When I was a first-year, downtown Lewisburg felt like the Old West–no laws, endless possibilities. Each house was a kingdom of itself. Now I feel like Huck Finn, making out for the territories to avoid being civilized. The construction uphill is like the railroad running through the prairies, bringing death to an old way of life. The new downtown ordinance is the nail in the coffin.

The Buffalo Valley Regional Police commissioner has distinguished himself as a despot of Lewisburg with the imposition of his new ordinance. His majesty requires students to fill out paper work, a $25 protection payment, and portable s*#@-houses. In a few lesser-known aspects of the ordinance, he requires that each downtown house deliver 50 percent of their crop yield to the police at the end of the fall harvest. This has many worried about their welfare, including some residents of the downtown house nicknamed “Yellowood.”

“Giving up half of barley harvest to the cops will be devastating, especially as we are expecting a lot of snow this winter and don’t know how we’ll survive,” one resident said.

The punishments for breaking the demands of the commissioner will be severe. Any house caught throwing a party without first kissing the commissioner’s foot will have to sacrifice their first-born son. This will be problematic for residents of “The Taj,” who have no children because they are all abstinent until marriage. In the most medieval of the inclusions, the ordinance will require any house caught playing drinking games to give up a pound of flesh for their sins. One resident already had to pay the price after being caught playing a game of Snappa.

“Yeah, it wasn’t a fun way to start the year, but if the town thinks they can bully us into not partying by removing pounds of our flesh, they need to think again,” the resident said.

Many also feel that the ordinance is threatening basic civil liberties, especially the right to assemble freely. They claim it gives the police the right to enter houses in the middle of the night without any just cause, abducting residents at random. Allegedly, an addition to the ordinance is in the works that would even make it illegal to learn how to read. All these changes suggest that students are being smoked out of downtown like rats and pushed back into the clutches of the University machine.