Dartmouth Students, “America’s Best and Brightest,” Really Struggling To Understand Why Touching Bonfire A Bad Idea

In spite of the exceptional intellectual capabilities and leadership skills that earned them their places at one of the nation’s most exclusive universities, roughly 900 members of Dartmouth’s Class of 2022 remain unconvinced that bull-rushing a six-story tower of burning wood and diesel fuel is a bad idea.

“We’ve done all we can to make sure the students understand the dangers associated with attempting to touch this monolithic death trap,” said Hanover Fire Department Chief Kevin Wyndham, “but, honestly, these kids should be smart enough to know that if this fire collapses on them, their lives will end in a slowly all-consuming Dantean hellscape, entombed by New Hampshire’s finest pine lumber.”

Still, Dartmouth’s academically unsurpassed freshmen seem confused as to why they should not touch the fire. “Yeah, I know that grazing the edge of the bonfire base with your fingertips can cook your flesh to a moist and tender medium-rare, but I’m honestly not worried,” said freshman and National Merit Scholar Dylan Castro. “I want to touch that 5,000 degree column of smoke and fire because at the end of the day, touching it would be super, super cool. I guess I could knock it over and kill myself in the process, but I mean, like… I won’t? And more importantly, a couple of brothers at Psi U said I’d definitely get a bid if I pulled this off. So I think it’s going to be worth it.”

Freshman Melanie McKinley, winner of six international mathematics medals by age sixteen, expressed similar disinterest in the consequences of touching the fire. “Hanlon said the bonfire tradition could end if any of us touch the fire itself, but I think that’s total BS. Nobody gives a shit about the fire itself — it’s literally just a gigantic and probably lethal fireball of dry timber and highly flammable motor oil! The real tradition is touching the fire. So, Hanlon’s telling us to respect the tradition of touching the fire by not touching the fire? I don’t think so.”

At press time, sources confirmed that various Dartmouth alumni had taken back the money they set aside to bail fire-rushers out of the Grafton County Jail and rerouted the money toward new internship programs for fire-touchers serving their three-term suspensions.

-SB ’20