Editorial

Satan's Knickers

These are the days that will break your spirit and reduce you to an empty husk of humanity, deforming your once fine soul beyond all recognition so that even loved ones shake their heads and mutter, "What ever happened to (him/her)? (He/She) used to be so nice."

Like most college campuses across the country, the University of Oregon--better known as The Devil's Arboretum--has thousands of kids running to and fro, frolicking and gamboling and skipping and capering and romping and cavorting and generally feeling their respective oats, sometimes even in group oat-feeling sessions on the weekends.

This profusity of merry youth and rollicking fun inevitably leads to a lot of trouble, so all students should be prepared for the unavoidable spot of hard luck.

So what do you do when your oats bust the burlap sack of your life wide open along the seams that, up until this point, you thought were sewn up by skilled and caring hands using industrial-strength baling twine with the sort of obscene weight-to-thickness ratios that the manufacturer reports with smug arrogance could hold the space shuttle together upon a particularly bumpy re-entry but has nevertheless completely shit the bed in this instance and left you with your oats spilled all over the floor?

If you're smart enough to make sense of that thought, you're probably smart enough to know that the first thing you should do is not call your parents. There are two good reasons for this:

1. You're too young to have been drinking the booze that got you into trouble to begin with, or
   
2. You're old enough that having your parents get you out of these scrapes would just be pathetic.

Remember, they sent you here to get you the hell out of the house so they could start having sex again, not so you could interrupt your mom's first decent orgasm in, like, 20 years with your whining about being caught smoking dope (again). They might have shot thirty-six more pictures of your graduation than were really necessary to record the event, but your first court date is something they would rather be spared from, believe you me.

Rule number two: there is no rule number two! That's right, the best thing to do is grab a beer and embrace your ultimate powerlessness in this situation. Get Zen and go with the flow. No matter who you're in trouble with--the cops, the University, the legal representatives of someone with whom you engaged in some irresponsible oats-feeling--you are screwed. There is no way for you, the average student (possessed of the incumbent lack of experience, lack of financial resources and lack of motivation to do anything but get down on all fours and just take it), to get out of a bad situation unscathed.

That's not to say you shouldn't brace for impact. By all means, get in touch with your public defender, ASUO Legal Services, the Office of Student Advocacy, et al. They are here, after all, to smooth the transition between righteous indignation and a thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another type acceptance of fate. Contact all the applicable personnel, ask them how truly badly you are screwed, and find out what they, in their professional opinion, think is the smallest fine/minimum number of community service hours/fewest letters of apology you must pay/perform/write in order to cut and run on this whole thing.

In the end, there is but one bit of wisdom that pertains to a student in the grip of authority: Take your lumps. And remember, in some bitter future you'll get to exact your revenge on kids who seem even dumber than you were.