Era of Prohibition

Events have been dry since that exposé last semester.
In a plot twist of events, The University of Tulsa has announced its desire to become the top school for potential incoming students. To start to venture towards greatness, they pulled the plug on this once-wet campus and drained all of our boozy keg pools and the secret cabinets above our fridges that the barely legal 18-year-old students on campus cannot reach. The once seventh ranking party school in the state of Oklahoma has now risen to the top in alcoholic anonymous memberships. To celebrate this achievement, the university broke out the oldest and best of the booze from the speakeasy deep below the library study lounges.
However, we toasted to this achievement too soon. The very next day faculty made this wondrous celebration our last as it forced the campus into an era of sobriety. This unprecedented abstinence has sparked a whirlwind of reactions, ranging from bewilderment to outright rebellion among students and faculty alike as the school has rebranded itself as Temperance University (TU). This sobriety induced enlightenment has not been an easy transition. To replace the loss of the student’s liquid spirit the school looked towards adding a well known attraction to the campus to increase their joy to some minimalistic capacity. On this quest for first in all things superficially and visually important for bringing in the crowds, the university has continued to blur the lines between student academics and potential student advertisements.
The transition to Temperance University represents more than just a rebranding effort — it symbolizes the loss of school spirit itself. No longer will there be Margarita Mondays, Booze Day Tuesdays, Wasted Wednesdays, and Thirsty Thursdays. The once-vibrant social scene at TU now resembles a somber funeral procession, with the students trudging across the campus with the heavy weight of not only their books but sobriety on their shoulders. Gone are the days of stumbling across campus to our classes. Even the Starbucks secret menu has taken a hit as the request for an extra shot of “TU spirit” in your Starbucks latte provides you with only a solidial shake of the head from a Starbucks employee. An anonymous student (definitely not our Editor-in-Chief) reported their weekly mourning routine: “A shot of tequila first thing in the morning baby.”
One cannot help but wonder what prompted this modern day Prohibition. There are a multitude of questions regarding the administrators’ thoughts and concerns that led them to this decision to make TU a dry campus. Some students speculate that the catalyst of this decision was a bitterly sober student writer’s scathing exposé titled “We aren’t a party school, we swear?”
Regardless of the motivations or trigger that set this alcohol ban into motion, the repercussions have been felt far and wide. The good news is that students experiencing withdrawals from this horrendous decision can now reach out to the new campus mental health app, TimelyCare, and utilize the virtual AA support group located under the YikYak adjacent therapy area.