St. Peter, MN- In a move that surprised many, earlier this morning it was announced by President Bergman that a campus-wide ban on onion rings will be implemented. Starting in the fall of 2018, campus safety will be armed to the teeth to enforce this new policy. The Gustavus administration has already begun investing thousands of dollars so that officers will have access to The Ringalyzer 3000, the latest in onion-detecting breathalyzer technology.

The debate over whether to regulate the consumption of fried onion rings has come and gone over the last fifteen years at Gustavus, but no action of this scale had seriously been considered. That all changed in December of 2017 when a report was released highlighting the damaging effects second-hand grease can have on the community as a whole. “Even in cases where no direct contact was made between our subjects and the ring-users, oftentimes subjects would find their own hands covered in grease as a result of touching shared surfaces such as doorknobs. We also saw many students in the cafeteria sobbing, and at first we speculated that this might be a result of second-hand onion exposure, but we could not come to any hard conclusions regarding causation as it also happened to be finals week.”

Discussion became even more hotly contested when one student named John Marchessaut decided to share his story on social media. John’s mother consumed onion rings while he was still in the womb, and as a result, he was born with his fingers lightly salted and fried to a crisp golden-brown. “This is something I wouldn’t wish upon anybody else. Do you know how hard it is to wake up every morning with a burning urge to eat your own delicious fingers? Please, it’s time to wake up and make a lasting change.”

There are also many who have already started speaking out against this ban. They see it as a discriminatory policy that will largely affect out-of-state students who come from the southern U.S. where cultural norms surrounding fried ring usage are completely different. In an interview with Senior Political-Science Major Andy Pokely, he told us that, “This is actually the worst way to try to help those currently struggling with onion related addictions. All it’s accomplishing is the further shaming of a marginalized campus population. Besides, rings are rad, bro.”