By Militant Mike

Cambridge, MA - The Harvard University Police, The Massachusetts National Guard, and David Carradine have been called in to secure the campus and protect the lives of key administrators after the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) welcoming speeches on Tuesday. Graduate students, normally known for being apathetic and spending all their time in their lab, apparently took Dean Kirby's message to "safeguard free inquiry" to heart and are now trying to put Harvard under martial law.

Sales of high powered weaponry are the highest they've been since the last NRA conference when Charlton Heston himself bought out the Uzi section at the Somerville K-Mart, and give no sign of slowing as grad students build their personal arsenals in the pursuit of academic freedom. And the graduate students are not bluffing; when one student's thesis advisor asked if he could make some revisions to her paper, she replied "You'll have to pry my data from my cold, dead hands," screaming, "Narc!" before leaping through the nearest window in some kind of dorky ninja outfit.

Libraries are also powerless to stop the large-scale looting of their periodicals as students hoard journals in case of, as one student put it "the man tries to put us down." When this reporter informed a looter that all the journals he had stolen were, in fact, available on-line, he said, "Computers are a tool of evil, you filthy cyber-communist! Haven't you seen the Terminator?" This reporter didn't argue, for the same reason that hikers avoid getting in between a mother bear and her cubs. Also the guy had a flamethrower.

Don't even think about it, dorkface.

Perhaps the gravest event that really shook the administration out of their slumber involved an unidentified student breaking into Dean Ellison's office and attempting to strangle him with a printout of the newly proposed budget, chock full of cuts to graduate funding. "I didn't know what was going on," said the Dean. "This pasty white thing with long hair leapt at me from behind my filing cabinet, screaming about how he was a bright young mind of the future. Luckily, I used to be a wrestler and this grad student was about as threatening as veal - I had him under control in seconds. Still, it would be a problem if some of the stronger, kung fu knowing, grad students had made the attempt."

Administrators are flabbergasted at how this could have happened. "I'm flabbergasted," Dean Kirby said. "I don't understand how the orientation speeches could have set off this mass-scale riotous violence. I mean, I haven't changed a word since I became the Dean 30 years ago. I didn't even think that people listened to that crap about safeguarding academic freedom. Seriously guys, when I was a student at Harvard, the only reason any of us came to the Orientation was to get that free unofficial guide and check out the level of booty in the incoming class. What the hell has happened to the lazy, self centered grad students we had come to love?"

Judging by the mounting violence on the campus, those sheepish, docile, Ph.D. candidates of the past appear to be gone for good. Even the more poorly funded humanities students are joining in the struggle against academic repression. On the condition of being unnamed, Medieval Poetry student X told HSP how she had stolen all the toothbrushes in her residence hall and sharpened their ends into shanks "just in case."

However, despite the signs that the University will soon be descending into total chaos, Harvard President Larry Summers remains unconcerned. "What's an administrator or two? No, I think we'll be all right. Because no matter how twisted these grad students get, they all have a common weakness: free food. We'll throw a Bar-B-Q, give away some free beer, and they'll forget all about it. It's like Colt '45. That shit works every time."

Although Summers' lack of worry seemed clear from his words, we couldn't help but notice the 50 pounds of ammo, the rocket launcher, and the incredible pecs he had somehow obtained in the past week. When we pressed him on this, he told us to leave, as he brandished a crimson, monogrammed grenade and boldly ate his cigarette.

We took this as a sign and exited through his triple padlocked door, being extra careful not to touch the expertly camouflaged trip wires and carpet mines.  HSP