• Monday mornings were always busy for Dr. Cassidy. Managing a university was a stressful job, but he prided himself in his success over the years, a success that had been recognized for the last three years running when his school had been named, consecutively, the best undergraduate university in the country. It was a goal he had striven for, and was determined to maintain. However, this week was BurMac. The yearly hockey game which was the bane of his existence. Well, he thought, perhaps it was not so much the game itself. Dr. Cassidy very much enjoyed a good game of hockey, and this game always received a large student turn out, and the proceeds were donated to charity. It was the rivalry which led up to the game that was troublesome.

    Burnard and MacInnis Halls had always been rivals, and for many years, it had never been a problem. The two houses kept it friendly, and it culminated over a game of hockey. In the beginning. Then the parties started. Then, the teams started pranking, and then the fights, and it culminated four years ago with the destruction of the rink in the new sports facility. By this point, Dr. Cassidy had seen enough, and removed all university support. If the houses wished to continue the game, they would have to find funding and book the community ice rink, and the rink on campus, once repaired, was off limits. So the game had moved off campus, and Dr. Cassidy had been left with sorting out the usual problems of campus destruction, excessive drinking, and sexual assaults that all followed in BurMac’s wake. David Letterman may have named the event the second largest party in North America, second only to Madri Gras, but Dr. Cassidy felt that this university, his university, should have more of a reputation than that.

    The phone rang. On the other end was Catherine, a Residence Life Coordinator on his residence staff. Dr. Cassidy had always liked Catherine, she was reliable, and fair, and had always related well to the students. She was also calm when under pressure, which often happened as she was responsible for over seeing Burnard Hall. Today, however, Catherine was not so calm.

    “Ryan, we have a situation,” she said quickly, almost frantically. “The posters… It’s all disgusting! They’re all over the women’s floors in Burnard…”

    “What posters, Catherine? What’s happened?”

    “BurMac posters,” she replied with a groan.

    “Don’t touch anything,” Dr. Cassidy said. “I’ll be right there.”

    * * *

    “Disgusting!” Dr. Cassidy growled, ripping one of the posters down from the message board. “This is a lounge decoration in MacInnis?”

    “It took first prize,” Catherine nodded.

    Dr. Cassidy crumpled up the poster of the naked woman with splayed legs, and a gigantic paper machete p***s aimed between them. The caption on it read “Burnard, we ******** your mom!” As he looked down the hall, Dr. Cassidy saw more of them, saw the condoms still stuck on doors filled with a white substance that looked conveniently like semen.

    “How many more posters are there?”

    “We think there are about fifty of them, and they’re only on the girls’ floors. Same with the condoms, and the same goes for the tuna and sardine oil placed in the dryers with their clothes. The smell’s never going to come out of them now,” Catherine replied, looking down at the report she had received not long ago.

    “Have the cleaning staff remove all of this immediately, Catherine. Something has to be done about this quickly, and quietly.”

    * * *

    Carly hated Tuesdays. Tuesday meant she would spend her afternoon in sociology with a professor she couldn’t stand talking about sexual assault, something she was uncomfortable with any way. It was supposed to be her, Brad, and Kim in the class together, but Brad rarely if ever went. She was harassing him about it over her messenger when Sophia messaged her out of the blue.

    What are you doing at 4:15? Want to help cancel BurMac?

    Carly now knew what she wasn’t doing at 4:15: She wasn’t going to her soc class. Sophia quickly explained about the posters, condoms and fish oil used in a prank at Burnard Hall, and Carly was just as quick to pass it on. BurMac was scheduled for the next night, so they would have to move swiftly. She had always hated the event, felt that it brought out the worst in her campus, so why not try to bring an end to it? Besides, this was a form of sexual assault, so it wouldn’t be so bad if she missed soc for this. It was better than skipping to play a video game, as she had been planning. It also gave Brad and Kim a reason to miss class as well. By 4:00, Carly was pleased to have rounded up four of her usual group of friends, to meet others over at the Student Union Building, affectionately named The SUB.

    The room was small, and a short, older woman with graying hair and large glasses breathlessly informed them that they didn’t have much time; President Cassidy had announced he would be making a public statement at 5:00 in regards to the events that had taken place. These events, which had been rather blurred among the students, were spelled out clearly: They were misogynistic, degrading, and could potentially incite violence towards the women on campus. Something needed to be done, and everyone agreed that the best case scenario would be that the game would be canceled. Carly couldn’t understand why there was any hesitation on the part of the university to stop the event if they had the power to do so, but she also realized that it could lead to potentially greater problems. Burnard and MacInnis were known for both their wild parties, not housing the brightest crayons in the box, and their violence. There were fights continually, and the damages in both houses, halfway through the year, were grater than the rest of campus combined. These weren’t the sort of people she wanted prowling her campus looking for trouble.

    At 5:00, she wandered down to the press conference, suspecting that the only reason anything was now being done was because of the Women’s Rights organizations who had gotten a hold of the situation. It would be all over the news by the next day, and the university couldn’t pretend that it had never happened, like with the dead deer left in Burnard the year before, like all of the rapes and assaults that happened on campus, like anything that would threaten the school’s prestigious reputation. President Cassidy’s opening remarks did nothing to alleviate this suspicion.

    “Our school is known for tradition, for excellence, and for the close knit community formed on this campus. However, there have been some traditions that have been taken too far, and we will not stand for it! These actions are unacceptable, and offend our morals! And, as a result of that, we will be doing everything in our power, placing what pressure we can on the parties involved, to cancel BurMac.”

    The crowd broke into applause. All but the hockey players from both houses. Dr. Cassidy extolled for half an hour about how vile the acts were, how they were a part of something deeper on the campus, and it all ended now. He then opened up the floor for students.

    “How is this any worse than the deer that was cut open and left in the halls of Burnard last year?”

    “Why is something being done now? Why not when girls were drugged and raped last year for BurMac? Why not when a freshman drank so much during frosh week his heart stopped?”

    “What are you going to do to keep the campus safe tomorrow night?”

    “This has nothing to do with hockey, or BurMac; this is about hate. What are you going to do about that?”

    Dr. Cassidy did not have answers for all of these questions. He supposed that no one would. He offered what fluff he could, knowing that the students were unsatisfied, but there was little more he could do. He legally couldn’t. At this stage, there were going to be more questions than answers, for himself, and for the students at large. All he could do now was try to cancel this hockey game, and hope for the best.

    * * *

    By later that evening, the entire campus buzzed and bristled. Not because of the acts that had taken place in one of the residences, but because BurMac, for the first time in memory, had been canceled. Carly couldn’t help but laugh, albeit nervously, as she listened to the various accusations floating around her house, mostly from the men who lived there. The game had been canceled because of the feminists, because of the women’s suffrage movement, women, women, women… Carly was by no means ever uncomfortable in her dorm, but it was certainly not the place she particularly wanted to be at this moment in time. Especially when the subject “Let’s Kill All The Women” came up on the Student Union’s online message board. It was promptly removed, but not before it had been seen, and sentiment had echoed. Carly found herself wondering if this was 2005, or 1805 as more and more anti-woman sentiments became apparent.

    Wednesday morning, things were worse if anything. Most of the professors had given up on attempting to lecture, and found a willing audience for their rants among their students. Students also found an open forum amid their classmates to discuss the events. There was a clear stalemate: There were those who felt like victims, and those who felt justified by the university’s decision. There was no middle ground to be reached, or so it seemed. Carly left her first class of the day with part of a conversation still ringing in her ears.

    “Last year it was a dead deer, this year it was a vulgar, degrading picture of a woman, what will it be next?” one of the students asked.

    “A dead woman,” her professor had replied simply.

    Carly was unsure if it was the ease with which her professor had made the statement that unsettled her so much, or if it was that there was truth in that statement. Judging from the glares she received all over campus, there were truth in the words. Tempers had reached a boiling point, and something was bound to happen tonight. There was no hockey, so what sort of outlet would these people seek out?

    Carly forced the thoughts from her mind as she went about her day. She attended class, heard the same arguments over and over again and left. She finished her last class for the day at 9:30 that evening, and skipped off to the corner store to pick up a snack and a small carton of milk to take back to her dorm room. Her thoughts had shifted from the events of the past two days to the paper she intended to go home and work on before bed with some difficulty. It was a boring paper, which was why so little of it was actually done. It was due soon, though, and she wanted it done before she went away on her trip for spring break, which she realized was just over two weeks away. She resolved that she would work on the paper until midnight, then go to bed. She’d be up in plenty of time for stained glass in the morning that way.

    There were footsteps behind her, but Carly paid very little mind to them. It wasn’t so late that there would be no one out and around, so it didn’t surprise her to hear them. What surprised her was when she was sent sprawling when something solid connected with the back of her head to a drunken cry of “Stupid b***h!”
    Carly’s eyes watered. She was very aware now of the group of men gathered around her, of the milk seeping out onto the ground around her. Her breath came is short gasps, but they needn’t have bothered. A foot connected to her ribs, knocking her over, and another hit her, knocking what little air that was in her lungs out. She couldn’t breathe, and the kicks were coming faster to an inaudible series of shouts. She managed to scream, but that only seemed to make it all worse. One of her attackers was on top of her, prying her hands away from her face and wrapping his hands around her neck, squeezing painfully.
    Wildly, Carly clawed at his face and arms, but he had fortified his resolve with a pint of rum. She could smell it on his clothes, on his breath as he cursed vehemently at her.

    His face was growing blurry, and she had long ago ceased to hear anything happening around her. Her lungs burned, and she found it too exhausting to continue her struggle. It was useless, any way. He had tightened his grip since she had begun to fight back. He was shaking her head now, and her head rolled loosely. Blackness was creeping in on her vision, slowly taking her away from it all. In the moment before the darkness claimed her, she found herself thinking back on a conversation from earlier that day.

    “What’s next?”

    “A dead woman.”

    How strangely insightful her professor had been, while being wrong at the same time. They weren’t going to have to wait until next BurMac to see such a display of house pride, and school spirit.