By: Dev Petrovic, Staff Writer

Don’t you think it’s a little strange that “construction” and “pandemic” have the same amount of syllables? Coincidence? I think not. 

Clearly, SFU started a global pandemic just to finish the endless drilling and pounding — also to get students to cut the construction jokes. They really started hurting a certain higher-up’s feelings, okay?

I bet Andrew Petter was getting insecure while scrolling through the SFU Dank Memes Gang page on his fake Facebook account. Imagine seeing all the construction memes at his expense. Heck, I’m sure the campus mazes he thought would improve student morale, started to get annoying for him, as well. I sympathize with Andrew; starting a pandemic must have been a difficult choice for him, and then to organize all of his colleagues to back him up? I’m impressed at his hustle. Think of how many emails, how many lofty spiels in all those SFU Mail messages . . .

If you think about it, just as the Burnaby campus was starting to become purely a compilation of loud noises, a strange virus also gets discovered? It all adds up chronologically. Although, I think the whole ‘let’s stop roasting the President, pretty please?’ pandemic plan went awry when an actual virus came into the picture, but by then it was too late to turn back. No one was supposed to actually get sick! He just wanted to stop the drill jokes from drilling into his head!

Poor little Andrew must have had quite the meltdown when the CDC announced the pandemic as a state of emergency. Imagine the stages of grief he must have gone through, the anxiety! “It isn’t fair,” I imagine him saying on the phone with his mother, “I just wanted them to stop making fun of me!”

Look, It got out of hand. He didn’t mean for it to go this far — since now a bunch of goofs don’t even believe in it. Ridiculous. It was only supposed to be an SFU-wide scheme for a few months to finish all these projects. Now, somehow, the government and global community are involved? Here’s how I imagine the conversation between Andrew Petter and Jonathon Driver went down:

Andrew: “Jon Bro, remember that whole pandemic thing we talked about? You know . . . to get that construction stuff done, get our investors— I mean, students to stop roasting us?”

Jon: “Yeah bro. What about it?” 

Andrew: “It’s real now bro”

Jon: “real? You mean an actual—”

Andrew: “Keep your voice down man! Yeah. It’s for real.”

Jon: “ . . . ”

Andrew:  “ . . . ”

Jon: “Fuck”

It just all makes sense now. SFU needed a reason to close down campuses, but the snow excuse was never actually plausible without any actual snow and, well, it wouldn’t make sense considering SFU’s snow day track record. They needed something that would last longer than a couple of days. A pandemic only made the most sense. 

So, did it work? Maybe. Is anyone surrounded by construction? I’m not. Are students still roasting Andrew Petter for the never-ending construction? No, he’s not even president anymore! Point proved.