EVANSTON – In a move to appeal to an increasingly Internet-centric youth, Northwestern University will be offering a major in Meme Studies, Assistant Dean for Curriculum Joan Linsenmeier announced yesterday. Northwestern will become the first major university to offer a degree in the up-and-coming science of Internet memes.

This announcement comes in response to years of student petitions for the university to offer a full major in studying Internet memes – which, for those uninitiated in Internet culture, is defined by Wikipedia as being “a concept that spreads swiftly via the Internet.”

“I can’t tell you how many students have come up to me and asked, ‘Assistant Dean Linsenmeier, why you no have Internet Memeology major?’” Linsenmeier said to reporters. “Well, I’m here to say that, Northwestern students, you can has a degree in Meme Studies.”

Yale University’s philosophy department offers a course titled “Philosoraptor and Society,” and the University of Chicago recently drew headlines when they paid rapper Xzibit “upwards of $50,000” to come to campus and lecture about recursion. However, this step by Northwestern is being lauded as a groundbreaking move in a still-developing academic field, which aims to study “the ways that Internet memes reflect and influence society as a whole.”

“We live in a meme-based world, there’s no denying that,” said Northwestern sociology professor Grant Richards. “While it might not be considered standard academic material, I believe that this in a important move for Northwestern. It shows we’re embracing the changing culture and not remaining stagnant.”

Linsenmeier revealed several of the courses offered by the new Department of Internet Memeology, which included “Introduction to Redditology,” “History of the Internet: IRC, /b/, and Beyond,” and a 300-level course in “The Sociology of Rage Comics.”

The newly created program will partner up with Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in offering a series of courses about the current social media market.

“At Northwestern, our goal is to offer an education that gives our students a chance to impact the world in a very real way. The Department of Internet Memeology and Medill will be giving our students the tools to do just this,” Linsenmeier said. “Students majoring in Internet Memeology won’t just be ‘derping’ around.”

Reaction among the students has been overwhelmingly positive.

“I was like, me gusta,” said junior Alex Goodwin, who is enrolled in the Weinberg College of Arts and Science. “My parents have been paying $60,000 a year for me to browse the Internet, so it’s only fair to them that I at least get something out of it.”

Goodwin added, “Good Guy Northwestern: notices you’re browsing Reddit during lectures, gives you a degree for it.”

EVANSTON – Auguste Rault has faced accusations of being French ever since he came to Northwestern University with a backpack full of baguettes and cigarettes in 2010. Rault, a sophomore French major, claims that this stereotyping is evidence of a culture of ignorance prevalent among “fat, American, spoiled” Northwestern students.

Rault, while moodily chain-smoking in the pouring rain, explained that people question him about whether he is French almost weekly.

“It’s almost as if a man can’t dwell on the meaninglessness of life without having accusations of being French,” Rault said, spitting on the ground. “C’est pathétique.”

He explained that he thought things would change from high school, where his peers merely thought he was homosexual. “I view this as offensive to the superior French culture, that I cannot stand here of my own accord and smoke. Americans, you know, they don’t think when they smoke, they’re always in such a hurry,” Rault said, gradually devolving into a thick Parisian accent.

The view that a person can’t stand condescendingly considering all culture around him to be intrinsically inferior without being accused of Frenchness is symptomatic of a corrupt and intrinsically inferior culture, said Rault.

“I curse you ignorant Americans,” added Rault, who, when asked where he was from, vaguely gestured, and remarked “east of here.”

Rault is willing to look on the bright side, though: “At least they don’t think I’m an English swine.”

EVANSTON – When Jeremy Schlitz, a Weinberg freshman from Elkhorn, Wisconsin, took the Purple Line to go to his aunt’s Oak Park condominium, the last thing he expected was to see public masturbation.

“It just didn’t cross my mind,” Schlitz said, shaking his head in awe. But when he boarded the southbound train, the first thing he saw was a homeless man furiously pleasuring himself in plain view of everyone on the cab.

“Everyone pretty much ignored it, so I figured that it was normal,” Schlitz said. “We don’t have that up north.”

The homeless man, whom Schlitz described as being in his “mid-to-late fifties” and “bearded,” made quite an impact on the freshman, who intends to study sociology.

“I grew up in a pretty sheltered town,” Schlitz explained. “It was rare to see a homeless man defecating on a park bench, let alone masturbating in public!”

Schlitz added, “It really shows you how progressive Chicago is, culture-wise.”

After taking pictures of the masturbating man with his iPhone, Schlitz tweeted “man masturbating on #purpleline. i’m learning so much! #smalltownboy.” Schlitz explained that the tweet was retweeted by several of his friends back home, who were presumably impressed by the artistic and cultural environment of Chicagoland.

On his trip returning from his aunt’s, Schlitz said that he did not see anyone masturbating, but added that there was only one other person in his cab and that perhaps his fellow passenger was too shy to pleasure himself in front of only one other person.

“I bet he felt awkward,” Schlitz hypothesized. “My professor talked about that, it all has to do with socialization.”

Whether or not the masturbating man was performing a social field experiment or simply deriving pleasure from the manipulation of his genitalia was something that Schlitz intended to research in the future, he said.

Schlitz said, “I asked my Human Sexuality professor about discussing it in class, but he just got nervous and hurried away, muttering something about a fucksaw.”

TOPEKA – One man of Tecumseh, Kansas who prefers to be referred to only as “Brian,” is filing charges against Apple for sexual harassment by the new iPhone’s voice-recognizing assistant.

“It all started off alright,” Brian said, “I was excited about the new update, I unboxed it right away…it all seemed so normal.”

Brian says that he should’ve taken the phone’s first interaction with him more seriously. “I started it up, and the first thing it said was, ‘What’s your name, sexy?’ But I figured that was just a joke.”

“Then I caught it taking a video of me changing,” Brian continued. “It got to the point where every time I would ask it to do something, like, say, email my boss, it would only comply if I removed an article of clothing.”

Allegedly, when the victim attempted to call his lawyer, Siri refused to dial the number while repeating, “Come on, baby.”

“I would buy an Android,” Brian said, “but my friend said they’re all racist.”

PALM BEACH, FL. – GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain struggled to finish his speech to the seniors at Maple Oaks Retirement Community yesterday after he ran out of ways to compare the United States to pizza.

“Um… well, really, what we need to focus on is speedy delivery,” Caine said, wiping his sweaty forehead. “The government is like… well, it’s kind of like if a pizza delivery guy had to ride a bike instead of drive a car.”

Cain apologized when one senior pointed out that people do deliver pizzas on bicycles.

The Republican candidate, who recently has emerged as a frontrunner in polls, was formerly the CEO of a Nebraska-based pizza chain and frequently touts his business experience as a credential in his campaign until yesterday, when his speechwriters ran out of pithy ways to relate running the United States to running a Midwestern pizza chain, leaving the 65-year-old man to fend for himself.

“Well, I got the name ‘Godfather Pizza’ from the popular gangster movie ‘The Godfather’, and I like to think that I’d bring to the American government the same kind of efficiency that Don Corleone brought to American organized crime,” Cain said, realizing quickly how fucking stupid he sounded.

“Sorry about that, everyone,” he added miserably.

Cain reportedly finished his speech with half an hour of vague metaphors relating tariff policies to pizza toppings, finishing by drawing a picture of a pizza on the whiteboard behind him.

EVANSTON – A study done by the Department of Psychology revealed that Northwestern students have increasingly “had it with this stupid fucking shit,” researcher Don Kranz said.

In a sentiment brought about by “this whole goddamned mess,” it appears that Northwestern students are increasingly threatening to “say fuck it and go to state school.”

“Every day, it’s just a constant shit blizzard, and it’s like I forgot my fucking boots, and I’m just wading through this giant shit storm,” an anonymous subject said.

“Fuck it all,” he added.

The results of this survey confirm a long trend spanning centuries of academic and existential torment, said Kranz. He points out documents from students in the class of 1855 (excerpt follows):

“Today, I received my marks for the mid-term examination in biology. My professor, a stout and gentle Pole, evidently found it of the utmost necessity to report to the Dean that I was unable to differentiate mitosis from meiosis. What a fucking asshole. Fuck this stupid, stupid bullshit. I don’t need this – does he not understand that my father is held in the highest esteem by President Pierce?”

The historic trend of Northwestern students to be “done, just fucking done with it” seems to have taken a decided upswing in the last decade, in which students ensure that “everything has gone to hell.”