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In a leaked report from the office of Father JayJay I. Jaykins, C.S.C. a surprising clause appeared at the bottom of the page: students are banned from having friends on campus! More specifically, to quote Jaykins himself, “all students will be required to disbar from social connections, meetings and gatherings for the semester. In conjunction with other university officials, I have determined that complete social isolation is the best way for everyone to proceed with this semester. Any student found in a room with more than one other person in a non-class environment will be subject to the university conduct process.”

News of this briefing caused an uproar among students. After all, was Notre Dame not famous for its renowned community, the reason why many choose Notre Dame over comparable schools and even the Ivy League? To uncover the mystery behind this rationale, I spoke to Doug Pritchett from the COVID-19 surveillance testing services department.

“Yeah, that was the plan all along,” he said conversationally, dumping a giant bucket of hand sanitizer across the floor of the stadium. “To lower the infection risk to a near-zero rate and look morally and functionally superior to our peers, this was the only way. On the bright side, single people can finally put their coping skills to good use.” 

With this knowledge in mind, Scholastic went out to interview members of the student body about this pre-planned strategy.

Georgia Henley, the only person Scholastic reporters encountered smiling as she read the email, was ecstatic about the news. “My cousin goes to Harvard, and according to her, they don’t have any time to make friends. With this announcement, we’re functionally the ninth member of the Ivy League!” While the Scholastic reporting team saw several flaws in that statement, including Notre Dame’s challenging history with the Catholic faith, the lack of any statistical changes in data to prove her point and the inability of Notre Dame’s campus to relocate to the East Coast, we nevertheless wished her further happiness and continued on our way.

Other members of the Notre Dame community were not as thrilled. We met up with the director of “Pride and Pompousness,” Kelly Keene, who adapted the character of Mr. Darcy, famous from Jane Austen’s bestselling novel “Pride and Prejudice,” into a third-year Mendoza student with an internship at McKinsey already locked in. Upon hearing this news, she promptly burst into tears. “How can I express the drama, the intrigue, the truly boundary-crossing moment of a relationship between a hardcore accounting major living in Keenan and a French major from Farley who shows him there is more to the world than Excel? My production will have to be postponed indefinitely!” 

Considering she had one man playing Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bennet and Mr. Collins simultaneously, this may have been for the best. No members of our reporting team were able to determine how she would stage this production as a one-man show. However, due to her dramatic flair and excessive use of adjectives, Scholastic did offer her a job; she starts Tuesday if anyone wants to drop into our office and meet her.

Overall, while the general consensus shows mixed results, we here at Scholastic firmly believe in the importance of staying safe and preventing sickness before it occurs. Therefore, in the spirit of Doug, we will be handing out buckets of hand sanitizer for you to use however you please, and we will take absolutely no other precautions. From the office of *cough* Scholastic, we wish you a phenomenal rest of the semester and hope that all of you can survive being alone with your thoughts for the next eight weeks.