A Capella Banned on Campus

HAMILTON, NY—On April 1st, President Brian Casey announced that, effective immediately, a capella would be banned from Colgate University’s campus. All students received an email that said “Outside of showers, no singing will be permitted without accompanying instruments, and any student caught doing so will be brought before a disciplinary committee.” President Casey intended to send out an email later that day revealing the previous announcement to be an April Fools joke, but he reconsidered when he saw students reaction. Immediately, hundreds of them streamed out of class and began to celebrate and cheer in delight. Wandering the quad, dazed and with tears streaming from her eyes, sophomore Viola Melody said “It’s… It’s over. It’s over! I thought I was the only one, I thought everyone was supposed to like a capella and I would have to live a lie for the rest of my life, but it’s over!” Freshman Harold St. James, from Britain, told the Rag “When I first got here I was shocked. I sat down for orientation and I thought Colgate had a strict policy against hazing, but then those noises started! It took me days to realize you Yanks listened to that awful stuff on purpose.”

Musical Studies professor Clarence Oboe explained that that a capella is, “Biologically impossible for humans to enjoy. It is distinguished from gospel, choral, and other forms of non instrumental music by being, in technical terms, Really Bad. It is literally just taking popular songs and making them infinitely worse.” However, recent psychological studies have suggested that the U.S. population is suffering under a mass delusion, similar to what can happen to cultists or kidnapping victims. A capella seems to have originated in the 15th Century. It was developed by the Knights Templar, and led Philip the Fifth of France to order them burned at the stake. It was rediscovered by a secret division of the SS, but was unable to be deployed before the fall of Berlin. It was then transported to the Soviet Union, but KGB analysts determined that it was too inhumane to be unleashed on a civilian population. Following the collapse of the USSR, the technology was thought lost, until it was introduced into the U.S. population through the television show Glee and the movie Pitch Perfect, both now thought to have been developed by North Korean intelligence.

Colgate has had to speed up construction of its new residence halls to accommodate the skyrocketing admissions yield number, as over 95% of students admitted to the class of 2021 have decided to accept due to the a capella ban. Colgate’s admission numbers for next year are expected to become more selective than Harvard or Stanford, and other universities are considering implementing similar policies. Additionally, Brian Casey has become a nationwide hero, and top Democratic officials have reportedly met with him and are considering tapping him to run against Donald Trump in 2020.