For Taylor Swift, going “Back to December” is bittersweet. For Bucknellians, it’s just bitter. See, December means the semester is coming to a close which in and of itself is great; we all could probably use a break, after all. However, the time between now and that break is filled with nothing but pain and sleepless, caffeine-fueled nights as the shadow of finals looms over us and we send prayers up to the grade gods, begging for a curve that rarely comes. Seeing the popularity of Spotify Wrapped, and knowing that Bucknellians could use a little bit of fun in their life right about now, Bucknell’s administration released Bison Wrapped to allow students to look back on the highlights of their semester. Unfortunately, the project was rushed, and so it was released with one major bug: it only shows students their lowlights.
Before getting into what happened, perhaps it’s best to understand what was supposed to happen. Students were supposed to receive an email with a link to view their Bison Wrapped. Upon clicking on it, they were supposed to see stats pertaining to all the positive things they’ve done this semester, things like “Number of Times You Got Dinner with Friends” or “Time Spent Dancing to Mr. Brightside.” Of course, students knew what was supposed to happen, so that made it all the more surprising when they opened up their Bison Wrapped link and were bombarded with things such as “Time Spent Blacked Out” and “Number of Failed Talking Stages.”
One student, Joe Schmoe ’26, opened up his Bison Wrapped only to be met with an empty screen. Personally, I would’ve dropped out after that one because, of all the ways to get called boring, that has to be one of the most hurtful.
Other students were horrified to find out that Bison Wrapped wasn’t just targeting their questionable life choices, it was also attacking their academics, a.k.a the very thing that Bison Wrapped was meant to distract students from. For one student, Bayley Leonidas ’24, this was a positive thing as it spurred her to seek academic coaching after she saw her atrocious “Times You Said ‘I Need to Get to Work’ to ‘Time Actually Spent Working’” ratio.
Most students, however, expressed their outrage. No one enjoys being called out, especially when said calling out reminds them that they are woefully unprepared for finals and that they still haven’t done that homework assignment that they said they would do 500 TikTok videos ago.
In the end, Bison Wrapped was a complete and utter disaster. There’s really no other way to spin it. Not only did it deal a massive blow to student morale, but it also came back to bite the administration as students began to question how exactly their statistics were collected. Some tinfoil hat-wearing students have suggested that you might want to keep an eye out for those squirrels you see all over campus.