Spooky things, scary things, Russian black-ops teams who take your professors away. Bwog continues the horror stories with a fresh addition from Staff Writers Jennifer Nugent and Paola Ripoll. 

It was a dark and stormy midday on November 9th, 2016. The students of Professor Adelbert’s Soviet Interventions class slowly shuffled in, excitement in their eyes as they prepared for another lecture full of Russian mockery. Professor Adelbert started the day as any other, showing the class newly revealed records of old Soviet conversations during the World War II and Cold War eras. He went on to point out his own seminal theories of Soviet strategy, and mentioned that the Russian government continued to deny atrocities that historians attest did occur during those times. As usual, he gave the class a wink-and-smirk, pointing out that the Russian government would throw him in the modern equivalent of the gulag if they ever found out about his lectures.

One student was vigorously taking notes when she noticed a presence standing at the door. Perhaps it was that one guy who always unabashedly strolled in late, she reasoned, but then noticed the stranger’s all-black ensemble and menacing glare. Definitely not the student that was always late, then. She decided to ignore the intrusion in favor of updating her notes, when she saw several more men enter. Quickly, they surrounded Professor Adelbert’s seat and growled at him in Russian to come with them. The professor refused, leapt from his seat and firmly told the intruders that, as they were in the United States, they had no right to threaten him. One man replied that they had been given authorization by President-elect Drumpf to breach American sovereignty on Putin’s behalf and capture the Professor. Students screamed and ran to the back of the classroom, hoping that if they stayed hidden long enough, everything would return to normal.

But things rarely work like that. The Russian men in black refused to leave. Two reached for Professor Adelbert, grabbed him by the arms, and hauled him towards the door. The professor tried desperately to recall the tactics he had learned as a young Hungarian, when he was required to complete a year of service in the Russian Army. Unfortunately, he realized, those tactics simply involved looking at detailed maps of Poland and drinking vodka! The students saw the defeat in his eyes and knew in that moment that their academic idol had accepted his terrible fate. The black-ops team dragged him out the door and avoided the student-populated staircase, opting instead for the elevator. The professor made one last dramatic cry as the button to go downstairs was pressed.

Meanwhile, the students in the classroom vowed not to just capitulate to the overwhelming odds they faced. Together, the fearsome group of eight and a half students (the freshman barely counted) huddled together, knowing that they had a secret advantage: being on home turf.

The students were on the move, charging out the door of the classroom and into the hallway of Hamilton. As expected, the abductors were glancing about bewilderedly, confused as to how the elevator had taken ten minutes to arrive! The kidnappers were frustrated, as Prof. Adelbert had been lecturing them about how his theories were underappreciated in the academic community and how it had taken him twenty years to get fellow scholars to agree with his theories.

The GS MilVet took the lead, racing forward to protect Professor Adelbert. The rest of the small class followed, using the same guerrilla tactics that the Hungarian and Polish revolutionaries that they learned about in class had used in their own uprisings against the oppressive Soviet government. They charged for the black-ops team, aiming to take down one of the agents at a time, following the style of the “salami tactics” they had learned about in class.

As the students charged for the soviets, Professor Adelbert kept talking, yelling about how he was being used as a “spacegoat” by the oppressive Russian government. The black-ops team tried to yank him into the elevator to lead him away to Room 101 for torture and interrogation – but the elevator still hadn’t arrived! “These amerikanskis,” growled one of the Russian agents as he roundhouse-kicked the freshman, sending her flying across the hallway. The students, however, didn’t give up in their desire to save their professor, and simply attacked the agent’s comrade, succeeding in taking him down.

Slowly but surely, in the same way that the Soviet Union had taken over Eastern Europe, the students managed to overcome the Russian agents, with only minimal losses to their forces: only the freshman was still passed out on the other side of the hall. Not that she been that useful in the first place. The team of eight students pushed aside the unconscious bodies of the fallen Russian agents, rushing to crowd around their beloved professor.

“You saved my life,” the professor said incredulously. “I thought I would never get to see the free world again, and that I’d have to embrace Putin as my leader. This was like that one time when I was a young man in Hungary…” and so Professor Adelbert launched into another of his lengthy stories about growing up in the Soviet bloc.

And in that moment, there was a clicking sound: the elevator door had finally opened.