Disclaimer: This special April Fools’ edition contains spoofed content
The University’s Office of Campus Planning and Real Estate announced plans Tuesday to excavate large portions of the Pioneer Memorial Cemetery to make way for a 130,000-square-foot trophy showroom honoring Ducks athletics.
Nearly 5,000 partly and fully decomposed bodies will be removed from their weathered sepulchres, combined with cement and crushed rock and used to help grade the open pit of Lane Community College’s Downtown Campus currently under construction. The vacant land was secured for the University’s use through eminent domain, and the school has publicly stated the site would be put to “much better public use” as a sports accolade gallery.
“Graveyards are just not financially viable in this economy,” University athletic director Rob Mullens said. “Dead bodies cannot throw very far, run very fast or jump very high, and therefore really have no place at this school.”
The coming showroom is currently being designed by Big Bux Architects based in Portland, and will be built with plate-glass windows, gold-plated rebar and three-ton granite boulders for doors. The interior will boast a 30-foot flaming “O” fountain, fueled by an amalgam of hippie blood, high-octane gasoline and protein powder. Visitors will be able to treat themselves and their trust-fund friends to overpriced lattes and miniature lox sandwiches at the What-the-Duck Bistro, and enjoy other luxurious amenities such as ice-sculpture armchairs and champagne hot tubs heated with five-hundred-dollar bills.
Construction costs will be provided in full by a generous donation from global advanced weapons technology corporation Lockheed Martin, in return for the installation of the company’s giant aqua-blue “star” logo above the building’s front boulders. University President Richard Lariviere said he endorses the gifted facility because of the publicity it will bring to Oregon athletics, and because accepting such a gratuitous private donation will ensure continued donations to the school from weapons manufacturers and petroleum corporations in the spirit of his New Partnership proposal.
“This gift marks the beginning of a new era of funding for this University,” Lariviere said. “I look forward to similar gifts from all corners of the private sector. Fighter jets, anthrax, prescription drugs, barrels of oil and government-foreclosed properties will all be gladly accepted in lieu of monetary donations and will be put to good use.”
The expansive three-story structure will also feature a family-friendly, lifelike simulation of a Nike sweatshop where participants can try their hand at sewing basketball shoes for 14 hours a day in a dim, poorly ventilated shipping container. Though only in planning stages at this time, the “Just Do It Simulator” blueprint calls for the construction of a life-size, grinning effigy of Phil Knight in the center of the athletic apparel factory. Mr. Knight’s likeness will wield 33 outcropping tentacles each adorned with a spiked whip, one for each year that the corporation has been working to improve the livelihoods of the global dispossessed.
Upon hearing the rumble of backhoe engines and stamping of construction workers’ boots, the slumbering cadaver of long-deceased Civil War veteran Reason P. Endicott awoke and climbed out of his mossy coffin to politely question a curious passerby in his heavy Missouri drawl.
“Shoot, son! Ain’t there no peace for the flippin’ dead at this here a’buryin’ ground?” Endicott wheezed, flesh hanging off his frowning face. “I ain’t got no fancy-schmancy college degree, but I know a rotten deal when I see one. Where be the dirty rotten scoundrels behind all of this?”
“Johnson Hall,” the shocked sports business professor replied casually and continued walking.
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