COLLEGE PARK — An icy tundra whistles softly, its featureless expanse punctuated by a graveyard of upturned scooters and frozen varmint. According to local legend (and surviving signage), this was once a lively college campus. Within the deepest recesses of this most inhospitable wasteland rests an extant reminder of a warmer era: the esteemed President Pines, frozen in situ by a “large icicle,” according to the University.

Since Sunday’s record-breaking snowfall, Facilities Management crews have worked tirelessly to clear and de-ice roads and sidewalks. However, a more pressing task — freeing Pines from his icy prison — consumes the University’s attention. Specialized units, armed with blowtorches and ice picks, are “closer than ever” to breaking through what one expert describes as “a small glacier.”

Several student employees and a few auxiliary members of the University of Maryland Police Department have also been recruited to attack the icicle’s impenetrable walls with hair dryers and hand warmers. “We salute their bravery,” said Jennifer King Rice, the University’s Acting President, “and we call upon all Terps to donate a percentage of their body heat to free our dear, beloved leader.”

But what of the thousands of Terps currently on campus? According to eyewitness reports distributed through YikYak, conditions in College Park are “stupid cold,” as evidenced by the ever-growing lines in front of students’ favorite bars. Many sidewalks have become littered with the ice-bound remains of those whose “liquid blankets” couldn’t stand up to the frigid temperatures. The University assures that they, too, will be thawed sometime before spring break.

No one is safe, not even in the residence halls. Bereft of steam-powered heating, shivering residents have gained intimate knowledge of which dorm furniture is best for makeshift bonfires. In short order, North Campus’ lobby furniture was reduced to ashes, the remnants of a raging inferno tearfully recounted by an out-of-state freshman as “the only part of Maryland [he] will ever miss.”

Who will we be at the end of this long winter? Sources within the student body have mixed opinions, but a collective notion holds: only the strong will survive — the rest will transfer to the much sunnier University of Miami.

Image Credits: Felix Baum