“I hope this isn’t just a complicated spell the witches are casting,” said one student as they watched a pile of torches and pitchforks burn.
Photo by Amit Roth
In his most recent announcement, Chancellor Pradeep Khosla stated that UC San Diego will no longer allow witch trials to take place on campus. The Chancellor “just felt that it was ineffective at stopping witches from cursing our students, mostly due to the fact that 95% of the witch trials resulted in wrongful execution.” Despite the positive reception from many students, William Belmont, the leader of the Student Association For the Eradication of Witches, the Occult, Rituals, & Demons (SAFEWORD), responded negatively to the news. According to Belmont, “Student bewitching incidents have increased by 50% since that wretched Chancellor announced his dark and evil agenda.” When asked where he found that information, Belmont refused to answer.
The timing of Khosla’s announcement comes after the SAFEWORD “dunking event,” where SAFEWORD members threw three suspected witches into a small pond to test if they were made of wood. This resulted in all three victims drowning, as they were unable to swim. SAFEWORD initially celebrated these deaths, insisting that the victims’ bodies floating back up proved “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that they were made from wood. However, an autopsy revealed that all three victims were made of meat and there were no cursed markings etched into their hearts, indicating that none of the victims were witches. Following this event, SAFEWORD released an official statement apologizing for their mistake, but also emphasized the importance of “protecting UCSD from those devil worshippers” and that “it’s better for a few innocents to die than it is to let a single witch walk the earth.”
Since the banning of witch trials altogether, SAFEWORD has debuted the “Witch Watch” program, which aims to educate students about the “dangers of witchcraft” and encourage them to speak up if they “suspect their peers are practicing the dark arts.” The initiative has seen mixed reception from the students who have participated, such as Abigail Viste, who said that this program will “only cause students to turn on their peers and further negatively impact people who are stereotypically witchy, like emos and mysterious women.” Despite the views of students like Viste, others believe that Witch Watch will greatly benefit the overall health and safety of the campus. One such proponent, Mitch Burnstein, thinks that “[UCSD] would have gone completely to hell if we had no one fighting against these damn witches, but at least we have our saviors at SAFEWORD protecting us the best they can!”
The ban has also attracted the attention of the campus’ witch advocacy group, Sorcerers Against Needless Death (SAND). SAND released a statement praising UCSD for its “progressive policy of not letting students burn each other at the stake” and stating that it is “important for people to remember that just because someone commits the heinous act of witchcraft, does not mean that they should be condemned to death.” It is currently unknown how UCSD will continue to enforce its anti-witch policy without the use of witch trials.
