Reader’s note: This story is satirical in nature and published in a spoof issue.
University President Jock Strapp admitted this week to purchasing an arts school on a drunken whim.
Although Strapp has repeatedly claimed that the acquisition of the Corcoran College of Art + Design was a strategic move to boost GW’s arts reputation and save a financially failing institution, a Hatchet Job investigation has revealed a shocking scandal and subsequent elaborate coverup.
Strapp said in an interview that he purchased the arts school at a flea market one lazy afternoon, after he and Provost Merman had a few too many beverages while partaking in the unlimited boozy brunch at Tonic.
Strapp arrived home and presented the purchase to his wife, who was outraged. She refused to store the school in her own home and demanded that Strapp find a place for it on GW’s Foggy Bottom Campus.
“I didn’t know what to do,” a red-faced Strapp told reporters. “Here I had gone and done it, and promised to renovate the entire fancy arts school, and she didn’t even want it.”
Merman told The Hatchet Job that he suspects Strapp made the purchase to imitate his predecessor. Years ago, former University President Original Stevie No. 1 Worldwide brought a hippo statue to campus after his wife rejected the alcohol-influenced gift.
Pressed to move the purchase, Strapp concocted an ill-advised plan all his own: Play it off as a well-meaning decision to bring arts recognition to GW and keep the Corcoran school alive. He announced the acquisition and said the Corcoran would be housed under the Columbian College of Arts and Crafts – a seemingly perfect coverup, he imagined.
Although he knew the transition would be rocky, “I figured in a couple years, it would be like it had always been there, and people would really stop wondering about its origins – or, at the very least, invent some urban legends of their own about how we came into it,” Strapp said, shrugging.
Already, theories have started to spread around campus.
“I heard the school is a leftover from olden days, when GW actually cared about the arts,” freshman Aiden Braden McJaden said.
