The Onion Dip Column is the satire section. All articles are not to be taken seriously.
By Josh Dratler || Contributing Writer
Lancaster, Pa. – The Protest Tree, typically covered in posters, political statements, and complaints about F&M, has been oddly barren this semester.
This marks a significant reversal in the tree’s influence on campus. As recently as last March, a sign put up by an “anonymous student” demanding a rise in tuition fees led the school to increase the cost of enrollment for the 2023-24 academic year. In late 2021, a pamphlet posted on the Protest Tree about the negative health consequences of 5G prompted school administrators to declare F&M a 5G-free campus. So what’s going on? Has one nefarious professor been secretly removing anything put on the tree each night? Did all adhesive products universally stop working? Is this a glitch in the simulation we are all unknowingly part of? The College Reporter, Franklin and Marshall’s second most-read collegiate newspaper in 1972, couldn’t idly sit by when online advertising revenue could be made by writing a story about this.
As it turns out, in the ultimate form of protest, the Protest Tree has opted to eschew its very name and will no longer be an outlet for protest by the F&M community. In arriving at its decision, the Protest Tree cited the Maui wildfires, global deforestation, Blue Line’s rebrand to the Diplomatic Cafe, the threat of climate change, and its recent suspension from X, formerly known as Twitter. Despite attempts at mediation by the Franklin and Marshall groundskeeping staff, the Protest Tree intends to continue its boycott until significant changes transpire.
In the meantime, F&M students will have to turn to other avenues to express their discontent, like streaking to bring attention to the plight of starving children in Afghanistan, self-immolation to protest slow campus internet speeds, angrily emailing school administrators about how the Dining Hall has been passing off squirrel meat as chicken for the past two years, or actually organizing a physical protest. We can only hope for a swift resolution to this crisis.
Senior Josh Dratler is a Contributing Writer. His email is jdratler@fandm.edu.