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There is a lethargy haunting the quiet quadrangles of our quaint university. Students exposed to its hot gaze fall into a deep state of apathy and distraction, eyes glazed over as they barely pay attention to the exams lying in front of them. Common symptoms include men returning to their dorms from a workout session at the Rock with no shirt to cover up their beer bellies, as well as a never-ending stream of Big Bootie Mix pumping out of some speakers on the quads. One of the numerous afflicted, a senior finance major, violently stumbled into our mid-afternoon interview after a wild Wednesday night of debauchery. Explaining that he hadn’t attended class for weeks ever since securing that dream job “pushing fake money around until it precipitated a banking crisis,” he was looking forward to a hard-working and horizons-expanding summer of yacht rock on his parents’ ’77 speedboat at the lake house. Another, a junior philosophy and theology double major, sighed in resignation when I asked of her summer plans. “I always said it was in God’s hands, but I guess God hates internships,” she replied dejectedly as she furtively tried to erase her recent Google searches for the advisor in the economics department. Engineering students failed to respond to any requests for comment, with the dean of the college of engineering simply stating its students desired no breaks and wished to study indefinitely.

Regardless, with the spring nights lengthening and ND Marriage Pact matches already in inboxes, students find themselves spending more time acting out the philosophy of awkwardness by the lakes than studying the actual philosophy of love in the library. Organic chem attendance has collapsed; calculus classes look like courses in urban camouflage. St. Liam’s has reported that incidents of cholera and other water-borne diseases have plummeted considering students no longer are stuck inside drinking from the DeBart sewage line. To cool off, students are instead opting for periodic dips into the much cleaner St. Joseph’s Lake beach and power plant runoff reservoir (I’ve never seen a COVID-positive survive the substances they pump into that water — take notes, AstraZeneca).

What more can you say? It’s spring in South Bend — the trees are blooming, the songbirds are serenading, and the mosquitoes are biting. A summer malaise has infected the student body, and the only cure is the completion of finals. However, as we near the end, I offer a simple word of warning to the reader: don’t get too wild when you go back home, because even though they call this coming summer the beginning of the Roaring Twenties, remember what happened to Mr. Gatsby when it was all said and done.