Don’t Judge a Class By Its Title
Rachel O’Connor ‘26
What follows is a cautionary tale about the perils of not reading your class syllabus. Do not let this happen to you.
Students taking Dr. Grey’s always popular Unethical Science lecture were downright horrified by their classmate’s conference project presentation last week. Allegra Furter, a junior transfer who allegedly hadn’t attended a class after syllabus day, claims, “It’s really not that bad. You guys are being mean.”
“It’s a crime against nature,” one of her classmates said.
“I was pretty sure she dropped the class, and then she just showed up with that…that thing,” said another.
“I actually threw up. Like it smelled so bad. It was, like, rotting.”
“The creature? Oh yeah he’s chill. Bummed a cigarette off him…he should probably stop using a rock as deodorant.”
Eyewitness reports describe the creature as a nine-foot tall amalgamation of body parts that may or may not be human, with some reports suggesting the use of roadkill in its creation.
“Its face literally looks like raw ground beef with two eyes just jammed in there. And it has this massive black hole for the mouth that just goes on forever. Like a slip n’ slide. Or a garbage chute. How does it eat? Like seriously it doesn’t have teeth? You don’t think it eats people right? Hey…ummm…this is anonymous right? It’s not going to come after me or anything, is it?”
Furter defended her creation saying, “Oh my god I ran out of animals, okay? Cars aren’t running down skunks everyday. I know the class is Unethical Science, but if you expect me to be killing them myself, you’re insane. I borrowed some leftovers out of the communal fridge. I’m pretty sure whatever that was used to be an animal at some point. It counts.”
Rest assured, all our witnesses will remain anonymous to protect them from retribution or nasty Fizz posts made about them. There is no concrete evidence the creature eats people.
In an odd twist, the creature disappeared for almost eight hours yesterday, only for it to be discovered that the creature had parked itself, incognito, in the faculty lounge. It was fitting right in with its evolved opinions on Hegel, heuristics, and the obvious connection between fifteenth-century gender norms and the comedic arc of Rick and Morty.
When asked for further comment, Furter simply shrugged it off and said, “It’s vegan.” Despite its horrific appearance and vomit-inducing smell, the disclosure of the creature’s vegan status immediately vaulted its social standing above the roughly 2% of Sarah Lawrence College (SLC) students who don’t profess to be vegan.
Someone might want to tell the creature about the source of its newfound social status because an SLC Anonymous post alleged he was seen leaving The Barb with chicken nuggets last night.
One user commented, “I guess nobody warned him about the food poisoning.” Despite efforts, we have been unable to confirm that an angry mob of torch-wielding, Birkenstock-wearing SLC students were hunting for the creature last night, seeking vengeance for the creature’s crime against humanity of eating some undefined parts of a chicken.
We tried asking the creature for a comment but he just made an uncomfortable series of grunts and wet gurgles before handing us a cigarette. After learning our interviewee was not the creature but actually a long-suffering adjunct professor, we located the creature and were treated to the same grunt-and-gurgle routine. Seems like the creature would do great in prison. Or in the SLC administration.
When asked how Furter came up with the idea for such a…unique project she said, “I’ve never taken a science class before, so I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I watched Lisa Frankenstein, and she’s just, like, so me-coded. I didn’t have a tanning bed though, so I made it in a contraband air fryer I keep under my bed.”
You would think subverting nature and creating life à la Frankenstein would earn Furter a solid evaluation, right? We asked Dr. Grey to weigh in.
Dr. Grey sighed loudly, took off her glasses, and rubbed her face with her hands. This was probably not a good sign for poor Allegra Furter.
“I don’t think she even read the course description, much less the syllabus. I really don’t know what she was even doing in my class.”
“I needed the science credit to graduate,” was Furter’s defense.
Dr. Grey went on to say, “Unethical Science is a class for reviewing cases of historically-poor science and talking about what went wrong and what could have been done to make the experiment more ethical. We’re trying to teach students how to approach science with respect and dignity. Conference projects were meant to be an essay about an instance of unethical behavior and why it was so dishonest. Which she would know, if she ever came to class. I wanted presentations on Rosalind Franklin or the Stanford Prison Experiment. Not a student literally using science unethically to create the creature from the black lagoon.”
One student disagreed, saying, “Take a look at our course catalog. Unethical Science sits right there with classes like Breathing is not a Natural Act, Microdosing Happiness: The Positive Effects of Shrooms on the Brain, and Hooked on a Feeling: Hookup Culture as a Form of Self-Expression. A class designed to create grotesque monsters out of road kill would seem to fit right in.”
Say what you want about Furter, but at least she didn’t abandon her creation. Rumor has it he's sleeping on the couch in the Garrison common room and having a great time publicly reading The Bell Jar on the South Lawn while wearing jorts and wife beater. Rumor is it's even a feminist. We would say that’s pretty ethical, Dr. Grey.
We asked Furter’s suitemates to weigh in.
“I mean he does the dishes, which Allegra has literally never done. I say we kick her out and let the creature take her room,” said one.
“Oh, the creature? I don’t care. What I do care about is that [redacted] Allegra used my leftovers for her weird science project! It had my name on it!”
“Most normal thing to happen in Garrison, to be honest.”
Another suitemate added, “He doesn’t walk around the suite naked or roll joints on the carpet, and he puts a sock on the doorknob when he’s eating a houseguest inside. He’s probably in the top half of suitemates around here.”
We asked the Residential Assistant (RA) for a comment but they just grumbled something about updated roommate agreements and not being compensated nearly enough for this [redacted]. They then trudged off, an air of defeat wafting along behind them.
Moral(s) of the story? Read the syllabus, if you create a freak of nature it’s your responsibility, and be kind to your RAs.