On Saturday, Nov. 1, the Vassar Student Association (VSA) hosted its annual Halloween Tent on Noyes Circle. The event was a success, with hundreds of students revelling in the Tent’s bright expanses. Esoteric, funny-but-also-hot costumes were visible as far as the eye could see. One junior, who was chicly dressed as the unicorn from the medieval Unicorn Tapestries, told reporters, “That was probably the best night of my life. Ever since I was a little girl, I have dreamed of awkwardly standing next to every acquaintance I have ever known. In the Tent, I was able to do that while indecipherable, lyricless music played!”
However, the roaring success of the event was soon overshadowed by an unforeseeable tragedy. It appears as though this year’s Halloween festivities were the final straw for the oft-abused earth of the Nircle. During the afternoon of Nov. 2, students began to notice the desecrated lawn quivering slightly. While most assumed that these were mere aftershocks from the New Jersey earthquake of April 2024, Campus Safety nonetheless put out a notice for all community members to stay away from the area. And then, as the sun set that evening, the unthinkable happened: the Nircle collapsed. A sinkhole soon consumed the entirety of the ground beneath the Tent, leaving only a gaping abyss.
In a huge win for posterity, Art History major Kyle Watersworth ’28 was perched in his Noyes House window seat, scribbling in his Louise Carmen journal, when the tragedy struck. His words are the only living record of the very moment in which the Nircle fell. In a scrawling, black-ink script, Watersworth wrote, “The undulating green earth writhed like the frothing sea. In one singular, shining instant, all became none. The pit consumed.”
The New York Department of Supernatural Land Activities provided a comment to The Miscellany News via email: “With the sheer amount of Depop vintage boots walking across that lawn, an incident like this was bound to occur. We are monitoring the situation closely.”
Vassar College’s Ultimate Frisbee team was particularly inconvenienced by the appearance of the sinkhole. With their practices displaced, they were forced to compete for highly-coveted space on the quad. However, after being hit by one too many satchel bags, team member Lester Johnson ’26 was determined to remedy this slight. In the dead of night, he ventured to the closed-off Nircle and set out to investigate the vanquished land mass.
“I couldn’t stand it,” Johnson told reporters from The Miscellany News. “Nothing felt right anymore. It was like Vassar’s whole center of gravity was missing.”
While searching for answers, Johnson drew increasingly closer to the vast sinkhole. He described how, upon entering the entity’s magnetic field, he suddenly lost his footing and fell into the gaping cavity. “I really thought that was the end,” he said.
However, when Johnson opened his eyes, it was as though he had never fallen at all. He emerged into a world that looked exactly like the one he had left.
Annoyed and slightly confused, he went back to bed. It was only upon waking the next morning for breakfast that Johnson realized something was amiss. “The straight side and the gay side of the Deece were flipped,” he said. “That was how I knew something was totally wrong.”
Johnson promptly searched the entire campus, taking note of the inconsistencies. Examples included: the Retreat open on the weekends, raging parties at the THs, an effective campus smoking ban and students who called the Deece “the Gord.”
After a full day of this strangeness, a disturbed Johnson trekked back to the Nircle, hoping to return home. This time, he jumped into the sinkhole voluntarily.
“I came back here and immediately posted on Fizz,” Johnson stated. “I was extremely concerned about the possibility of a multiverse of Vassars, and I wanted to make the community aware.”
As of publishing, the College has yet to confirm or deny Johnson’s findings. While access to the Nircle remains restricted, some students have still claimed to visit the rumored alternate Vassar. Louisa Clark ’29 told The Miscellany News that she had actually found a boyfriend after spending the day in the sinkhole, stating, “He is a business major on the football team. I was so worried I would never meet anyone like him at Vassar!”
This is a developing story.