A Holiday Mystery as White as Our Alumni

Winter is abrewing. That means the skies are stormy, the frats have new pledge classes, and WashU has countless broiling lawsuits when the WashU bear cubs of tiger-mama’s slip on the way to Management 100. All of this is to say, mysterious white powders are showing up all over WashU campus. We sent our WUnderground journalist team to collect samples and determine whether they are coke, snow, or unicorn blood. 

The first sample was taken outside McKelvey on the east end. We had our resident LARP-er (Live Action Role Play-er) lick the white powder off the sideway to process as evidence. The LARP-er combusted into a Voldemort want-to-be, which strangely resembled my sadly balding 23-year-old brother. Then, an overworked engineering student ran out of the east end crying, admitting to a Harry Potter fetish and an attempt to use dark magic to pass his Fluids and Solids test, exams that sound like they’re for boring wizards anyway. The dark magic was unsuccessful, according to the grade point average. Conclusion: mysterious white powder #1 was unicorn blood. Also, mental health at WashU is at an all-time low, judging by the disappearance of several unicorns. 

The second sample was taken in the East Asian library. It was easy to use a sacrificial goat as a taste tester because no one planned to look up from their notebooks anyway. That is, until the goat’s pupils dilated, and it started bleating like the horny seventeen-year-old couple I lived next to freshman year. Conclusion: mysterious white powder #2 was coke. There may be no food and drinks allowed in the East Asian library, but there is coke. And no one will ever see the student that snorts it, because they’re all too busy clickity-clacketing on laptops and avoiding eye contact with the kid that sounds like they’re anti-vax and sniffling from covid. 

The third sample was taken from the Admission Office’s bank safe. That’s right, we found white substances lining the floor of the room where the Admission Office keeps their bars of gold. It’s supposed to be sealed off from the touring parents that don’t yet know to dive for cover when an impeding bike barrels their way. I licked the powder off the floor myself: it was snow. Don’t worry, the yellow hue came from light reflecting off the gold bars rather than piss or tequila (I am under 21 and STRICTLY spend my time in Ursa’s Nightlife or investigating where the coke is on campus, as this article is about). It turns out, rich parents have been sneaking into the Admissions Office’s bank safe to leave little bar-shaped presents for the officers that will admit their future, deferred bears in regular decision. In the process, the snowflakes fall off their Canadian Gooses. Conclusion: mysterious white powder #3 was snow.

Ah yes, another Xmas mystery solved by your favorite, non-balding (yet), WashU detectives: the WUnderground investigative journalist team. A special thanks to one LARP-er and one sacrificial goat in this holiday mystery.