HAMILTON, NY — If necessity is the mother of invention, then sobriety is the big daddy of unprecedented collaboration. This month Colgate’s campus has experienced a surplus in underground trade, as thirsty freshman exchange illicit goods with famished upperclassmen. Both armed with powerful identification cards, underclassmen offer their elders the bounty of their unlimited meal plans in exchange for blackout quantities of booze. We asked one of Colgate’s top economics majors -who couldn’t remember his full name after losing his Gatecard at the Jug a week ago but thought it was probably Tyler- who helped to shed some light on this dark corner of the Colgate economy. “So like there’s this pretty complicated economic theory called Supply and Demand. I don’t want to have to “mansplain” it to you but basically these little Garbage Pail Kids have access to all the breakfast sandwiches in the world, but all they want is enough Recipe 21 to marinate their organs. So the two exchange, and we call it comparative advantage.”
Most surprising is the imbalance of power between these two economic forces; with upperclassman being the more desperate partner within the trade. Marissa Bacardi, one of the major booze distributors explained: “we have at this point an exchange rate of one handle for a plate of chicken tendies. One plate, if they’re generous we might get a side of ketchup or get to hear what Cathy said about the weather. I’m lugging four bottles of Recipe 21 from my ToHo just to get through the day. Prostitution might’ve been easier but with all this booze those pre-pubescent fucks are getting more ass than a SoundCloud rapper.”
Measures have been taken by staff to diminish this flow of contraband, offering solutions like greater border security in the underclassmen dorms, higher surveillance in the Coop, and more powerful automatic weapons carried by kitchen staff. Many organizations on campus -having watched like half a season of Narcos- recognize the infectivity of oppressive law and order regimes on thriving illegal markets, and have taken alternative routes to help their desperate peers. The Junior Conservatives Club has founded TARE (Tendy Abuse Resistance Education) a program to help students find long term solutions to their calorie dense addictions. President Thad Thadderson elaborated, “we saw how well Nancy Reagan’s program worked. We figured it was the least we could do. I was one of them once, I would loiter around outside until I saw some kid with a copy of the Odyssey or Darwin and I’d offer them a whole rack just to sniff the inside of a smoothie cup.”
Stories like Thad’s offer us hope that one day this vicious cycle will end, that the rates of addiction will fall, that peace and prosperity will be restored, and the freshmen will have to buy a fucking fake like the rest of us.
The Monthly Rag 
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