The Whitman College campus was put under an emergency lock-down this past week due to the careless actions of Whitman freshman Emmett Barras who accidentally popped the Whitman bubble. Although the situation caused some severe anxiety on the part of Whitman staff and students alike, everyone’s naiveté got through the incident unscathed, and the only casualty was a senior’s loss of his feelings of being totally sheltered. Since this normally happens to seniors on track for graduation anyway at some point or other, the loss was not too serious, and experts expect her inaccurate worldviews to survive. As of Friday the bubble was reinstated, likely thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol consumed by students and staff alike in a concerted effort to keep the outside world from intruding into their affluent fantasy of the academic life.

Whitman BubbleEmmett Barras prods the Whitman bubble on the edge of campus in a dramatic reenactment

Barras was highly distraught over the result of his destructive actions, claiming that he never had any intention of harming the Whitman bubble and would never dream of deliberately trying to enlighten Whitman students of their isolated and disconnected existence. Whitman Dean of Students Chuck Cleveland decided not to discipline Barras for his mistake, stating that although his infraction was far more serious than that of most first offenders, he was also not responsible for his actions because his sense of autonomy hadn’t yet been beaten out of him by Core.

“Normally we don’t have this sort of problem,” said Cleveland. “Freshmen are, as a rule, not really used to Whitman to cause much trouble, and then after they’ve gone through Core they waste all their time questioning their own existence and such and forget to look critically at the aspects of their lives that actually matter. It could be that he’s one of those problem students that resists such things and actually did this on purpose, but even then we wouldn’t give up on him. He’d be a disingenuous little beast, but that’s what Critical and Alternative Voices is for.”

“I really don’t know what Em was thinking,” said one of Barras’s friends to reporters. “I mean, that’s some serious [shiznit]. I wouldn’t have thought he’d have it in him.”

Details are still slightly unclear as to how exactly Barras managed to pop the bubble, but a suspiciously knowledgeable prospie has been implicated, as well as a stolen pair of branch trimmers. Word of the embarrassing incident has not so far spread much off the Whitman campus, a state of affairs which Idol Bat staff are working around the clock to rectify.

Despite the Dean of Students’s decision to let Barras off without prosecution, the Whitman administration is still interested in any information about the popping that students might have, since without knowing the details of the case they cannot institute preventative measures to keep the Whitman bubble intact.