By Capt. David F. Xavier Rubino, M.D., Esq.

EVANSTON – Northwestern students will have a whole slew of new meal plans to choose from when they return in the fall. After nearly a decade, researchers seeking the least optimal plans for the student body have finally reached a consensus.

“It all started when students began voicing their complaints”, former ASG Student Life VP Matt Belassai told The Flipside. “They would fill out surveys denoting how dissatisfied they were with the overall services, and naturally this led us to the conclusion that students felt they weren’t being challenged enough in this aspect of their lives.” As it is ASG’s role to look out for the students as much as they can, they took the problem into their own hands.

The student government began tweaking the ways in which meals would be divvied up among students across campus. What began as something as preposterously easy as meal costs divisible by seven (“elementary mathematics,” says Belassai) has grown to trying out all manner of prime numbers. For a brief period of time, 11 meals a week were offered, until the government “struck gold” with the seemingly unlearnable 13 meal-a-week plan now typically offered. However, somehow students managed to work this into the rhythm of their schedules, and ASG was compelled to add even more confounding factors to the process.

For a few years following, students became accustomed to seeing new and inventive methods of getting fed up. First was “points”, exactly the same as actual dollars, simply mislabeled in an effort to create what was described as a “treasure hunt” mentality among the students as they struggled to keep track of this new fantasy currency. Then came Munch Money, which are also the exact same as dollars — but transferring funds between points and Munch Money is forbidden. As the years stretched on, however, more and more students became too savvy about finding workarounds, and the administration used a final tactic: equivalency. Arbitrary plans could be used for their “point” amount at select locations, while others couldn’t, often based on little to no reasoning. This managed to finally cause the mental gridlock that ASG was looking for, but recently, those dreaded complaint letters started to come back.

Fast-forward to the future, and it seems that Belassai and his successor have finally hit upon the secret formula for optimal confusion. The Flipside was able to get a small preview of the plans to be offered:

“Lunar” Plan

• Students may or may not be able to eat, as denoted by cross checking a moon phases and zodiac sign chart.
• 2.73 meals a week may be used at retail locations

“Globetrotter” Plan

• 1 point a day, non-rollover
• Students living on south campus will be required to eat at Elder, while students up north will be relegated to 1835.

“Spice o’ Life” Plan

• a student may not eat anything they have previously eaten that year, including relevant permutations.
• full equivalency at all retail locations.

“Thinker” Plan

• the number of meals a week is equal to the number of meals used the previous week, divided by the week of the quarter and multiplied by the average # used a week.

EVANSTON – The Northwestern University student body recently elected Austin Young as 2011-12 President of the Associated Student Government (ASG). Young ostensibly garnered many votes because of his chosen running mate, the popular Ash Ketchum of Pallet Town.

While Austin vocally supported policies including better communication between ASG members and the implementation of systems designed to make students’ voices heard, Ash ran on the platform of dissolving the Team Rocket fan club and allowing all students to select Pikachu as their starters.  Now that Ash has been elected to this office, he has made some more promises. “I want a Master Ball for every trainer and a Magikarp in every home,” Ketchum said in a press conference this Monday. Ash has also decided to make Professor Oak his Technologies Supervisor, a position he will create upon taking office.

Yet the new VP is already stirring up controversy. In the press conference, Ash made it abundantly clear that he refuses to work with any trainers who use Ghost-type Pokemon.  Earlier he stated “Guys, you know I’m all about diversity. I think all Pokemon were created equal as much as the next guy, but come on. Ghost Pokemon are just plain cheap.  You can’t use any physical attacks against them.  I just won’t stand for it any longer.”

When asked for his stance on the Living Wage campaign, Ash responded, “Living wage? Pokemon don’t need any money.  All they need is love, food, and shelter.  Sometimes only one of three.”

EVANSTON—After his defeat in Wednesday’s vital ASG election, certain facts about Claire’s opponent have come to light concerning his true agenda. Alessio Manti, long thought to be striving for a piece of the political pie, is in actuality a simple vendor of incandescent lights, as evidenced by his most prominent campaign icon, an “A” inside one of the devices.

However, thanks to an overeager student body and his deep, sonorous voice easily confusable with that of a politician, he was all-too-swiftly placed along the pedestal of “candidate”. This can also be attributed to the long-standing tradition of keeping the voters as unaware as possible about the actual campaign issues at hand; preferring instead the “tactic” of plastering the candidates names everywhere with the hope that people would make a non-existent connection.

Sadly, most people only saw the light bulb and thought it was a metaphor. In fact, the logo’s message was intended to be much more blunt: he only wanted to increase sales. Perhaps if Alessio cast some light on where he really stood about how many sales he wanted to make, the types of lighting he could have provided, and how his new AllesiBulbs can eliminate the beer-goggle effect, he would have won over the hearts and minds of more students. As it stands, however, when The Flipside tried to question him on the issues, Alessio declined to comment. Upon further irritating him with light bulb puns, this reporter was forcibly launched from the audience. Perhaps Claire can clear up the question about why my current lighting situation also doubles as a “fire hazard”, but at the moment, we are all, as a student body, left in the dark without Alessio’s bright, shining future.

EVANSTON—Civilians rejoiced on Wednesday after learning that vice president elect Hiro Kawashima had in fact saved Claire “The Cheerleader” Lew from the clutches of the sinister Alessio “Sylar” Manti. “Yatta!” exclaimed a delighted Kawashima as he stood next to the uninjured Lew, “I wish I could stop time right in this very moment.”

Things were looking grim for Claire and Hiro yesterday after Manti made a promise to “inherit the thoughts of [current President] Mike McGee.” He claimed that he was “stronger than ever” and that “no one can stop me now, not even you, Claire.” McGee has not been seen since.
Kawashima explained the thrilling 24 hours that followed to The Flipside: “I was ready to give up until my future self reminded me: Save the Cheerleader, save the world, save ASG. That’s when I knew I had to help her.”

The tumultuous final battle seemed to be tilting toward Manti and his running mate Adam Thompson-Harvey after Manti drove an incisive listserv email through Lew’s heart. However, she was able to recover, and with the help of both Kawashima and NU President Morton Shapiro (whose ability to fly proved invaluable), Claire was able to triumph.

“I’m glad they won,” said Medill junior Sarah Renner, “I just hope they don’t get significantly worse next season… I mean, quarter.”