For as long as the school can remember, the student body has begged for Borden Gym to be renovated. Students are tired of climbing over debris and crumbling framework to get into the gym. It has been over 500 years, and the gym has still not been renovated. Though it is a historic icon, it has long since passed the point of uninspired responses like, “That’s pretty interesting” and “Cool!” and progressed to evoking guttural cries of fear and projectile vomiting. There are only two bench-presses, and they’re not even the kind where you just type in the weight on a holographic screen and the machine does it for you. The bikes are so out of date that they are actually bolted into the ground instead of hovering above the floor, as they should. The pull-up bar has tape on it that has been there since the school was founded. There are not even normal mirrors; however, there are lots of odd ones. Like, really, yo mirrors are so old, they turned into those funhouse mirrors you see at a carnival. Really doe! Without mirrors, students and athletes alike will never know how truly huge they are getting. In a modern society, mirrors are a more vital part of a workout room than actual weights. The travesty that is Borden not only affects the drive to workout for students, human or alien, but also effectively renders our humanotic sports teams incapable of physical activity. Each year, our sports teams get worse and worse because students don’t even want to go to the gym, lest their eyes burn in pain and be “haunted by [a] woman wailing for her demon-lover!”* The Andover Football team has yet to win a game in over 508 years. This fact creates palpable tension in the school, and, although jokes are exchanged, it tears away at students’ hearts a little more with each passing day. The bottom line is that the Andover gym needs to be renovated so that students can work out as they did in the good old days. Every student knows the legend of Chinnifer Lang, Assistant Captain of the soccer team, who, with sheer determination of mind and spirit, got his sweat on everyday. Jacked up on Mountain Dew and the milk of paradise, he taught the school a lesson on how to get swoll. That’s the kind of golden example that is needed now. An opportunity is what the students have here tonight, ladies, gentlemen and not-so-gentle-aliens. An opportunity is what the students have earned here tonight! If the students want to breathe as badly as they want to lift, they will pack on meat. The time has come for the students to take charge. For this reason, a student initiative has been formed with the mission to go out there and construct a new gym. And all the PA community asks is: for the love of Christ, win a darn game, Andover Football 2512. Do it for the boys and girls and alien boys and girls out there who never had a chance. *Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan
