An anonymous email and hand-bill went out across campus Saturday, announcing the merger of Wesleyan groups the Lightening Society, the Lightning Society, and the Enlightenment Society. The three groups previously occupied separate niches on campus. The Lightening Society’s stated goal is “to ‘lighten’ the atmosphere at Wesleyan and at the same time effectively stir shit up.” A representative of the Lightning Society has explained the group’s mission as “hitting dudes with electricity, spelling ‘lightning’ right, and Thor is awesome.” The bronze plaque that commemorates the founding of the Enlightenment Society describes their goal as “viewing the face of God by living our lives according to the Golden Ratio.”
Their new group’s mission statement describes their goal as the following: “To increase awareness of the need for more adequate safety lighting on campus.” There follow six made-up pie charts showing that Jude Law loves to rhumba and bake moussaka.
University President Douglas Bennet spoke out against the new Enlightningingment Society in a campus-wide email. “There should be more outrage about anti-Semitic Ampersand articles and less attention on your precious chalk, beloved empiricism, and darling electrostatic discharge.” There followed a 4,500 word diatribe excoriating Wesleyan students’ “simpering dependence” on a nitrogen-oxygen troposphere.
Over Saturday night, chalkings appeared reading “It is incumbent upon the University to fulfill their side of the Social Contract in the form of improved safety lightning,” “As befits ‘our determination to be pleased with the happiness of others and to be uneasy at their misery’ (Hutcheson’s sensis communis), it behooves us to beseech of the Administration more adequate safety lightning,” and “THOR.”
The Administration has assumed that these chalkings are the work of the Enlightningingment Society, but an email sent on Monday by the Society for Enlightening took credit for them. The email states that “we of the Society for Enlightening believe that a more radical stance must be taken. Issues such as safety lighting on campus and the Facebook News Feed are a distraction from the real problem, the tyranny of monopolistic chalk manufacturers who utilize overseas sweatshop labor to keep down the price of sidewalk-, chalkboard-, and industrial-grade chalk products.”
On Monday evening, Bennet stated in a second email, “My so-called ties to the chalk-removal-products industry were taken out of context. The Enlightningingment Society, the Society for Enlightening, the Age of Enlightenment, and the naturally-occurring electrostatic phenomenon of lightning are only aiding the terrorists. Tremble, for I am a master of elocution.”
Lightning Jay ’09 could not be reached for comment.