SU Spends Entire Budget Corrupting SING!, Faces a Consequence

Some time ago, Student Union President William Wang and Vice President Vishwaa Sofat woke up simultaneously in a dark room, handcuffed together, back-to-back on two tiny desks.

“Uggghhh…what happened?” Wang tried to turn his desk toward his subordinate but failed. “Did you call the NKGB on the wrong room again?”

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Sofat was able to identify the room as the SU Room. He could recognize the sweet smell of corruption in his sleep. But it didn’t feel right. Something was up. There was something unfamiliar in this room.

Together, they tried to recall the events of the previous day. The only thing that stood out was that it was the first performance of SING!, and that they were missing it because some unknown terrorist group had decided to tranquilize and handcuff them as soon as the school day ended.

“Maybe it was a sting attack by Bronx Science,” Sofat offered to Wang. “Revenge for our covert insertion of Talos into their school system.”

Before Wang could answer, the lights came on. Surrounding them were masked students, identifiable only by their hoodies. Red hoodies with a white logo reading “694.” The (usually) overfunded robotics team.

“What do you want?!” Wang and Sofat shrieked.

The robotics mob gave way to their leader, who walked up to the two desks. “Oh, it’s pretty obvious what we want. We want revenge.”

The leader began to speak to the corrupt student politicians. “Here’s the thing. This season, we expected to receive a billion-dollar grant in order to fund our robotics lab. Instead, we received a note on loose leaf saying ‘money machine broke, try again next year.’ We needed that money, so we began using an advanced algorithm we developed called ‘Looking Through Your Search History—But For Geniuses,’ or the LTYSHBFG for short. (We’d probably be better at making an acronym if you gave us our funding.) We found out that the money machine, in fact, was not broken. Let me read aloud some of your searches. ‘How many bullets can you shoot at a SING! coordinator in order to get them to follow you without them dying?’ ‘How to stop your secret police from getting distracted by the costumes department giving them better uniforms; I need them to do their JOB.’ ‘Cool memes for student presidents corrupting SING!.’ You spent the entire budget trying to corrupt SING!! What do you have to say for yourselves, you corrupt hicks?”

Wang cleared his throat. “Okay. You got us. Do you really want to know what we did with that money? We put it into funding our secret police so they would be able to take out any of the SING! writers who even dared try to [write a joke that criticized] the SU. We put it into the hands of our secret police so they could create chaos during rehearsals. All the better for us, ‘cause the SING! directors were more willing to follow our instructions in order to stop the chaos. We put it in the hands of directors, so they would give us quality boxes for private viewing surrounded by top-of-the-line bodyguards. But do you want to know why we did it? Vishwaa, please continue for me, my mouth’s getting dry. It’s been, like, five minutes since I’ve had a Tea’s Tea. That’s way too much time.”

Sofat made direct eye contact with the robotics team’s leader. “Why? Why create all this corruption? Let me educate you. Stuyvesant High School is fueled by corruption. The academic dishonesty rings, the black market of stolen JUULs and phones, our mere existence. Without the corruption that runs through the blood of this school, well, we would be even less relevant than Staten Island, and that place doesn’t even exist! The SU is the only source of order in this heck-hole of a school. What would happen if we just let the SING! productions go uncorrupted? We may get shows that are full of nothing but sacrificing animals, holding hands before marriage, and even learning the lesson that you don’t have to have approval from authority to be a valid member of society! Our families would never stand for that! We do have families we love and fear, you know!”

“And face it, you don’t care about our corruption. You only care that you are no longer the benefactors of it.” Wang let out a whoop at Sofat’s final words.

Their leader took out a wrench and began spinning it in his hand. “You’re right. I don’t care. Corrupt or not corrupt, we will be getting our rev—”

The dramatic moment was broken by the stern yell of a tiny Chinese woman with a sandal in her hand standing in the doorway, along with many of her friends from the PTA. “AHEM!” The representative suddenly turned around in fright.

“Mom, it’s not what you think—”

“It’s exactly what I think. You are out on a school night! You should be studying, all of you! Get out and go home right now!”

The sheer anger in her voice, as well as the mob of women behind her that the rest of the robotics team recognized as their own mothers, was enough to get all the members of the robotics team running out in shame of their bad study habits, but not without them screaming “IT’S NOT OVER!” to their SU president and vice president.

Gratitude toward the moms popped up in Wang and Sofat’s minds, but it was quickly overridden when the moms turned their gazes to the two and told them, “And why are you two here watching a play instead of studying? You’ll never go to Harvard with that attitude. Why are you still sitting there? Go!”

“Ma’am, we’re handcuffed to the—”

“Does it look like I care about your excuses? Go home already!”

And so, not even uncuffed yet, the two student politicians hopped out the door, dragging their desks along with them, having (partially) gotten away with their actions.