Your House, USA – Since giving students the option to stay at home for the fall semester, Northeastern University has been taking steps to ensure that remote learners don’t get too comfortable in their own homes.
Or, what used to be their homes. Utilizing obscure passages from the Northeastern Constitution and the Quibi terms and services, the university has claimed the houses and land of each of NEU’s 3,000 remote learners through eminent domain, a process that is irreversible because of Northeastern’s status as a non-profit, “fuck you” institution.
Since carrying out this territorial coup de grâce, the university has been hard at work ensuring that students follow strict COVID-19 guidelines. Watched by drones and surveillance cameras (“So much for being robot-proof,” said one anonymous RA), students must now wear masks when walking from their childhood bedroom to the shower they don’t share with anyone, and maintain healthy social distancing from their parents when eating around the dinner table. If students fail to complete their Daily Wellness Check, learners will find themselves face-to-face with a projected warning from president Joseph Aoun, who seems to always appear just as they are about to begin… violating November’s traditional no ‘private-time’ practice.
The Northeastern Student Housing Affairs Rights Team (referred to as NUShart) has filed a purely symbolic lawsuit on the students’ behalf, alleging that the move violates the 3rd Amendments rights of students, since the proctors that now sit outside of each of the 3,000 new residence halls technically count as soldiers of the Northeastern government. Through séance, we were able to reach the ghost of James Madison for comment. Visibly excited by the news, he said “Finally, that one hasn’t been used in centuries. I told them it would be important.”
There have been mixed student reactions to the move- many dissidents have self-immolated in protest, while some have drafted a letter of complaint to the administration. The letter, drafted by third-year English major Camera Hoff, explains that the university should not take steps to make students at home give a single fuck.
“I stayed home because of my severe asthma, but now that I’m here, I do not want to hear a single word about protecting the pack. I am the m*therf*cking pack,” Hoff said.
Other signatories of the letter agree. Noah Comment, a first-year Political Science major in the NUStart program, said “While I’ve never had the chance to exercise my right to have guests in my room, I know this will be the year. Please. Someone. I’m so fundamentally broken and alone.”
