Shock gripped the Vassar campus following last week’s announcement that approval would be retracted for several beloved study abroad options, soon to be replaced with new programs in “places that suck.” In an official statement from the Office of International Studies (OIS), it was explained that study abroad was “at this point, basically a vacation,” and the limp-wristed Vassar populace needed to be toughened up by some time in a place that sucks.
While many programs are still in development, and won’t be announced until the end of the semester, several have already been revealed, including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Sinister Josselyn Cavern, a maximum security Brazilian prison and London. Students studying abroad this spring have already been assigned new locations, while those currently abroad will be banned from Vassar campus until they grow some hair on their chest.
Reactions to the news are mixed, with many students being staunchly opposed. “This is not what study abroad is supposed to be about,” said Brock Blake ’27. “Studying abroad is about seeing new places. Meeting new people. Exposing yourself to a new culture, and then sequestering yourself in the dorms and getting shitfaced with the other Americans six nights a week. How am I supposed to do that in the Sahara? This is probably the worst thing that’s ever happened,” complained Blake.
Others are more positive. Edith Wayne ‘27 said that she was “overjoyed” with her assignment. “I keep meaning to rid myself of all worldly desires, but I just can’t find the time. That’s why I’m excited for Vassar’s Monastery Exchange Program, which will allow a Buddhist monk to come get schnasty [sic] in the THs for a semester while I eat pine needles and prepare to be mummified alive through the process of sokushinbutsu.”
“I kind of don’t care,” admitted Tim “Crunch” Hamilton ‘27. “According to the OIS, I’ve never experienced real hardship in my life and I completely squander the privileges I’ve been handed from birth, so they’re sending me to the worst place they can think of. Unfortunately for them, I’m already from Philadelphia.”
Some students, outraged by this new direction for study abroad, have taken to the streets, demanding that they not be sent to various inaccessible mountaintops, active volcanoes or bubbling oilfields. Vassar admin, per usual, responded to criticism in a measured and accountable way: by herding protesters into a shipping container and then mailing them to a desert island somewhere in the Southern Ocean.
Thus far, the experience has failed to harden the bodies and minds of Vassar students, but the OIS holds out hope. “Come on, something’s gotta work, right? We’ve tried every other way of turning our students into rugged studs: cigarettes, steroids, getting them really into a semi-ironic lumberjack thing. Nothing. Honestly, if this is a dead end, we’re kind of fucked.”
As of publication, Vassar is committed to making sure all its on-campus students can experience somewhere that sucks by making everyone live in Raymond House.