UT Campus is Going Extreme Green

As the brutal summer heat fades into the crisp air of fall, the leaves of Rocky Top slowly turn to shimmery shades of orange. Naturally, the leaders of UT’s Make Orange Green Campaign are furious. “We’re trying SO HARD to make this campus as green as possible, so of course nature has to come and screw everything up!” said the student president of the campus organization. With the leaves changing faster, this environmental group has been scrambling to find a solution to their fading reputation.

Fortunately for them, a hidden supply closet tucked into the depths of the theatre department was recently uncovered, only to be filled floor to ceiling with different shades of green paint. When interviewed of the recent find, the head of the theatre department replied, “There’s no telling how long that paint has been sitting there. Probably since the performance of A Mid Summer’s Night Dream in 1952” The environmental council jumped at the opportunity to commandeer the vast quantity of free paint, and now plan to change UT’s landscape, one paint brush at a time.

The task of painting each leaf green has proven to be a harder job than originally thought; the ‘Literally Make Orange Green’ campaign has had a slow start. “We’re having a really hard time recruiting people for the job; it turns out that no one in the environmental group wants to go around painting trees! And to think they say they have the best interests of UT in mind…” remarked a weary manager for the project. Still, the campaign announces that they will not give up their dream of seeing an artificial green colored campus.

However, it appears that many roadblocks stand in their way to emerald victory. The campus’s health board carries concerns over the safety of the old paint. Various tests have concluded that every recovered paint can contains copious amounts of lead. The campaign coordinators have chosen to respond by largely ignoring all warnings about the paint. “For your information, I have been using this paint non-stop for three weeks and haven’t felt a thing. This stuff is so safe, you could drink it!” Against the interviewer’s wishes, the volunteer scooped a large amount of paint in his hand and proceeded to slurp it. When asked for a follow-up interview, the volunteer expressed signs of delusion with extreme mood swings. A few weeks later, he left UT to check into an elderly home specializing in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

Only time will tell if the Literally Make Orange Green Campaign will be successful. Hopefully the contributors of the project will keep their sanity in the process.

by Doc Brown