New signs have been appearing on stall doors in bathrooms all over Vassar’s campus, confusing students with their negative and often contradictory messages. Whereas previous bathroom signs have encouraged healthy drug and alcohol habits, responsible study practices and robust personal hygiene, the new signs reject all of these ideas in favor of absurd claims and extreme negativity.
Multiple students contacted The Miscellany News about the signs, claiming to have noticed major changes in the behavior of their friends and acquaintances. “My roommate hasn’t showered in two weeks,” one student said. “The bathroom sign told him that you should only wash yourself when Mars and Venus are in conjunction.”
“My friends have all stopped studying,” another told us. “The signs said that watching “Beethoven” (1992) was the most effective way to improve your exam results and that 0nly ‘grade-A dweebs’ studied the material before a big test. At this point, I don’t know anymore. Maybe they’re right.”
Health Service has seen an uptick in students coming into Baldwin with vomiting, dizziness and nausea after embarking on a “syrup cleanse” recommended by the new bathroom signs. When asked what exactly a syrup cleanse was, the students scoffed.
“Isn’t it obvious? You get rid of all that unnatural stuff in your diet—water, baking soda, strawberries, ham—and replace it with syrup, just like our ancestors did.” When pressed for more details, the student continued. “You know, all kinds of syrup. Maple, cough, chocolate, high fructose corn, you name it.”
The President’s Office and Health Service are working on a mass email warning students to avoid the syrup cleanse trend and make sure not to fall for bathroom posters unless they are officially from the Office of Health Promotion & Education, which provides reliable information from trustworthy sources.
Unfortunately, the new posters bear the stamp of the similarly-named Office of Health Promotion’t & Education’t, a cause of great confusion.
The Miscellany News reached out to President of the College Elizabeth Bradley for comment on whether or not this is a real, official office of the College. She responded promptly, albeit curtly, in an email:
“No.”