In the wake of a protracted standoff between the roughly 2,400 Wellesley students and the campus’ accommodations, which range from years to decades out of date, both sides celebrated an uneasy truce following the conclusion of what was presumably the year’s final nor’easter this past Tuesday.
“While this may not be the monumental victory we’ve hoped for, getting through yet another winter without being fixed is something to be proud of,” Pomeroy Hall’s disintegrating roof and ceilings proudly reported. “You’d think by now they’d have done something about what I’ve got going on up here, but first the focus on rebuilding Pendleton West and then the multiple consecutive blizzards really kept us where we wanted to be.”
“My room on Pom fifth has been leaking from the ceiling since December, but I held firm,” Francine Sanders ’20 explained proudly. “There’s clearly no winning here, but I also didn’t, like, die or anything.”
In the aftermath of the epic months-long struggle spanning several months, students and and the archaic structures they inhabit throughout their days have finally ceased what was, at times, a pitched battle.
“They closed the outdoor stairs leading up to the quad a few times, and I’ll be honest, I nearly broke my leg stepping over the chain that says ‘steps closed’ once or twice,” Ashley Bauman ’18 reported. “It was the ice on the steps leading up to Freeman than did me in, though. I was actually on crutches for like a week, which was awful because the elevator didn’t work for almost the entire time.”
As temperatures warmed, Dower House residents could reportedly be seen emerging, blinking, from their dorm.
“Termites,” one whispered softly, eyewitness accounts confirm. “So many.”
While at times it seemed that surely one side or the other must prevail — that the fragile bones of Wellesley’s students would yield to the sheets of slippery ice on the steps leading to the academic quad or that an administration with an ice cream endowment might be capable of responding to the more egregious safety hazards posed by the cold weather — Winter 17-18 has wound down without any long term resolution in sight, despite the reluctant armistice spurred by the warmer weather.
“Of course, the fight is far from over,” said the dilapidated pathway between the Science Center and the East Side’s new dorms. “I plan to send students who walk too close to the edge of the cracked asphalt sprawling over a steep graduation into the brush below, bruised and bleeding profusely, well into the summer, even in the absence of ice.”
The derelict paths, roofs, heating systems and floorboards also expressed confidence that, with the ongoing support of the administration’s priorities, a much more decisive victory could be anticipated in the coming spring.