For over 105 years, students have worked and played peacefully (excluding lacrosse) in Siberia, but this past Wednesday, President of the Russian Federation, V. V. Putin, declared war on Phillips Academy. “Those Commies blew up the Zamboni,” said Ralph Tubbs, a New Hampshire native and a custodian at the Academy’s ice hockey rink. In 1880, Alistair Blemmington, captain of the Phillips Academy Varsity Football team, was quoted in The Phillipian as saying, “The boys have nowhere to run. We tried to move all of the tables out of Commons and practice in Lower Right, but our scholarship water-boys kept fighting with the scholarship waiters! This is a mess. When I’m at Yale, I will at least have a proper gridiron.” And so, just before the turn of the 20th century, Headmaster Chester Longsworth sent a telegraph to Tsar Nicholas II asking for a plot of the Russian territory. “Nothing important…certainly not St. Petersburgh or the Stoli distillery… we’re just looking for a little something that you don’t really want or need.” And so, after much debate, the Tsar decided that he could throw Longsworth a bone and grant him the icy tundra known as “Siberia.” On February 17, 1902, the Academy assumed ownership of Siberia. The indoor practices, head-on collisions with the armillary sphere, and mid-practice catbonerings ended for good as we moved into our new far-off athletic retreat. “I want it back and I want it now,” says Putin, “It was mine in the first place, and you stupid Americans certainly did not call ‘no givesy-backsies!’ Siberia is a very important land to the Russian people. There is history, scenery, (cough) an oil field bigger than The Elephant Man’s mink cap (cough) and a place for me to walk my huskies. This isn’t fair!” When the U.N. met with Dean of Students Early Medwards and leaders of the Russian Federation to determine that there was indeed no call of “no givesy-backsies,” all left in support of the Russian President. Putin is reported to have skipped out of the meeting while “bringing it around town.” The Academy is ready for the fight. To give up any portion of Siberia would mean that it would lose its one-acre lead in campus size over Exeter, which would surely upset the trustees. A troop surge has been suggested to hasten the operation. Could this community handle being neighbors with the Russians? The hockey team would lose every game to the new European team. The Russian women could fit more dead animal pelts onto their heads and shoulders than your Ugg boot could ever handle. In the end, failure is not an option for Phillips Academy. The Salem Street crossing guard is just one more step towards communism. It will be a long fight. But I will rest easy, for we have Luke DeLuca. He’s enormous.
