Beginning his annual preaching on Northrop Mall three months earlier than usual, Brother Jerry spent the entire day yesterday bragging that he was right about the fate of University students — they are all going to hell for fornicating.
And as he performed a victory dance with his fellow evangelists and sign-bearing followers — a quick jig and barrel turn — students who gathered to see him speak metamorphosed into demons, trees burst into flames and holes opened up in the ground that swallowed passersby.
“I told you so, you fornicators,” Jerry said to a crowd of students whose lives ended with the coming of the apocalypse. “Fornication. I bet you can’t get no satisfaction now.”
Some students who were able to avoid falling into the large potholes challenged Jerry, arguing that he should be trying to save souls. Others thought his dance was rather pedantic and that he should at least have thought of a more creative way to revel in students’ guilt and pain.
Barb Millerhouse, a freshman studying criminology, attempted her own evangelizing. She paraphrased her favorite Bible quote with a sign that read, “Eat me and you shall be saved.”
“Sometimes the direct approach is best,” Millerhouse said. “Like when all those people got the gift of tongues. Rather than persuade, just directly confront. I don’t think we all are going to hell.”
However, Brother Fred, Jerry’s assistant, disagreed and said it was too late for the fornicators.
“Ours is not to question why things happen,” Fred said. “(The fornicators) had every spring for the last two decades to repent and save themselves. I never questioned why they fornicate. They shouldn’t question why they’re going to hell.”
Lisa Simmons, a senior in religious studies who supports Jerry’s actions, stood by Jerry in a nun’s habit and boasted about his sanctity and condemned whole groups of people, races and sexual orientations to eternal damnation.
“I had been saving my outfit for a special occasion,” Simmons said. “I never thought it would have been the end of the world. I am so glad I never fornicated.”
Fornication is biblically defined as unlawful sexual intercourse and worship of idols. Brother Jerry said most University students were guilty of the former, except Carlson School of Management students.
“Carlson students are guilty of idol worship only,” he said. “That’s why they’re also going to hell, but in a special unlawful sex-free zone led by Alan Greenspan.”

Margaret Bundesregel would welcome comments at [email protected], but the server is down — in hell.