Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced today that Huang Engineering Center will be receiving a “biohazard” label following the culmination of TreeHacks, Stanford’s annual 36-hour long hackathon wherein participants from around the world gather to develop technologies in areas such as security, education and sustainability.
“Participants not only demonstrated a lack of personal hygiene but also disregarded any sense of care for cleanliness of Huang spaces and overall public health on site,” said FEMA spokesperson Samuel Haltmann.
“The University has no intention of challenging the FEMA label and all ensuing emergency measures. It is a disappointment, albeit quite the unsurprising one, that things got to this point at such a gathering on campus,” Stanford President Richard Saller said in a statement responding to the FEMA declaration.
According to FEMA, “100 percent of the sinks, toilets, showers, hand sanitizer dispensers and deodorant sticks throughout Huang went unused by participants. This was the case for the entire 36-hour-long hackathon.”
According to Haltmann, Huang will be seized by the federal government and closed off to civilians “indefinitely.”
“I am pleasantly surprised that such action is being taken. I have worked at Stanford since long before any of the recent TreeHacks participants were born, and health concerns from this crowd are nothing new,” said a Computer Science (CS) professor who requested anonymity out of concern for retaliation by the University.
A CS major and TreeHacks organizer, who requested anonymity out of concern for retaliation by the University, provided video evidence that corroborated FEMA’s decision.
“As you can see, every single one of these participants has green stink clouds fumigating off of their bodies. Some spaces in Huang were filled with the stink clouds to the point you could not see anything,” the organizer said to The Daily as it reviewed the footage.