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| pic: Flicker.com, Kleinz1 |
Following yet another April graduation weekend in which thousands of students received their degrees and diplomas despite the majority of them having at some stage walked through the the infamous Drodsty Arch pillars, Rhodes University students have today announced their search for something else to blame their various failures on.
According to Rhodes University student superstition, walking through the wooden pillars underneath the iconic white archway below the Administration building and those flowers they plant twice a year to wow parents is an automatic guarantee that the student will fail and not receive their degree.
“I don’t get it,” said Bachelor of Social Science conferee Dow Ndowen. “We all know that a Rhodes degree can survive endless reckless partying, irresponsible substance abuse, overindulgence in a hectic sport schedule, back-to-back seasons of Breaking Bad and How I Met Your Mother, and even an overdependence on all-night last-minute cramming, but these pillars? No! These used to be the straw that broke the Purple Rat's back.”
Ndowen said that the failure of these pillars to produce, er, failure must be down to a sudden lack of potency.
“Their evil degree-ending magic must have run out,” he said, “because it definitely can’t be due to anything else, say, a student actually being responsible and managing his or her time wisely. In fact, I'm tempted to say that the only reason why any of us are graduating is because of God's personal intervention.”
This is not the first time, however, that traditional superstitions have been brought into question by the Rhodes body, with many students now pointing equally damning fingers at other much-loved scapegoats, the SRC and the statue outside the Great Hall.
“I used to be able to blame the Student Representative Council for everything,” said ex-Rhodes student and unpaid intern Jessica Myers, “but now that I’ve graduated I just can’t blame them anymore. It's like they actually have very little to do with my individual shortcomings, failures and daily gripes, or something. Something must be broken in its inner workings.”
The statue, too, has been called into question.
“I know that I use every possible opportunity to deride women and talk about how I’d totally fuck bitches and smash vagina and just generally squeeze in as much manly, misogynistic charisma into my anecdotes,” said BSC graduate Jeremy Atkinson, “but it might surprise many, many people to know that I’m actually still a virgin.”
According to Rhodes legend, if a virgin graduates, the statue’s sword will fall to the ground.
“I checked it today. The slut bitch still hasn’t dropped her whore sword. It makes no sense - why would someone just make up a baseless, silly superstition that sneers on the very idea of scientific reality?" said an angry Atkinson, addding that "[he]’d still totally bang her though, not in a weird way, like, if she wasn’t made of metal, and maybe wore something nice and tight, china.”
Rhodes students were reported also able to graduate despite the years-long arduous daily mental violence they've suffered because of the uni's name.
"Something is going very, very wrong," said Journalism Honours recipient Noam Thompson. "People say, 'oh, those are all just weak excuses to justify your failures' - but somehow, despite the daily trauma we've all suffered having to go to a place called Rhodes, we've managed to graduate. It's insane."
In light of all this, the SRC has brought the issue to the fore, and has since confirmed that they are hard at work finding other things for students to blame for whatever difficulty or discontentment they may have.
“We’re thinking of following the crowd with this one and blaming the popular things,” said incumbent SRC President Parson de Buk, “and so in future we’ll just do the South African thing and blame Apartheid or the ANC.”
Those offended by this article can contact anyone but us – preferably the ANC. It’s probably their fault.
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