By: Elaine Best, Editor

Jaded. Tear-stained resumes. Fluctuating emotions. These three elements define the second semester senior. In the hopes of bettering ourselves on this campus, we’ve tried to hold it back, keeping our lips shut tight and nodding along pleasantly to the going-ons around us. But it is time to do more than write “an open letter” on our blogs and passive aggressively shoot daggers into people’s backs. It is time one of us came forward to take the lead and release the true angst of this campus.

And so, much like Napoleon, I have crowned myself with this prominent title.

Life has been good to me, granting me the power to control all media on this entire campus.* I practically have more power than our dear Dr. Nayef Samhat.** I will admit I have some flaws (when I was younger, I used to hate ice cream and eat my cereal dry) but what fearless leader is perfect? We need someone who is strong, has laser vision, someone who can speak loudly on the important issues at hand! And since that person had no interest in writing this, you got me, Wofford.

*This is an incredibly gross exaggeration. I can barely manage my own Facebook.

**This is a blatant lie – please don’t take away my scholarships.

Perhaps you are asking yourself what important issues I will be bringing up in The Seniority Report (and see, even if you weren’t, now you are thinking about it. I can control your mind. I own you). The answer is simple: I want to open up the discussion about things we never talk about on campus, like why the furniture at Player’s Corner is so heavy.  Is this a conspiracy to make us workout more?  To make us feel inferior to inanimate objects? How about the new designs in Phase V – what do the giant ceiling circles actually do? Is it socially acceptable to sit at the end of the long table if a smaller group has claimed the other side? Here at the Seniority Report, I intend to find out all the answers in the most professional way possible.***

***I seriously lack the self-control needed to not continuously lie.

For this week’s Seniority Report, I want to dig up the dirt on one of the smelliest and foulest happenings on this campus: mulch. After some hardcore investigative journalism, I used my skills and googled what the definition of mulch is. According to the most reliable source on the interwebs, Wikipedia states that mulch is “a layer of material applied to the surface of an area of soil.” So in a way, if we see the world as a clown, mulch is the face makeup.

But you know what, readers? No one likes clowns, especially when they’re made up. Clowns are evil. It was only natural that I started to doubt this mulch and to even further wonder why our campus was using such a nefarious product.

Students have no access to the grounds keeping schedule and are thus left in the dark on when these smelly mounds of nutrients will be dumped outside their door. While many people gag at me when I walk passed them, I find that on mulching days, these students seem to be in far worse conditions. As a high-end college reporter, I knew I couldn’t let this slide, so I did what any other sane person would have done.

I held a stakeout in a tree.

Perched in the grand magnolia tree right outside of Old Main, I stood watch for 24 hours, noting every movement of the mulching process. Shovels and wheelbarrows marched out at the hands of the mighty workers. A family of squirrels wept beside me as they watched their preciously hidden acorns be buried and lost under the mountains of mulch. They will starve in the spring, I am sure of it. The fumes poisoned my lungs, and many times, I almost lost my grip on the branch. At one point, I think I had a hallucination that I was in the Hunger Games. (I apologize to any workers I threw twigs at – I sort of blacked out there for a bit.).

It broke me, watching the mulch suffocate this campus.

I invited a small group of students to meet with me to come up with solutions to this mulch madness. As per usual, no one showed up. Nonetheless, I created a list of changes we hope to see in future mulching routines:

1. Similar to Krispy Kreme’s hot light, we wish for Wofford to have a “mulch light,” one that would light up on top of Old Main to signify that fancy dirt was being hauled out on campus. The symbol for the light can be either a sad face or a terrier crying.
2. Wofford should provide students with face masks to combat the fumes. Lily Pulitzer designs would be greatly appreciated, as would a bland shade of kaki.
3. We want to initiate a Squirrel Protection System that would help Wofford Squirrels keep track of their acorns as well as providing some other necessary benefits to the poor creatures, like dental insurance.
4. That the play “Mulch Ado About Nothing” be hosted annually to teach incoming students about the dangers of mulch (including shoe stains, increased complaining on campus, questioning whether the smell is you or the mulch, etc.).

I have a mulch conspiracy theory that Wofford is hiding something in its arboretum. A treasure map, perhaps, hidden in the depths of Daniel Building – the most suspicious building on campus (other than Olin, of course). The mulch is meant to distract us, to make us go on a tangent about smelly dirt when in actuality, Wofford is secretly hiding the most glorious treasure from us.

And I suppose I have fallen trap to this diversion. Oh, bother.

The Seniority Report has nothing else to say on the matter except to be wary, underclassmen. Fellow seniors, let us not dirty our hands with this nonsense. We leave soon anyway. Let’s make this everyone else’s problem.

Over and out.