ANNE ARKY
Special to the Lampoon
A mob of students wielding picket signs gathered outside the University Bookstore on Tuesday to protest what they see as an embarrassing shortage of adorable kitsch available for purchase in on-campus facilities. The bookstore, which does sometimes stock a wide selection of beaded placemats, animal-shaped incense burners and classic Americana and film posters, is nonetheless woefully lacking in — among other things — small ceramic figurines of dogs wearing people clothes.
Although the bookstore does sell books, school supplies, university apparel and memorabilia, students have criticized what they call an “outdated inventory.”
“What do we want?” shouted Carol Vansdale, 21, the student organizing the protest. “Charming stationery printed with a pattern of nostalgic watercolors of woodland creatures!” the crowd responded.
“What today’s modern student needs to succeed is different than what a student needed 20 years ago,” says Vansdale. “And it’s clear — to us students at least — that what we need to succeed is a collection of little Buddha figurines in different poses to line up on our windowsills, or across the tops of our desks next to the little fire truck-shaped piggy bank.”
Research shows that students unable to procure the necessary mugs shaped like Shirley Temple’s head or mass-printed paintings of bay hounds in adorably garish frames are three times as likely to live in depressingly unadorned rooms, and their kitchens are 78 percent more likely to be duller than a model kitchen at Home Depot.