Last Tuesday, freshman Ann Oing went missing.
She was last spotted in the “Absolute Quiet Room” of the John D. Rockefeller library. Witnesses to the incident recount a chaotic scene, uncharacteristic of one of the most serene spaces on campus (second only to the SciLi lounge chair you accidentally fell asleep in that one time).
“Well,” says sophomore PC Enquiet, a contemplative-studies major who enjoys no more than three conversations a week, “it was about 10 or 11pm and everything was completely silent. I mean like, you couldn’t even hear anyone typing. I think a few students might have stopped breathing. Anyway, all of a sudden, I heard the sound of someone’s phone go off. We thought it was a bomb or something–one poor kid fell out of his ten thousand dollar armchair.”
What happened next, witnesses recall, was shocking. Suddenly, a red light started flashing and four men in full suits and tinted aviator sunglasses ran in. “It was scary,” junior Maddy Tation explains. “They came in like a SWAT team, handcuffed her, and then dragged her away.”
When asked if she heard anything from either Ann Oing or her captors, Tation says, “Oh no. This was the Absolute Quiet Room after all. Yelling for help would have been quite rude.”
Several days after Oing’s disappearance, Christina Paxson gave a speech to the Brown community expressing her commitment to finding the lost student: “The administration of Brown University is deeply concerned about the disappearance of Ann Oing, a beloved student, daughter, and Jabberwock. We are committed to doing absolutely everything we can to bring her back home, as long as the effort costs us less than $50 and an hour of our time.
“At the same time,” Paxson continued, “witnesses at the scene unanimously agree that Ann Oing’s phone went off in the ‘Absolute Quiet Room’ of the John D. Rockefeller Library, which, as you know, is a very serious violation. So I do think that she should face some sort of disciplinary action for her behavior if–sorry when– we find her.”
One heroic, sexy reporter from the RIB asked CPax whether the administration might have played a role in the disappearance, to which the President responded with a rather hesitant “no.”
“Personally, I’ve never seen, ordered, or paid four men in full suits and tinted aviator sunglasses to arrest a student for being loud.”
“But,” she continued, “if the university did, hypothetically, do that, it would be perfectly within our power. We have every right to enforce quiet library time, which is, after all, an important aspect of our mission. Brown is deeply committed to making overworked and deeply-stressed nerds as comfortable as possible.”
In a possibly related incident, bloodstains and aviator sunglasses were found in the zero decibel section of the Sci-Li.