On seas of blood we now set forth
With blades of fear we gut and gorge
We are the terror of the North
Formed in Odin’s fiery forge.
Beat them! Rape them!
Blood! Blood! Blood!
ITHACA, NY (AP)—This is a translation of just one of the verses which will replace Cornell University’s current fight song when Baron Kurt Von Gottsblüdiner takes over possession of the college on January 1, 1996.
Cash-starved New York State put the land grant portion of the Ivy League school up for sale in a last-ditch effort to raise money for the state university system. The privately held portion soon followed suit, bowing to both pressure from Governor George Pataki and fear of pillaging on the part of the baron’s hordes.
“It’ll take some getting used to, but I think New York is going to love it,” Pataki said. “Making Cornell a barony will not only save our education system, but create a unique, laboratory-like opportunity for historians to study the effects of random tyranny and senseless violence on fresh-faced, upper middle-class college students.”
Baron Von Gottsblüdiner used funds from his inestimable family fortune to purchase Cornell, which is located in the small, isolated town of Ithaca and surrounded by deep natural gor-ges.
“It can be sealed like the turtle’s shell and de-fended like a hornet’s nest,” Von Gottsblüdiner said.
The Baron, who negotiated with the university this summer and began processing the legal work in October, has promised many changes for the Cornell students.
“Welcome Week” will be replaced by a series of duels between male freshmen and the Baron’s legendary “Horde of Skulls.” Losers will have their heads affixed to pikes around the mall while winners will be indentured to the horde and trained for combat. Chancellor Vance Elkye told reporters that the new freshman placement system would serve as a guarantee that Cornell would remain as selective as possible.
For incoming women students, there will be a lengthy test of purity involving relics of the Virgin Mary’s sheets which are said to turn black over the wombs of soiled women. Virgins will repor-tedly be sequest-ered in the new stronghold of Ris-ley Hall, while those of inferior moral stature will be set to work in the fields next to the art museum.
Those fields will, in fact, see a lot of action, as English and math requirements will be replaced with a 60-hour per week “Serfdom Re-quirement” which will teach the value of sowing, reaping and submitting to harsh and unfair taxation.
Students in the art and architecture departments have already been set to work building a frescoed chapel in the center of campus. When finished, it will be the tallest building on campus, featuring a 400-foot baroque spire.
“Its purpose is to bring their sinful toiling bodies and my majesty closer to the face of God,” Gotts-blüdiner said.
Elyke said that despite the initial difficulties of re-adjustment, students can rest assured that the Cornell administration is overseeing all changes and will ensure that the university’s commitment to education and di-versity re-mains un-changed. Elkye ensured reporters that the hairshirt he and other administrators were wearing was “good insulation.”
Not everyone in Ithaca has taken to feudalism like the Cornell administration, though. Area merchants have complained that members of the horde are already causing significant property damage with their nightly raids.
“Three times they’ve come in here and set fire to the sweatshirts,” said Tom Sklar, owner of Kampus Kaboodles. “And they blood-eagled my best clerk.”
The blood eagle is a favorite battle ritual of the horde, and involves pulling the lungs of your enemy through his back and flinging them over his shoulders, creating an eagle shape.
In response to complaints, captain Gustaf Lieb-fraumurter issued a statement ex-plaining the Ba-ron’s position on the practice raids.
“This spring we will lead a glorious assault on the god-less duchy of SUNY-Bing-ham-ton,” the statement read. “No virgin will be left untouched, no field unscarred and the riches of their merchants will be showered upon us.” Liebfraumurter ex-plained that the loot taken from “the scum and villainy of Binghamton” would more than compensate for any loss of life or damage done to local stores and fields.
