Since 1908, Tabor College has been terrorizing the students, faculty and staff of our beloved Bethel College. For decades, our administration has allowed Tabor students to casually roam our campus and play in our sports matches. This has been detrimental to the health and safety of Bethel students, and has at times caused them immense emotional pain. One student even reported involuntary vomiting and muscle spasms after speaking with a senior at Tabor for only two minutes. It’s safe to say that Bethel’s entire student body despises the students of Tabor for a multitude of extremely valid reasons.
When asked about Tabor students, an anonymous Bethel student was quick to cite the reasons for his disdain. “So for starters, they’ve got their f—ing blue, and they always have to wear it whenever they’re on campus,” he said. “So they walk around in all these maroon-themed buildings with their horrible blue and it just makes everything look like s–t. It’s a s–t color combination.”
Something must be done about Tabor’s plight on our school. The administration has failed to properly address the issue, instead preaching an allegedly Mennonite message of cooperation and good will. What our administrators have failed to take into account is the unabashedly cutthroat behavior of the Mennonite Brethren. If Bethel is to survive, we must adopt the ways of the enemy, as tragic as that may be. And there is a perfect solution to counter Tabor’s treachery—a solution that follows Anabaptist values of nonviolence while also preserving classical Mennonite passive aggressiveness. That solution is to require all Tabor students to pay a fee upon entering Bethel’s campus.
This solution would immediately give Bethel a leg up in the local collegiate cold war. It would demonstrate to Tabor and our other rivals that we are not going to back down from a (non-violent) battle. Furthermore, in a much pettier sense, it would take money away from the students of Tabor and put more money into Bethel’s currently dilapidated coffer. And lastly, let’s be honest…do Tabor students really deserve to bear witness to our beautiful campus? An outright ban on their presence here would undoubtedly spur countless peaceful protests from those Brethren hacks. But requiring them to pay a fee…we can get away with that.
Overall, I believe this initiative is so ingenious that it’s shocking no one has thought of it before. It’s just one more step in establishing dominance amongst the Anabaptist college community.