Friday, October 9, 2009

BURNED NEWSPAPER ARTICLE THAT NEVER WAS: A TRUE STORY part six Copyright 2009

Cryptic Messages through Padlocks and Chains: Campus Terrorists


Dear MGMers,

By now you should be getting the message that college campuses are dangerous places. The lesson here is that opponents plot in shadows. They dislike fair and open engagements. If you speak, be prepared to face your opponent’s wrath with warfare’s rules of engagement. Get, Sun tzu’s, The Art of War.

[M] r. Swibach was silent about the so-called bonfire event, and nothing more was said about SL’s infamous article about a Latin revolutionary. During class, he droned on about all things that interested him. Swibach thought himself to be funny and SL was fascinated by his insatiable need for adulation. The lazy were all too happy to give him kingly status; it meant that they didn’t have to crack a book.

SL wondered how Swibach intended to grade the class. She didn't trust Swibach as she listened to him entertain the unkempt, while chewing on marijuana leaves.

For a while Swibach ignored SL. She soon learned, however, that his unclean followers were still under the direction of their SDS master and they were plotting. It had seemed that things were dying down and SL thought that she might have some peace. She was wrong.  She learned to never underestimate an adversary.  As she walked to the place where she had parked her car, Sl knew she had unwisely let her guard down.  Her car was missing, or so she thought.

SL spotted her missing car sitting in the middle of a driver’s lane. Someone had removed it from its parking space to another isle. Her state of waning calm diminished precipitously. Drawing closer, she could see that the entire car had been enveloped by chains, which were connected by padlocks. SL suddenly realized that her enemies knew more about her than she knew about them, and contacted the campus security police. “Bring chain cutters she told them with an air of irritability.”

The campus guards arrived with metal cutters and laughed at the sight of the small car. Still suffering from the effects of shock, irritability and disgust, SL was not in the mood to chuckle. “I’m concerned that whoever did this may have damaged the transmission, while moving it.” The two men still thought that it was a harmless prank.

They assured her that the car could be moved easily and demonstrated their claim, by lifting and moving it in place. “Small cars are easy to move,” they assured, as they casually waived off the incident as a prank of the Greeks, a campus student group. “If you only knew,” SL said cryptically as she thanked them for their help.

The next day, she discussed the incident with staff and it was arranged that she could park in the teacher’s lot. It was one of many survival maneuvers SL would use to protect herself from Swibach's cohort of SDSers, and their associate malcontents from the outside world of haters.

A sense of danger kept SL’s survival switch in the on position as she wondered what their next move would be. She would soon be tested, again, in a terror face-off, after she wrote two “student-interest” articles that made Swibach’s minions very angry.

To be continued.

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