By John Musci
Three students suffered horrific deaths and 19,997 others were left permanently without vision when they opened the Daily Tar Heel to the opinion page on Monday.
Russian exchange student Svetlana Vodkavichka’s head exploded from sheer confusion at the new layout, and Reese Carson, from New Jersey, died from a brain hemorrhage related to the “severe boggling” he suffered, authorities said.
“The worst was that Kevin kid. What a mess,” said Dr. Vicki Lauterer, referring to sophomore Kevin Smecker, who was crushed to death when the letters from Jason Rose’s cheeky poem about the redesign slid off the side of the page and landed on him.
Those students who were not killed by the opinion page found themselves suddenly sightless. Campus police say that the new downstyle headlines on the back page was too attractive to the eye and coincided too well with the rest of the magazine’s style, though a group of independent investigators feel the extra six inches of letter space caused the blindness.
“Reading too many opinion articles will make you go blind. And you’ll get hairy hands, too,” said investigator Paul Ratfink. “Eh? Eh? You know what I mean.”
In either case, Ex-Editor Ryan Tuck has emerged to take full responsibility for the severely injurious consequences of the redesign to all 20,000 students who picked up a copy of Monday’s edition.
“This is all Chris Cameron’s fault,” said Tuck in a news conference Monday.
The Daily Tar Heel columnists were also among those rendered sightless. Sarah Boatright, Jason Baker, Ginny Franks, Jason Rose and Jeremy Spivey have all pledged to finish out their duties in spite of their new handicaps.
“We’re used to being in the dark,” said Boatright, “but at least now I can dislodge my head.”
While the columnists are learning to write, cartoonist Philip McFee has been given complete reign over the back page of the Daily Tar Heel. McFee plans to do a 28-part strip on Dean Smith’s “Davie Poplar Confessions.”
“The day is mine!” screamed a shirtless McFee from the top of the Union in the middle of an unusually catastrophic thunderstorm.
This is the fourth time in the 113-year history of the publication that reading the Daily Tar Heel has actually killed someone.