Recently announced tuition and room and board hikes for next year are a result of UR’s weather machine being broken, a Campus Times investigation has uncovered.
University President Joel Seligman admitted in an email Saturday that the machine has been broken since last year.
“I regret to admit that, following the intense winter two years ago, the University’s weather machine broke down,” Seligman said. “The top Hajim students have been working non-stop on it for over a year now, but nothing seems to be working.”
Seligman added that the project had been receiving funding from Wegmans CEO Danny Wegman, but support was cut after Wegman discovered that Wegman Hall was going to be a data science center rather than an actual on-campus Wegmans.
“It was a tough but necessary call to raise tuition rates,” Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jonathan Burdick said. “Our students demand the highest standard of misery when it comes to their weather, and we will stop at nothing to bring it to them.”
The Buffalo, N.Y., National Weather Service Office declined to comment but provided a list of weather anomalies believed to be a direct result of the broken weather machine. Included in the list were the unseasonably warm weather the past two winters, last year’s blizzard, and an over 40 degree Fahrenheit temperature drop Wednesday afternoon into Thursday morning.
Additional research by the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences has found that the weather machine has been the cause of an increase in the amount of severe weather, especially thunderstorms.
The discovery has left many in shock, especially the increasing number of students and faculty who have been struck by lightning. Not even Dean of Students Matthew Burns was able to escape the wild weather.
“It hit during my daily 3:00 a.m. yoga session on top of Rush Rhees,” Burns reportedly said in a transcript released by the CARE Network. “I’m not sure what to tell students other than to not hold their phones up outside when trying to get Wi-Fi in the middle of the Wilson Quad. Be careful, everybody.”
Burns declined to comment further, but not before he angered students by tanning himself on the roof of the Frederick Douglass Building during Wednesday’s “scorcher.”
The action left students outraged and confused.
“I’m paying thousands more per year and the administration is just lazing around? Ridiculous,” junior W. Heather Pathern said. “Will anybody actually listen to our concerns? What happened to our communal principles, to our sense of empathy?”
Other students took a milder tone, such as those from Hawaii.
“Whoever broke this machine is a genius,” senior Sir F. R. Dude said. “Now we can play ultimate, croquet, and frolic in the grass all day while we play hooky. Sure, it may get cold every now and then, but this generally warm weather is worth paying a bit extra for.”
There is an overwhelming sense of hope, however, that the machine will be repaired quickly. At Monday’s Students’ Association meeting, Senate voted unanimously to scrap the budget for this academic year and the next academic year and allocate all funds toward repairing the weather machine.
“I’ll work day and night if I have to, as long as this machine gets fixed,” SA Vice President Lance Floto said following the presentation of a report from the Board of Trustees estimating that repairs will take another two decades. “We must combat these unacceptable tuition increases and bring honor back to our school with a blizzard of actions like no one has seen before.”
Floto was last seen with Speaker of the Senate Lindsay Wrobel being sucked into a tornado of $100 bills. While unconfirmed, several students and faculty have reported seeing Seligman in the center of the twister, crying while trying to nurse the weather machine back to health.
