By Jordan Carroll
Requiescat in pacem, University of Louisville
According to coroner’s reports, the University of Louisville campus died yesterday at 6 PM. Sophomore Eric Seguy identified the body, describing it as “barely recognizable.” Cause of death is still unknown. The funeral will be held in the not-too-distant future in a local place of worship.
The campus, known to its friends as “U of L,” had been sickly for several years. When asked, the local campus described itself as “empty” and “mildly dyspeptic.” Its complaints were ignored by the majority of students and faculty members, who left it at the end of the day to fend for its life. Even its closest companions, people who lived on it, could be seen abandoning it en masse every weekend. During the day, however, its life was a bit happier. It experienced, if only for a few hours a day, a feeling of fullness. These pleasant moments made the subsequent loneliness all the more bitter.
A few stayed with it during its silent hermitage. Mostly, they hid and watched it from dorm rooms or from the library. When they did enter the campus proper, they usually left it almost as quickly. Some visitors would come and mark its face. They brought chalks of many colors and drew all over it. Still, it would sit. Sometimes it would cast glances to the squirrels, which were always with it. The campus bit its lip until the visitors left. Once they were finished chalking up its facades and sidewalks, they would scurry away to another place. Then, the campus would give a great “Harrumph!” and go back to the business of being a lonely campus.
Are we to blame for killing it? True, some of us are very busy with our lives elsewhere. We don’t have time to stay with the campus late into the night. Other things deserve our attention. Still, maybe there was something we could have done. There could have been a fundraiser for the campus, maybe a raffle. Surely something could have brought it out of its malaise.
That is not to say that there were no attempts to save the campus. One group, for example, has tried to get new movies for the campus. We are unsure whether or not the campus would have actually watched them, but the effort was valiant. Others have held events to cheer it up. One company or another hawks its products on campus every other week. Still, it was too late to prevent the campus from shuffling off its mortal coil. Atrophy had set in long before.
Some say that the campus will return. Some say that this is merely a near-death experience, or a moment of transmigration, and that the campus will rise, like a phoenix or a zombie, from its death. They are naïve optimists, to be sure! The campus is dead. It shows absolutely no sign of life. There’s no coming back. We can try to massage its heart, we can pinch its nostrils and blow breath back into its lungs, but it will not come back. What’s done is done.
This doesn’t bode well for the future of the University of Louisville. The campus was a quiet harbinger of its buildings. It had little to say, perhaps, but it helped maintain a healthy university atmosphere. During its decline, this atmosphere dissipated somewhat. We cannot say whether or not things will decay further after its demise. This columnist, at least, believes it shall.
