Daily Editor Henry Golub writes in his free time to impress women. Just kidding . . . ha aha. Anyway, in this article, he argues that we replace the tarp on the grass with material that’ll last.

Don’t get me wrong. I love tarp as much as the next guy. I love the sound it makes when you step on it; I love the smell of dirt it takes on during camping trips; and I love the way it mars our campus. I just think that if we’re going to cover our grass, then we may as well see the thing through. Why stop at tarp when we have more durable tools at our disposable? I’m not suggesting that we smother our grass with thumbtacks. I’m talking about plastering the fields with concrete—preferably reinforced.

The Romans invented concrete 2,314.159 years ago. Commentators said that it “tasted like Caesar dressing,” “smelled” like “glue,” and served as an “effective grass asphyxiant”—high praise, coming from a people admirable for sowing fields with salt. The Romans used concrete in many ways. Brutus, for instance, used it to brush his teeth. Nero fiddled on it. Venus de Milo covered herself with it. She did so without arms.

We, inheritors of the past, must avail ourselves of the tried and true substance. Let us do as the Romans would have done and spread stone through everything green. Let us turn Columbia gray. Let the soft soil harden into crust. Colors have had their season. Who needs joyfulness when we could have grasslessness? Joyfulness and grasslessness are both words.

Just kidding, grasslessness is not a word.

But we will make it one. Together.

Join me. Join the movement. It’s not as if we have to carry the fields to Mordor. We will take all of those snow-shoveling go-kart things that keep on chasing me and glue concrete mixers to them. Laying waste to our plants will be easy. Take it from me. When I played baseball, I would raze the outfield with my bare hands. They called me “deadweight” and “bad.”

Speaking of baseball, why stop at covering the lawns with concrete? While the lawns congeal, we may as well smooth Low steps into a ramp, blot out all of the windows, and fossilize all of the trees. We can even raise a wall through Riverside Park. Mwahaha. Anything that sparks joy we shall smite.

I foresee the administration rejecting my proposal, and I worry that come spring, our cheerful grass will sprout again. I hope that it won’t, but I know that with our current approach, it will.

Fellow students, if the words “dull” and “plain” arouse in you any sort of emotion—a bold yearning for a future that could be—make clear to our teachers and deans that Columbia students deserve better than tarp.

We want stress-fractures when we run. We want concrete.

Tarp via Picryl

Concrete via Wikimedia Commons

Winter Wonderland via Wikimedia Commons