My Opinion
A warning to undergrads: A PSU diploma will kill you

I don't mean to spread conspiratorial rumors, but I am fairly certain Joab Thomas is trying to assassinate me.

I'm not sure how this happened. It wasn't long ago that I was a happily oblivious undergraduate: sunbathing on the HUB lawn; frolicking in fresh piles of campus snow; sometimes fitting both into a single, fun-packed afternoon. (It's not for everyone.) The possibility of my own death seemed remote, excepting a few desperate moments I had during the final exam of Physics 461 (Classical Dynamics II: Equations of Fury). My future stretched before me, a long and prosperous journey down life's freeway, with the occasional bathroom stop in Breezewood.

Then, as sometimes happens with college students, I (barely) got a bachelor's degree, graduating at a ceremony attended by President Thomas. A few weeks later, I received a letter from the Penn State Alumni Association. Thinking it was an overdue credit card bill, I threw it under my bed unopened and forgot about it.

Months after that, I was rummaging under the bed for laundry quarters when I came across the envelope. Curious as to how angry my creditors had become ("Dear VISA Cardholder: We're gonna break your kneecaps! We're gonna kidnap your sister! We're gonna . . ."), I tore the letter out and read it.

"Dear Mr. Hollingsworth," it began. "This letter is to congratulate you on your recent milestone, and to offer you a no-cost benefit Penn State extends to all new graduates." Reading further, I found I was eligible for a free one-year life insurance policy of $5,000. This, according to the letter, would provide financial security to my beneficiaries should something tragic occur.

At that moment, my mind flashed back to the commencement ceremony.

I was onstage, waiting for my diploma and wondering if maybe I should have worn clothes under my graduation gown (everyone else seemed to have done so), when I found myself face-to-face with President Thomas. He grabbed my hand and pumped it vigorously.

"You will be greatly missed," he told me, and winked. (This actually happened. I swear.)

The clues came together as I read the letter again: President Thomas' cryptic comment to me at commencement; his recently announced "retirement" this August; and the fact that Penn State's dormitories stopped providing pillows in 1992 -- the same year Bill Clinton was elected to office! (Source: The Clinton Chronicles) These were no unrelated phenomena; they were components of a massive, barbarous plot by Thomas to murder each new crop of Penn State graduates and collect on their insurance money. Furthermore, I was to be his first "greatly missed" victim.

Fighting my panic, I realized a cool, rational response to this threat would aid my chances of survival. I drafted letters to local newspapers, exposing Thomas' ploy and warning him to stay away from me. I am deeply versed in the martial arts, I wrote, and would defend myself if threatened. No paper printed it.

The nightmare continued. When I visited my parents at Christmas, I received a note from a "local alumnus" inviting me to a nearby home on Jan. 2, where a group would be gathering to "recount Happy Valley memories and watch Penn State play its first Rose Bowl in over 70 years." Did Thomas' bloodlust know no bounds? He had sent a death squad to lay traps for me in my hometown.

Worse, he began sending me false letters, cleverly forging the handwriting of various high school friends and posing questions such as "How's grad school going?" and "Is that new medication helping with your paranoia?" The man would stop at nothing to ruin me before gunning me down in the street and collecting his blood money. To spare my family the sight of my murder, I fled back to State College.

Since my return, I have been lying low. Skipping most of my classes and appointments, I sequester myself indoors, playing Nintendo and subsisting on my roommate's tortilla chips. (Granted, this is also how I spent the past four years, but you get my point.) In constant peril, I am beginning to feel like a Terminator-era Linda Hamilton, only with far less muscle tone. My life is trembling, unmitigated misery.

At some point, you will be next. If you are a Penn State student, it is only a matter of five, maybe six years before you graduate and become game in President Thomas' manhunt. (Yes, you. The one with the shirt on, reading the paper.)

Your only hope of surviving --follow my logic here -- is to avoid graduating at all costs, thus excluding yourself from the insurance offer. Change your major at least twice per semester. Exhaust your late drop credits. Refuse adamantly to meet with your adviser. If necessary, fail English 202 repeatedly. (Trust me, this is feasible.) If you do not heed this advice, you will end up a prisoner like me; trapped in your room, facing imminent death while hunting for the tortilla chips your roommate keeps hiding from you.

Don't say I didn't warn you.