Absurdly happy Divinity students must come from outer space

You don't have to be Carl Sagan or Jodie Foster to understand that we are not alone in the universe. Even at the University, there are people living among us, breathing and farting in our common air, who are not of our species. They come from a different world. They speak a different tongue. They wear jean-shorts. They are Divinity students.

It has long been my conviction that God has no place at Duke. How could the Master of Creation and say, patrons of George's Garage exist on the same hallowed ground? The University is much more of an Anti-Christ kind of institution. Ya know, Blue "Devils" and all that jazz. If you need specific proof that Satan dwells among us, just try to print something from a public computer cluster. You'll bite the heads off quad squirrels if it can help get one measly page out of one of those Hell-spawn contraptions.

But somewhere, tucked innocently beneath the dark shadow of the towering phallus-I mean Chapel!-lies the Divinity School, where students keep the faith against the forces of darkness. How do they do it? My theory: They're from outer space.

The books and teachings of L. Ron Hubbard, which have changed the lives of so many of our society's foremost thinkers, like "Do" (loosely translated as "a deer, a female deer") of the Heaven's Gate suicide cult, Kirstie Ally and Tom Cruise to name a few, fully support my "Christians from outer space" theory. In Hubbard's whimsical world of Scientology, it is a well attested fact that Jesus was an alien. The society of aliens who originally planted our species on earth sent Jesus down to give us certain messages, like "love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:31) and "eat me" (John 6:57), without which such glorious events like the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition would have been misconstrued as meaningless slaughter.

It might seem like an unfounded logical leap to assume that all Divinity students are aliens just because Jesus was, but have you ever really stopped to look at these people? No one, I repeat NO ONE on the campus of Duke University should ever be that happy. While the rest of us non-divine entities crawl around like pale stressed-out freaks suffering from last night's alcohol poisoning and last spring break's case of genital herpes, these other-worldly wonders are smiling from ear to ear like the Rapture is right around the corner.

Luckily for us, their movement seems confined exclusively to the Chapel quad. If you'll notice, even when they go out to eat lunch, they don't go past those long white stairs. Instead, they gather in bunches of 12 or less, like the disciples of yore, munching down white bread and jello, and yapping passionately about how "downright jim dandy" everything is. They're like the Canada of Duke-so crisp, clean, and giggly, I wanna punch 'em in the neck! I feel so dirty around these people, like I, personally, let the Romans borrow my hammer.

Some of the braver divine "visitors" are allowed to go "on assignment" and leave the sanctity of Chapel quad to examine actual human behavior face to face. To do this, they must become members of the most despised species of lowly earth scum there is: Duke Resident Advisers. As RAs, they can hone their superior bossing, guilt-laying and pot-smelling abilities by forcing their twisted brand of ethics on beer-blinded freshmen and upper-class computer science majors. You don't believe me? Just try to tell me with a straight face that at no time during freshman year you thought that your RA was from another planet. Check and mate.

So what can we do about these interplanetary ideologists? Stuff them away in a hanger in Arizona and probe 'em till the cows come home? Make a B-movie about them starring TV's Neil Patrick Harris? Or perhaps we should think about this another way. They are good for keeping up the "et Religio" side of our school's motto, which certainly isn't being taken care of by neo-pagan Baal worshippers like myself. And their cute southern drawls and twangs preserve the only remnant of North Carolina "culture" left in this forgotten last exit on the New Jersey Turnpike. So, in the spirit of Race Day, let's celebrate our diversity and accept the Divinity students into our society. Anyway, it should only be a matter of time before they shave their heads, buy the Nikes and go back home.