BERKELEY, Calif. – The Tang Center has been experiencing a spike in calls to their emergency phone line the past two weeks, the latest from senior Helen Oberon frantically seeking help in the middle of the night. Her crisis? She woke up from a pleasant dream, in which her boyfriend, fellow senior Demetrius Stratford demonstrated basic care, only to find him DM-ing “consulting-club friends” at 2 A.M.
“I thought, I, I thought that when I woke up, he’d care about my thesis and post-grad plans, but, but, but….” Helen trembled, bottom lip quivering, “But he’s still just the pledge master of ZBT!” she wailed.
Tang center helpline nurse who helped Oberon, Beatrice Williams, cheerfully violated HIPPA and elaborated the situation.
“Really, it was much ado about nothing…” Williams shrugged, placing students on hold to feel something. “I mean, this is like the twelfth night in a row that I’ve gotten a call like this. These gals, they’re thinking one day they’ll wake up and find Romeo…and then they realize that a little EECS weasel ain’t gonna be spoutin’ poetry under their balcony on Piedmonte.”
Sophomore Titania Herman reported a similar phenomenon, and when the Tang Center failed to help, she sought out spiritual guidance.
“I’ve been everywhere. Hillel. The Berkeley Mosque.The Catholic Church on the way to Baker and Commons. I even tried this freshman who reads Tarot cards out of her quad in Unit 1,” Herman sighed, banging her head against the shelves at Moe’s Books while her boyfriend looked for used copies of books on Kantian Ethics. “Most of them thought God was telling me to break up with him through my dreams, but none of them understand how much time I’ve put into him. I mean, it’s like he always tells me—he’s an econ minor—you’re nothing without your investments, and that’s why poor people are poor!”
While the Tang Center has offered the girls a heavy dose of melatonin and a high fidelity punchcard to help them with their walking nightmares, the calls continue to flood in as their midterms push on and their boyfriends’ hairlines continue to recede.