story Yona Tan | May Tan
Over two dozen students’ rooms at Yale-NUS College were raided on Thursday, March 27, after campus security acted on anonymous tip-offs about a chewing gum smuggling ring within Residential College 4 (RC4). A twelve-hour search by authorities, however, only revealed large amounts of unused condoms and several cats in students’ rooms.
According to security officer Kerosh Fun, the Campus Security Office had been receiving multiple anonymous letters throughout the semester claiming there was an underground chewing gum distribution ring within RC4. The letters also detailed how the underground ring had spread throughout University Town and parts of the National University of Singapore (NUS) main campus. “At first, we just passed [the letters] around the office as a joke, but then the [gum] wrappers started appearing,” Fun said. “We began to believe there was suspicious activity, and started holding gum stakeouts on campus,” he added.
At 3:12 am and 41 seconds, while a fire alarm was activated, campus security took the opportunity to conduct simultaneous surprise raids on the rooms of 25 prime suspects. The suspects’ names were revealed in the latest of the anonymous letters. However, twelve hours of searching proved unfruitful. The search was assisted by the ferocious pet dogs of several faculty members, such as professors Drew Onsen and Jennifer Hansel.
Hsi-men Ch’ing ’16, one of the students whose rooms were searched, claimed he had not come into contact with gum since leaving his home in Taiwan for the semester. Instead, 38 unused condoms were found on his desk. When questioned by the search officers, he said, “I was planning on using them, okay? The opportunity … it just hadn’t, it just hadn’t come up yet, okay?”
Ch’ing was not the only one found with unused condoms. Of the 25 rooms, sixteen were found with over twenty unused condoms. According to Health Counselor Dr. Sarah Seuss, this discovery sheds new light on a long-standing concern of the Healthy Living Clinic, which is working on sexual health policies that are “confidential at the moment”. Due to the large number of taken condoms, she had believed there was a very high number of sexually active students in the college. She now thinks there may be other reasons why students took the condoms, such as the fact that “the condoms were sponsored by Yale University and the packaging has their cute bulldog mascot”.
A few rooms were also found with cats living alongside their occupants. According to guidelines by the Office of Housing, students are strictly prohibited from keeping animals, other than lions or bulldogs, within their dormitories.
According to the leader of the search operation, Sergeant Robo Cop, one student’s room was almost filled completely with cats. Katniss Evergreen ’19, the student in question, invited Panopt reporters into her room to prove her innocence. “They said the floor was covered in cats and they couldn’t even walk in, but look! No cats at all,” she claimed. Loud meowing could be heard from her neighbors’ rooms.
A senior, who wished to stay anonymous, claimed she had introduced the cats into RC4. “It started with one stray. I just couldn’t leave her, and so I took her in, fixed her up, and a classmate adopted her,” she said. “Then more started showing up, and that was when I found my calling. I can graduate in peace now.”
President Lericles Pewis ’81 said he was heartened that at least a number of Yale-NUS students are involved in some form of community service. “We are in Asia for the world …. for cats too,” he said.
This article was part of our April 1st, 2015, satire issue. Individuals, statements and opinions in this issue are purely fictional and not representative of any real-world entities.