EVANSTON—In a shocking turn of events, Evanston police arrested three NU students for painting a rock-like structure late Friday night.

“Those kids had a good three buckets of paint,” said police commissioner Danny Buckter. “They were slopping paint all over the place. Graffiti just can’t be tolerated on campus.”

Buckter added, “You would think that the kids at Northwestern would have their heads screwed on right. I guess the SATs don’t test you on civic responsibility!”

Mary Finkel, a Weinberg sophomore arrested for taking part in the vandalism, was utterly bewildered.

“I don’t get this,” said Finkel. “I thought that was completely allowed, I mean, there was a lot of paint on that rock before we even got there! I thought that was a thing students did here!”

Finkel was one of the three students arrested, along with Brad Harris and John Murrow while attempting to raise awareness for their fundraiser on Sunday. The three were members of the student group, GlobalReach, whose fundraiser was focused on raising money for underprivileged children in Vietnam.

“I’m glad I caught those delinquents when I did,” recalled Buckter. “Who knows what subversive, dirty things they could have written on that rock. As it’s in such a central location on campus, it’s likely that everyone would have seen it and its radical message. As a result, it’s probable that students would have gained increased awareness of the world outside of Northwestern and consequently donate the funds that normally went towards Ugg boots and Starbucks coffee to charity. The very infrastructure of the community might have collapsed — without NU students stimulating the Evanston economy, who knows what would happen?”

“I can’t believe this,” said Murrow, who recently posted bail. “Seriously, I know people who have painted that rock before. Who is this guy that arrested us? Is he new in town?”

Harris, who still hasn’t been granted his phone call at the penitentiary, agreed with Murrow.

“This is ludicrous,” said Harris. “Absolutely ludicrous.”

In the aftermath of the incident, opinions among Northwestern students were mixed.     

“That’s actually kind of funny,” said Stan Nash, a Weinberg junior. “I mean, it’s like, what the hell?”

“I think that is a terrible thing,” said Cyndy Li, a McCormick senior. “Graffiti can not and should not be tolerated on campus. Commissioner Buckter is a brave man.”

Li is a transfer student who has been attending classes for almost two days.

Morton Schapiro, also new to campus, honored Buckter in a press conference early this morning.

“I don’t see myself as a hero,” said Buckter later upon questioning. “I just call it doing my job. Someone has to put an end to teenage shenanigans, and I guess, today, that someone was me. I’m just glad that I arrived on the scene when I did. I would never have forgiven myself if that graceful monument had suffered the great degradation of one more coat of paint.”

EVANSTON—David Stephens, a highly touted freshman point guard, was reported as being “shocked and confused” by a pregaming event at Bobb last Friday. Stephens was invited to the party by his roommate, Jack Vineyard, “I figured, the dude’s an athlete,” Vineyard said, “I thought he’d understand what a pregame is. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

Stephens initially seemed exuberant upon hearing of the pregame. “I told Jack I just had to grab my ball and my bag and I’d meet him there,” the point guard explained, “but when I got to the room, there wasn’t so much as a Koosh hoop anywhere in sight.”

Vineyard explained that when Stephens entered the room, his gym attire and the orange ball in his hands initially confused the other attendees. However, his appearance was quickly forgotten in a chorus of “Hey!!!!” and Vineyard yelling, “SHOTS!!! FOR THIS GUY!” This seemed to delight Stephens, who then said, “Shots sounds good. I need to work on my jumper. Where are we going, exactly?”

The partygoers explained the Stephens that the party was right here, and he was about to get hammered. Stephens took offensive to this, replying, “I might be small, but no one throws down the hammer dunk on me. I’ll swat that shit away, no sweat.”

Eventually, Stephens began to lighten up, but retained his sporting personality throughout the pregame. When asked how he was doing, the point guard explained that he was just “taking it one drink at a time” and that he’ll “really need to step up at the actual party and give it his all.”

Stephens had reportedly been involved in a similar misunderstanding last week, when he wore his Sacramento Kings #4 jersey to a round of the drinking game of the same name.

ORLANDO, FL—After announcing plans to retire its trademark cartoon, Disney unveiled yesterday its new icon, Mick Maus. A company spokesperson, Sven Britton, said the change is indicative of Disney’s shift in target audience from the family sector to surly teen-aged douchebags.

According to Britton, Maus’s newly-penned back story details his past as a juvenile delinquent. “He wears a lot of black. He blows cigarette smoke in your face just because he can. He’s generally the type of tool you take one look at and realize you should make sure he gets nowhere near your children,” he said.

Disney decided to revamp its outreach strategy after noticing how many costumed employees dressed as members of the Mickey Mouse Club got the shit beat out of them at its nation-wide theme parks.

The company decided to conduct intense, laborious studies on kids. Researchers examined many components of young people’s psychological state, from their Facebook statuses to their Twitter tweets.

“It was an interesting endeavor, targeting and stalking kids on the Internet,” said developer Marc Remlinger, who recently appeared on Dateline NBC’s program To Catch a Predator. “But what we found is that this generation of children is overwhelmingly self-centered, rude and essentially evil. For years, Disney has tried to promote the opposite values, but it became clear that we needed to adapt our methods in order to survive in this changing social climate.”

It was then that Remlinger and his team of animators created the concept of “a complete dick who adolescents can look up to as a sort of anti-hero who encompasses all that is wrong in this world,” he said.

Disney already has big plans for Maus, whose new features include a thick German accent and a more colorful vocabulary.

In a bold and creative campaign, Disney will be releasing a video game making the mascot change interactive. Coup d’Etat, which is set to be released before Christmas, will feature players controlling the new Disney icon through levels of “a horror version of ‘It’s a Small World,’” trying to find and eventually slaughter the old Mickey Mouse.

Britton added that Disney will update other classic characters like Snow White and Cinderella, though he was unable to disclose many details. “The specifics don’t really matter, so long as [the characters] become extremely slutty. Our goal is to make all our female cartoons into whores. And Donald Duck is really just a quack, we might as well eliminate him,” said Remlinger.

Said Britton: “I’d like to think our company’s founder and my personal hero, Walt Disney, would be really pleased with the direction we’re going in. His top priority was always children’s happiness, and I think we killed it… I mean, in a good way.”

Dear NU Flipside,

Swine flu is definitely a zombie virus. How can I survive the zombie apocalypse?

Sincerely,
James Walshington

Well James, we here at The Northwestern Flipside have put many hours into the study of zombies and can say with great certainty that this so called “swine flu” is really a government ploy to cover up the reality that the dead are being reanimated as zombies. In the course of our studies, we have also devised a comprehensive survival procedure for such an event. First, it is important that that you properly protect yourself against the undead. We suggest a shotgun and perhaps a machete. Flamethrowers work nicely as well. Next, you will need a place to ride out the initial infection. Malls have been scientifically proved to be the best strongholds against zombies. We suggest that you camp out on the roof of the Old Orchard Mall and wait for the zombies to starve to death, as our intensive research has shown is inevitable. Once the danger has passed, you may proceed to repopulate the world as you see fit.

-Want to Ask The Flipside a question? Email your question to agresik@northwesternflipside.com