As the poet Goethe once said, “Short of being forced to eat a Greek salad with a spoon, no fate is worse than facing alone the wrathful masses.”
Since last Saturday, junior Walt Mickel has been facing that second-worst of fates: 64 Puget Sound students camping out on his lawn, picketing and demanding personal reform. It’s all part of the recent “Occupy Walt’s Street” movement, a leaderless organization without a clear or consistent set of goals. What’s clear, however, is that these protestors are pissed off at Walt, and their numbers are growing.
“Looking at recent history, it’s pretty obvious why we’re occupying Walt’s Street,” said junior Vicki Jara, a bright-eyed and charismatic young woman who is most likely the leader of the leaderless group. “Since 2009, when Walt entered college, he has been receiving food-stamps, even though his parents are paying his tuition and give him money every month. He uses this government funding to buy fancy beer at the Met. Fancy beer he’s never shared with his friends.”
“But that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” she added. “Walt’s generally a douche bag.”
Indeed, the grievances against Walt are many: cheating on tests, making inappropriate autistic-holocaust jokes, claiming to be going on a beer run and then disappearing from the party with everyone’s money, “and the way he says ‘Wow, you’re wearing that?’ that just makes you feel like an ugly horse,” continued Jara, who used to be Walt’s good friend.
While interviewing Jara, a group of dreadlocked students were hula hooping around us. Jara explained the hula hooping was in symbolic protest against Walt’s vicious cycle of using an insecure sophomore he knows for drunken booty-calls and then lying about wearing a condom.
The occupation began last Saturday when Jara and her housemates tried to get back a Bob Dylan vinyl that Walt had borrowed.
Yesterday, VAVA, Walt’s rugby teammates and his three housemates joined the protesters.
“At first we were like, ‘Walt’s an okay guy’,” senior Chas Milkywinks, one of Walt’s housemates, said. “He has his faults like everybody, but he’s a good guy. But then we realized: Walt is actually a huge prick…he never lets anyone help him with the ‘New York Times’ crossword, even on a Friday…he has a passive-aggressive way of guilting you into doing the dishes, even though they’re all his dishes…[and] he always says he’s gonna bone my sister as soon as she’s legal, like every day. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
When asked about these accusations Walt gave only a written press release from under his door, stating: “They [the protestors] don’t know what they’re talking about. I do none of this. P.S., Vicki, f*** you. The reason you don’t have your ‘Blonde on Blonde’ back is because you still haven’t paid for my pipe that you broke. It’s called collateral.”
Vicki claims that Walt’s pipe was actually a present from Vicki in the first place.
“The 99 percent who are not douche bags will no longer put up with the one percent that are douche bags. WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT!” she said.
Walt’s street is likely to be occupied for another week. If Walt does not announce reforms by then, the protestors will forcibly remove Walt and defenestrate him from the fourth floor of the library.
PHOTO COURTESY/MEGAN CHAMBERS