Vassar was overwhelmed by a deluge of complaints last week from a group of students concerned for their safety. Central Receiving was so central on campus that it was taking up space in Main dorm rooms, interfering with service at the Retreat and interrupting conferences in the Villard room.
The complaints began after a Villard-based lecture from esteemed professor Jonathan Warehouse was interrupted by an army of students who piled the day’s UPS orders into the lecture hall. Soon after, the boxes became so numerous that they spilled out into the hallway, filling the next four floors and covering the American flag that flies over Main Building.
Some Main occupants were excited at the new change. Envy Lope ’27, a new resident of Main, was shocked at how quickly her package arrived. “I was so hyped because the useless piece of plastic I ordered that I’ll probably return in two days was hand-delivered directly to my room! But my room is filled with 275 other random packages right now, so I can’t find it.”
The packages, too, were unable to handle the emotional stress of their harrowing journey up the stairs of Main. Many students reported on the packages’ mental distress; the boxes were completely broken down in the hallway and were piled together in front of a TV after being depleted at the end of the day.
On Friday afternoon, student Julia Shipper ’24 created the SHIPGO (Students Hoping to Induce Packages to Get Out) committee to address the dire emergency. Shipper’s first priority was to remove Central Receiving so far from the center of campus that no student could easily access it.
In Shipper’s proposal, students will have to travel past Main, travel through the Bridge, make a left, walk past Skinner, hike up a steep, overgrown patch of grass bordered by a driveway with swerving cars and 18-wheelers, trudge up a sunny hill and walk through a parking lot to get to their packages.
Shipper also ordered all pedestrian walkways destroyed to make it more difficult for students to access Receiving. “Let’s make the students walk on an active driveway that opens to a highway if they want a care package from their grandmother. That’ll show them!”
Students are delighted that Shipper’s plan will solve the issue of packages piling up in Main. The ingenious plan goes into effect next week.