the Mississippi River.

“Velcro,” interim Director of Athletics Justa Carousel declared triumphantly during a Monday press conference, a manic smile inhabiting his face as he continued: “We’ve tried everything to increase student attendance at sporting events. We updated the weekend schedule on the underpass, we gave out free pizza and swag. Nothing has worked. As the [Washington University] dean of fun, it is my responsibility that students enjoy themselves…by any means necessary.”

Desmond Pear | Student Life

Starting April 9 during the baseball team’s annual Wydown Showdown with Fontbonne University, the Athletic Department will begin Velcro-ing students to athletic field bleachers in order to increase fan attendance and school spirit. Seats at Irv Utz Stadium have already been lined with industrial strength Velcro, the money for which has been reallocated from adjunct professor salaries. All adjuncts will now be paid in nonrefundable Ibby’s coupons.

During the press conference, Carousel also outlined the selection process for deciding which students would be Velcro-ed to the stands. At the beginning of each week, a raffle will be held. Each student will have his or her name written on a ticket and inserted into a comically large rotating plastic ball, the funds for which were skimmed off the physics department’s diversity and inclusion stipend.

Enough students will be plucked from the pot to fill the stands for all the home games for the coming weekend. As an added wrinkle, students can purchase extra meal points in exchange for more tickets in the raffle. The exchange rate will currently be set at one ticket for five meal points.

This final stipulation has already created unrest among lower meal plan students who are now forced to enter their names into the Velcro-raffle many times in order to finance their consumption of half and halves and Bear’s Den quesadillas.

Katniss Everclear is a senior in the Sam Fox School and a member of the Gamma Gamma Gamma Gamma sorority. Both her and her little, whom Everclear requested remained unnamed, are on the bronze plan. The two women have been low on meal points since second semester started, and Everclear has already began purchasing extra for the two of them in exchange for raffle entries. She has forbidden her little from doing the same out of fear that the little might be selected for a grizzly hook-and-loop fate.

“It’s a small price to pay for our Ibby’s dates,” Everclear said.

Carousel declined to comment on this strangely Hunger Games-esque development.

Once students have been selected, they are required to report to the Danforth University Center where the second half of the Velcro will be secured to the seat of their pants. They will then be marched down to their respective fields and secured to the stands.

“Short of dropping out, they’re not going anywhere,” Carousel said.

On how students in attendance will be able to stand up to cheer if their rears are firmly planted to the aluminum, Carousel insisted the Athletic Department is taking the problem one step at a time.