This piece is entirely satirical. Read the rest of our April Fool’s edition, the Trinibonian, here. 

In 2022, the rats came for Bruce Thomas Residence Hall. A year later, they came back for the rest of campus. After a few sightings across upper campus, several rats were seen scurrying up Murchison Tower, prompting immediate action from facilities services and pest control to try to stop the further spread of the rodents across campus.

Rats have now been found in large numbers in a number of upper campus buildings, including Coates Library, the Center for Sciences and Innovation (CSI), Northrup Hall, and the tower.
They have been a nuisance for students, faculty, and staff trying to go about their business on campus. For former Thomas residents, like Erik Shawn, junior finance major, the situation has brought up some bad memories.

“First, the rats were all over my dorm building and eating my clothes, and then I thought I was safe, but now I can’t take two steps on campus without seeing one,” Shawn said. “But honestly, the worst part is that they got to climb the tower, and I didn’t.”

Facilities services have been working around the clock with pest control to take care of the rodent infestation ever since the critters were spotted around the tower. James Chef, senior director of facilities, explained the measures they have been taking to control the rat population.

“We got to work straight away. I mean, it’s not just Thomas Hall anymore, it’s part of campus that prospective students actually see,” Chef said. “Our first order of business was training all of the campus cats to become rat-killing machines. Some of them have taken to it more than others. You may also notice some traps in strategic places throughout the buildings.”

While the cats and traps are still being implemented, the rats continue to run amok on upper campus, interrupting classes, chewing through electrical wiring, and even biting students. More and more students have been skipping classes to avoid dealing with the rats.

The rats have posed a major issue for professors, as they face nearly empty classes and a slew of technical difficulties on top of dealing with the rats themselves. Jared Beauxdoen, associate professor of biology, has tried to carry on despite the situation at CSI, though class has not been quite the same.

“At this point, there are more rats in my class than students,” Beauxdoen said. “But there are still a couple of those little nerds who refuse to skip. And no way am I putting class back on Zoom ever again. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can still see all of those black boxes.”

As the rats continue to make life at Trinity difficult, the question of how these rodents got to campus in such large numbers remains on the minds of the Trinity community. Tara Dikoff, sophomore history major, begged for answers.

“It’s not fair, okay? I got a whole suite together, was completely on top of my housing registration, and made it into Prassel. This kind of thing is only supposed to happen to students who end up in Thomas,” Dickoff said. “Where did they even come from? What is Trinity doing about it?”

Facilities services coordinated with TUPD to investigate why the rats showed up in such large numbers so quickly. TUPD reviewed hours of security camera footage in the affected buildings to look for any sudden appearance of the rodents.

TUPD eventually found footage of a student emptying a large bag full of rats in Northrup Hall, and another student who was there late studying at the time reportedly heard someone saying, “Finally, we’ll have an actual news story to write about. I can’t keep doing little puff pieces about random campus events.” TUPD later identified the individual as Bosh Bitra, freshman political science major.*

*Bosh Bitra is a reporter for the Trinibonian.