In response to the omicron variant of COVID-19 spreading on campus and around the world, University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce has sent out a message regarding the university’s planned response to the outbreak. Here is a copy of that email for your convenience:

This message is not being sent to students, staff, faculty and academic personnel across the University of Washington because it is satire.

Dear UW Community,

It’s back. Mmm, that sinking feeling in your stomach, not knowing when the next time is that you’re going to leave the house. Yeah, I bet you like it, you’re gonna go back to being a disgusting little gremlin that never exercises and eats like a child of divorce whose parents aren’t around. You told your psychiatrist to lower the dosage on your meds? GO BACK. DOUBLE THEM. God, you'd better, you sickening, sickening person.

A dirty little part of you wants this, I bet. Your crippling social anxiety really took the wheel last year, and now you can’t look people in the eyes in public anymore. Fuck you. I’m not even doing this to you. You’re doing this to yourself. You want this. I know you. You hate the feeling of having to wake up more than five minutes before your first class and feel that cold, fresh, nasty, terrible morning air on your now acne-covered face. Oh, yes, let the crippling depression and self-loathing wash over you again, curl up into a little ball on your bedroom floor, and fucking cry yourself to sleep. Don’t wake up until the early afternoon. Go all day without eating, and then binge on an ungodly amount of boxed mac and cheese alone in your bed. Watch TikTok until 3AM and then take four melatonin gummies because even though the sun is closer to rising than setting you can’t sleep without them anymore. Bitch.

What’s that you say? You’ve done this before and you’re ready this time around? Not at all. I can tell you’re about to regress. All those bad habits you spent fall quarter trying to get rid of? You’re gonna start doing all of them again. Because things are worse than ever before, and there’s nothing you can fucking do about it. So shut up, ignore your homework that’s due at midnight and get wine drunk until you pass out on the couch after eating an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Because this is about to get bad, and the only way you’re going to get through it is if you’re the very worst version of yourself.

Additionally, we will be raising tuition for the 2022/23 school year, as COVID-19 has put constraints on budgeting. More details will come out after you’ve already registered for classes. Remember, in times like these, we rely on our community and their wallets to pull through!

Sincerely,