By Bill S. Hakespeare

Friends, Wildcats, Countrymen, lend me your beers;
You came to register on CAESAR, not to praise it.
With evils that men program into it,
The good is oft interred with their codes;
So let it be with CAESAR. The great Schapiro
Hath told you CAESAR was easy to use:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And you were not let into any of your classes.
Here, under the gaze of great Schapiro—
Remember, CAESAR is easy to use;
So says Schapiro, our great president—
Come I to speak in defense of CAESAR.
It is our tool, accurate and equipped
With powerful search functionalities,
Which make it simple to find your classes:
For Schapiro says it’s easy to use,
And Schapiro is a great president.
It points out all your scheduling conflicts
And has helpful navigational tools:
In this, is CAESAR not easy to use?
When that freshman hath cried, CAESAR has crashed:
“Easy to use” needs be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Schapiro says it’s easy to use;
And Schapiro is a great president.
You all did register for your classes
No matter if they were ones you did need,
Though thrice it logged you out: is this easy?
Yet Schapiro says it’s easy to use,
And, yes, sure, he is a great president.
I speak not to disprove Schapiro’s words,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all loved CAESAR once, not without cause:
It offered CTECs, and lists of classes.
O judgment! thou flees to Lakefill wi-fi’d;
Wildcats have lost their reason. Bear with me—
My heart is on the Internet with CAESAR,
And I must pause till my signal comes back.

HOLLYWOOD, CA — The producers of Jurassic Park 4 announced last week that the upcoming film is being indefinitely delayed until cloning technology makes “several large breakthroughs.”

Patrick Crowley, one of the two producers, said, “This film is going to be groundbreaking. We’re going to use real dinosaurs, no more of that crummy CG-stuff audiences can so easily tell is fake. After only measurable success with the first films in the franchise, we knew we wanted to take 4 to the next level. We just need to wait for technology to catch up with our vision.”

Crowley’s co-producer Frank Marshall explained what went wrong, causing the delays. “The real dinosaurs idea is phenomenal, but it’s been tough to get around the staggering lack of dinosaurs on this planet. We tried cloning a dinosaur, combining crocodile DNA with some DNA we extracted from blood trapped in a mosquito preserved in a piece of amber, but that didn’t work. The dinosaurs were too vicious and agile and escaped from their cages and ate two of the cameramen.”

Marshall continued, “We decided to wait until cloning technology was good enough that we could combine our dinosaur DNA with a friendly bunny rabbit. Right now our best velociraptor has a little bunny tail and two floppy bunny ears. It’s super cuddly and nice and loves snuggling. It’s absolutely ridiculous, completely unusable. We had to have it shot. We need the ferocious look and the friendly personality. Cloning technology just isn’t there yet.”

Crowley added, “Worst case scenario is that we’ll just release the footage of our first velociraptors eating our cameramen.”

Crowley said he is sure Jurassic Park 4 won’t fall into the same trap the 2009 film Avatar did. Avatar was delayed 15 years so that technology could create James Cameron’s dream for the film, which had “very pretty visuals, but no compelling storyline whatsoever.”

“There’s no way our gory, action-packed, many-year-delayed, multimillion dollar sequel-to-a-sequel-to-a-sequel will lack a story worth telling.”

EVANSTON — A humpback whale washed ashore South Beach today and became beached when it could not move itself back into deeper waters. The whale remains on the beach now, but four Northwestern seniors who were playing volleyball at the time of the beaching responded quickly. They are providing continuous aid in order to keep the whale alive until the crane building the new music building can be requisitioned to lift the whale back into the lake.

Weinberg senior Katie Bogarty called the beaching “a dream come true.” Bogarty, president of NU Students for Saving the Whales, “never thought [her] club would accomplish anything useful.”

“Luckily I had just re-watched that Seinfeld episode where George saves a beached whale,” continued Bogarty, “and so I knew just what to do.”

Bogarty took control of the situation by yelling, “Quick! Is anyone here a marine biologist?”

Miraculously, her volleyball opponent Melody Xin was, and Bogarty reluctantly turned over the rescue efforts to someone who might know what they were doing.

“I had no idea there would be a marine biologist,” said Bogarty. “I really think I had that situation under control.”

Xin explained that she’s a double major and usually just tells people she’s studying chemistry. “It’s much more respectable.”

Xin rushed toward the whale and attempted to save it, prepared to use all her marine biology skills. She identified the species as humpback by its long pectoral fins, measured its length at 13 meters and estimated its weight at 34,000 kilograms. That done, she stepped back, wiping her hands in triumph and looking especially pleased with herself.

“Once they beach, there’s pretty much no hope for them,” Xin told the confused onlookers. “So, yeah, that whale’s a goner. But how cool is it that I was able to identify it?”

“What really puzzles me,” Xin wondered aloud as waves gently lapped the struggling mammal, “is how on earth a whale made it to Lake Michigan. Even if it did manage to swim from the Atlantic ocean through all the canals and rivers, whales are salt water creatures, and Michigan is a fresh water lake.”

An investigation conducted into this matter has shown the whale to be inflatable, placed into the lake by several McCormick sophomores at North Beach.

Oh, wait, this was totally satire. Our mistake.

EVANSTON — Mayfest, the student organization responsible for bringing performers to Northwestern’s annual music festival, Dillo Day, has officially announced the complete lineup for the June 1, 2013 festival after it was accidentally leaked by a member of its executive board. Carly Rae Jepsen will be the 2013 headliner. The full lineup is printed below:

Smash Mouth – With their performance in Evanston leaked months ago on their Facebook page, Smash Mouth will play first. Theater majors are especially excited to be reassured that they are “all stars.”

Hanson – Hanson, whom we all enjoyed when we were ten, will perform second with songs like “MMMBop.” They’ll also almost definitely swish their hair, which may or may not be gross at age thirty.

Ludacris – “It was so convenient to ask him to stick around in Chicago after A&O Ball,” said Mayfest of the decision to contract with Ludacris, who is reportedly looking for a “couch to crash on” in the Chicago area. Northwestern’s fraternities have already announced plans to host a philanthropic penny war in which the winning frat will get to host Ludacris until the concert.

Kid Cudi – Recalling his fantastic performance in Welsh-Ryan Arena in 2010, which was only slightly overshadowed by Snoop Dogg, the Mayfest executive board said they are “excited to have a rapper of this caliber joining us on Dillo Day.”

Carly Rae Jepsen – The creator of the hit single “Call Me Maybe,” the announcement of Jepsen as the headliner has many thrilled many Northwestern students. “This will be the best Dillo Day ever since they banned high school students from coming,” said an excited Allison Jones, Medill senior.

Weinberg Junior Mary Blitzer commented on the Mayfest leak, “This lineup is so much better than last year’s. I was afraid Mayfest would wait until the last minute to announce the lineup, and that the headliner would be even worse than Steve Aoki.”

The Daily Northwestern and Mayfest have each confirmed this lineup.

EVANSTON — When Bienen sophomore Kayla Toussmann found out that Emily DeGrout, her fellow sophomore and classmate in Italian 101-3, was on the field hockey team, she felt excited to be in the presence of such a successful athlete.

“The field hockey team, like, never loses,” said Toussmann. “It’s the one sport our school is actually good at! When Emily told me, ‘Gioco a hockey su prato’—‘I play field hockey’—I was all like, ‘Oh mio dio! Questo è fantastico! Congratulazioni!’”

Blocked by the language barrier imposed by their professor (English is forbidden in class), DeGrout was unable to find Italian words to express her reaction to Toussmann. DeGrout told The Flipside, “I wanted to say, ‘You’re thinking of lacrosse, idiot. Field hockey games are in the fall, and, um, we don’t win championships the way the lacrosse team does.’”

Instead, DeGrout said to Toussmann, “Grazie…idiota.”

“Yeah, I was confused why Emily called me an idiota,” said Toussmann after the class. “Maybe she meant ‘idioma?’ ‘Language?’ Like she doesn’t know the words to express her gratitude for my enthusiasm?”

When her mistake was explained to her, Tousmann said, “Isn’t field hockey the same thing as lacrosse? It’s girls on a field trying to get a ball into the goal, right? Besides, why would she take offense? I’m just trying to express my love for our school and our team. Go ‘Cats, am I right?”

Asked if she had ever attended either a lacrosse or field hockey game, Toussmann scoffed, “Oh, hell no!”

Yes – Raising Tuition is An Unfortunate Necessity in Today’s Economic Climate

By Morton Owen Schapiro

Every year, I am presented with the question, do we need to raise tuition by another four percent? Every year, the answer is yes.

As someone whose specialty is the economics of higher education, I know that there is simply no alternative to raising tuition. Let me outline just three of the many reasons for you:

1. Financial Aid – In order to pay for the tuition of lower income students, we must raise tuition for everyone else. Because tuition keeps rising, for the university to be able to provide the same level of financial aid, we need to keep raising tuition. It’s a vicious cycle.

2. Free Stuff – All the free things students here get aren’t actually free. We just charge more for your tuition. Free t-shirt? That’s $15 of your tuition money. Free shuttle service? $500. What’s that, you want free printing and u-passes for the El? That’ll be another $1000.

3. My Salary – I do my part for this school, my job is basically fundraising, and that exhausting endeavor deserves a commensurate salary. Look, I only make $212,000 a year from my Board of Directors stint at that insurance company Marsh & McLennan Companies. A couple million more from Northwestern is only fair.

And so, it is clear that from the financial realities of the modern world, for the University to be sustainable, we must continue to raise the sticker price of attending this fine institution.

Counterpoint:
HELL YES!!! – Have You SEEN the Prices for These Fucking Flowers?!?

By Morty Schapiro

Holy shit these flowers are expensive. Jesus! You don’t want to know how much it costs to keep this place looking presentable! Before I took this job, if you had told me that being University President boiled down to being a glorified botanist at the expense of improved campus facilities and mental health services, I’d have told you to take this job!

Wait, the saying’s “take this job and shove it?” Why would I want to do that? I’d tell you to take this highly-paid, respectable job! The whole thing’s like one of my beloved Economics problems come to life! I get to explore supply, demand, and investigate an intriguing market bubble!

Do you know what a bubble is? It’s when a good is continually sold for an amount that far outweighs its intrinsic value, eventually leading to a complete market collapse! And did you know that if tuition continues to grow along at current rates a single year at Northwestern will cost well over $70,000 by 2030?

Two completely unrelated facts, of course, as anyone who’s spent time with me or our fine University’s Board of Directors already knows that Northwestern’s tuition rates are pegged directly to the Florists’ Transworld Delivery exchange downtown in Downers Grove. You want to complain to someone, go talk to their President! He’s the head honcho! He’s the jackass who decided to price a single goddamned box of tulip bulbs at $40!

And, yes, we may technically have more money that we know what to do with, but that doesn’t stop us from needing more! We need to build a nest egg for our University to rely on during tough times! (Like when outrageous tuition costs lead to dire financial collapse at America’s oldest Universities.) Won’t you be glad that we’re prepared then?

WAUKESHA, WI — Jordan Stralisky was surprised to learn during Wildcat Days that the city of Chicago is visible from the Northwestern Campus.

“We drove like three hours to get from Waukesha to Northwestern, and on the tour we saw downtown Chicago from just outside Norris. I had no idea you could see Chicago from Northwest Illinois!” Stralisky said.

“I have family in Dubuque, so it’ll be great to be just a short drive from the Iowa border in case I ever want to have dinner with them. I could totally see myself shopping on Michigan Avenue on Saturdays and visiting Auntie May and Uncle Lester on Sundays,” the prospective student added.

Following her tour of the campus, Stralisky said she was most interested in meeting some of Northwestern’s Musical Theater majors, ordering a Nutella Crepe from Crepe Bistro on the ground floor of Norris, and witnessing the campus excitement of having a team in the NCAA Tournament. She has not had much luck experiencing any of this.

“I was so disappointed when Northwestern lost to Florida in the NCAA tournament. I was rooting for the purple and white the whole time, knowing that this could be the school I attend. I’m a huge basketball fan so going to a Division-I school with a competitive team is really important to me. I was hoping Northwestern would be a great fit for me.”

Nevertheless, Stralisky says Northwestern is still her first choice, due to the hotel-like quality of its dormitories, its sense of campus unity, and its affordable tuition rates.

CHICAGO — Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler stunned the seventy people who follow the NFL in the off-season when he announced his retirement at a surprise press conference.

“It’s time for me to move on,” said the disgruntled quarterback. “I’m tired of getting sacked by Clay Matthews and Ndamukong Suh. I’m tired of throwing interceptions. I’m tired of having my toughness questioned, of being called weak.”

Cutler said he plans to pursue his other dream job. “Being a starting NFL quarterback is really only half of every little boy’s dream. I need to stay true to myself—I need to become an investment banker,” said Cutler.

Cutler explained that the appeal of investment banking lies in the money, the opportunities for advancement, and the hot chicks. “Plus, I really think a career in the financial world will help me make the world a better place.”

Cutler believes that the decision to leave the NFL for a classy desk job will silence his critics, proving once and for all he has the manliness to make tough decisions and the strength to pursue his dreams.

The Chicago Bears, meanwhile, are scrambling to find a new starting quarterback, lacking confidence in recently signed backup Matt Blanchard. Head Coach Marc Trestman has suggested several candidates who will prove to be better than either Blanchard or Cutler could ever be, including bringing Vinny Testaverde out of retirement, attempting to sign free agent Seneca Wallace, or hiring the first guy they find walking outside Soldier Field when training camp starts.