This is not a new occurrence. Each year, the Athletics department pulls students from New Student Orientation for a period of intense research and study. As an unfortunate consequence, student-athletes can find it difficult to acclimate to their fellow students, likely due to extended periods of removal from the wilds of campus.
For approximately one to three weeks, Athletics keeps students in isolation to study their abilities and physical health. Athletes are incentivized with Bon food and branded swag to complete physical exercises the department describes as “training”. Observers from the department who refer to themselves as “coaching staff” collect data from the sessions. In order to avoid confusing athletes during this period, observers disguise themselves to resemble creatures from the athletes’ natural habitats, complete with colorful wigs and magnetic piercings.
Another practice that takes place during this period is “stat tracking”. The Athletics department has not released enough information for us to fully understand the process, but what we do know is that each athlete is equipped with a small chip, inserted under the skin behind their left ear subdermally.
From then on, Athletics has full control over their time and their bodies, as well as comprehensive statistics on yards dashed or serves delivered into the net. Athletics students also tend to miss large portions of classes, depending on which semester their primary “season” is in, often seen flinching at “neck” pain before standing up and abruptly leaving the classroom and running away in the direction of Pamplin.
“The baseball guys are already hardly dateable this year,” Jeremiah Short, a witness, said about the encounter, “and usually those tight pants save them from their own personalities.”
Unfortunately, the program has yet to recognize that removal during NSO could have serious consequences for Athletics students. Missing this natural part of their life cycle, and therefore missing the short window to make friends on campus before everyone retreats to small cliques they will stay loyal to for the next four years, interrupts the development of athletes. The athletes find themselves only able to socialize with other athletes, who bond over rigorous training schedules and having missed essential bonding time with other classmates. Even though the effects are similar each year, NSO is still seen as the prime opportunity to chip the students, before they can become socially integrated and form their own opinions on the matter.
The football boys get hit the worst. They begin to socially polarize, the largest effect of this being on their language skills. “Bro” and “fuck” become fundamental pieces of their communication. One can hardly hear them speak a sentence without inserting one or both of the two. They wonder why they ended up at such a weird liberal arts school.
If the Athletics department continues this harmful cycle, the Athletes will never find themselves able to integrate into normal campus life. They will continue to be an anomaly to the rest of the student body: beings who spend all day pumping iron in Pamplin, besides lunch and dinner hours, where they drink straight milk and eat plain chicken breast.
“For protein,” they say.
One day, we may come to understand these majestic creatures. Until then, though, we must consign ourselves to watching from a distance as their chips blink intermittently under their neck skin.
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