Vedder Hall students received an odd message along with their Message Center Digest email at 1:04 a.m. this past Wednesday morning. According to the announcement, Vedder custodians, who are on strike, took all the shower curtains in the building and locked them up in a janitor’s closet with a $3,000 ransom. Student reactions to the news ranged from mildly perturbed to flippant.

The message, sent to all Vedder residents, decried the use of brown mustard in the men’s and women’s showers as a perfume to mask the smells of Super Saturday, as well as the decreasing quality of the stale vomit found in the drains. The manifesto written by the Vedder custodians explained their position further.

“Brown mustard is dangerous and is known to cause cancer in the state of California,” the manifesto stated. “We refuse to work in these obscene conditions which threaten the lives of our boys in blue.”

Counter-protests have rocked the University, with students crowding and defending their right to shower in privacy. Some have even considered paying the ransom straight from their own pockets.

“3,000 for shower curtains is nothing when you realize the University raised our tuition for no reason whatsoever,” student Jon Smith ’22 said.