Every year, students gather toward the end of the fall semester to celebrate one of Hopkins’s only real traditions (besides animal cruelty and mental illness): The Lighting of the Quadrangles (LOTQ). However, the approximately 4 students that knew it was this week were sorely disappointed to find that it had been postponed to December 13. This may pose a minor inconvenience to some students, but to others, it is a petrifying nightmare.
Because of daylight savings and the 4:45pm sunsets that came with it, one student organization, Nyctophobics United Together (NUT), has been staking out a study room in MSE for the past semester and was relieved that the dark ages were finally ending. But just as they started to see the light at the end of the tunnel, these darkness-fearing little guys got absolutely dunked on. We spoke to the club’s members to shed some light on the situation.
“This sucks,” remarked sophomore Colin Furelp. “I haven’t been home or gone to any class after 5pm in weeks. I thought Lighting of the Quads would finally let us go outside at night, but now that’s not even happening. My rations are dwindling. I don’t know how many days we have until we get all Donner party in this bitch.”
Another student commented on the worst parts of living in the study rooms.
“The lights turn off if they don’t detect motion, so we always have someone running laps around the table. It gets exhausting. And now the only quads that are gonna be lighting are the ones on my legs.”
The students were planning to protest this travesty in front of Gilman, but a cloud unexpectedly covered the sun, disbanding the group in a cacophony of screams. They have not been sighted since, and the school remains in the dark regarding their whereabouts.