Apocalyptic prophets held a press briefing Thursday, about two weeks shy of the new millennium, to offer shuddering testimony on the new order soon-to-be imposed at the University.
Come New Year, the familiar maroon-and-gold campus will close and transform into a frightening, evil haven. Goldy Gopher and his rodent family will be forced into exile.
Administrators, professors and other assorted campus fellows will be relegated to positions of evil servitude. The former web of bureaucracy will give way to pestilence and other morbid tribulations.
Instead of the U Card, campus-goers will be tattooed with a bar code denoting their place in the hierarchy of doom. Formerly dignified University officials will become profiteers and traders of a flourishing black market — selling babies, animals and freshmen to the highest bidder.
Residence halls will soon make way for brothels and houses of ill-repute, prophets announced.
The dark side plans to decorate the former campus with red satin, black lace and other Gothic wares.
The University Gateway Center, the center of the new evil order, has already been turned into a fiery pit with more than 100 instruments of torture. Faculty members and students implicated in past embarrassing scandals have been charged with instrumenting the punishment.
Prophets posted a new “black list” complete with names and addresses of University “wrong-doers.”
Students and faculty members praised for leadership and academic integrity will be rounded up by campus demons and sent to the Gateway building to receive appropriate discipline.
The most severe sentence, cleaning West Bank restroom facilities with one’s toothbrush, has already been handed down to at least three “black-listed” individuals.
Freshman Buck Samuelson, one of the unlucky ones, has been charged with the crime of being overly cheerful, prophets said.
“He looked as if he were high or crazy, or BOTH,” one said.
Samuelson will be escorted to the Gateway Center on Jan. 1.
The young fellow appeared excited about his punishment after a prophet whispered the evil order’s plan to send the Gateway Center into outer space.
“Yeah, man, I know someone will sneak some beer inside for me and my buddies,” Samuelson said.
Prophets also unveiled photo illustrations depicting the scene after the University turns into a black pit of doom. Crumbled buildings, Campus Connector buses twisted into odd heaps of metal and a river of blood flowing below the Washington Avenue dismayed those in attendance.
“Prepare for the end,” cackled the prophets. “The University shall be no more.”
— Buck Samuelson’s mom contributed to this report.

Temporarily Spastic welcomes comments at [email protected].