Mischief is afoot this winter semester as the pandemic continues. During COVID-19, restaurants close, re-open, close, re-open just to close again, then re-open, just to close yet again and then re-open with indoor dining that’s outside. And, just like restaurants, universities across the country have been forced to make some confusing adjustments. Rather than have face-to-face classes, students now learn virtually, making every student’s commute to the classroom a little different than before. 

Wake up and your classroom is in the luxury of your own home or apartment. What a time to be alive. Students at Northern Michigan University are taking full advantage of this change and thoroughly enjoying learning from home. But, due to inappropriate Zoom behavior, university administrators find themselves in a predicament. 

Bryce, a junior at NMU, has been taking full advantage of the convenience of virtual learning. 

“I just, like, wake up, sometimes don’t even shower cause like there’s like no one there to smell me. Anyway, it’s pretty chill learning from a computer at my crib. I really enjoy it because I’m so close to the fridge. Yesterday I was like five beers deep during my Zoom call for Anthropology 315.  I cracked open a cold one and didn’t even have to leave the room during Zoom, I completely forgot to mute my audio though,” said Bryce.

Chad, who is Bryce’s roommate, is also finding the convenience of a virtual classroom quite rewarding.

“Fridays, Bryce and I have class at noon. Which normally would be a huge bummer if you ask me because on Fridays we throw darties. No worries, hakuna matata my dude. Now that we have all virtual classes, we can just mute the mic and turn off the vid. So we called up our boys, JT, Connor, Xavier and Brad. We slammed some beers and next thing you know we have like 40 people over and we’re jamming to Chumbawamba. Bryce forgot to mute his mic and turn off the vid, so the whole class including his professor saw the darty. She called campus PD and they shut us down real quick,” said Chad.

Numerous incidents like this have demonstrated a blatant lack of proper Zoom etiquette on NMU’s campus, and have forced Fritz Erikson, president of NMU, to shut down zoom classes entirely and go back to in-classroom learning campus-wide, despite the ongoing pandemic. 

“We’ve tried everything to ease this ongoing problem,” Erickson said. “We even considered expulsion, but to be honest, with the number of incidents we have had in regards to inappropriate etiquette on Zoom, expulsion would ultimately leave us with no students. So this is our best alternative.”

Editor’s Note: This piece is a satire column, not a news article. The information presented herein is not factual and is intended only for amusement. It is written by a non-staff contributing writer at the North Wind. As such, it expresses the personal opinions of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of the North Wind.