I was almost halfway through this article from the Indiana Daily Student when I started thinking, "Oh, come on, this can't be true!" Then I finally went back to the top and saw the note identifying it as satire for the Radish, a humor page published by the IDS at the end of each school section:
IU Police Department released figures this week indicating that, in the wake of the Boy Scouts of America's National Order of the Arrow Conference at IU, reports of campus bullying have gone up by 5,000 percent.
“It's an epidemic,” said IUPD Sgt. Joe Santana. “We've seen some pretty bad cases last year, like when the music students came to audition, but it's never been like this.”
Experts theorize that the presence of the Boy Scouts incited Bloomington residents to tease and steal from the youngsters, who were often slow-moving and unable to run from their aggressors because of asthma. On any given day, Scouts could be seen meandering around campus in large groups wearing decorative uniforms and sashes."
It's a sign of good satire that it's plausible. And it's either a sad commentary on the times or an indication of my own combination of gullibility and cynicism that it seems so believable that college students today would bully a bunch of Scouts.
