On Friday Nov. 15 Trent University President Cathy Bruce announced a bold plan to replace every available square metre of Trent University property with granite slabs containing a land acknowledgement in hopes students finally shut the fuck up about Champlain College.

“I want this whole place filled up with these markers of how sorry we all are and how much we really, really, mean it this time,” Bruce said. “This is just the beginning.”

The announcement came during the unveiling of a new cornerstone at Champlain College attended by Bruce, Chief of Curve Lake First Nation, Keith Knott, Chancellor Stephen Stohn, and various dignitaries who were promised a free stale muffin in return for their presence.    

In a 100% real press release, Bruce stated that the stone represents the university’s support for truth, reconciliation, and resurgence as priorities––apparently with a straight face.

“I just really think this is the best we can do,” Bruce said after the ceremony and in earshot of an undercover Arthur writer who was told they weren’t allowed to attend the ceremony because it wasn’t open to the public. 

“It’s called accountability––I honestly can’t think of what more we could do at this point,” Bruce continued, apparently to no one in particular. “I hope this shuts the students up for a bit. If they don’t we’ll just keep putting up more rock around the place until we have complete deniability.”

The new granite slab, which contains an inscription in Anishinaabemowin, is adjacent to literally two other stone memorials commemorating the seventeenth-century journey of Samuel de Champlain through the territory laid by former Premiers of Quebec and Ontario.

In an actual press release vice president of communications Marilyn Burns said that “the addition of the Michi Saagiig cornerstone to Champlain College is symbolic of Trent’s motto ‘nunc cognosco ex parte,’ meaning ‘now I know in part’ and serves as a reminder of continued learning in our pursuit of knowledge.”

A member of Trent staff in attendance, who spoke to a confused satire writer from Arthur on condition of anonymity, said that members of the senior administration pulled this stunt and attendant press conference off with no sense of irony or satirical intent whatsoever.

“Cathy and Marilyn are so serious about this,” they said as they devoured a plain-looking muffin behind Bata Libary. “I’m beginning to think they genuinely believe that the more granite apology notices and land acknowledgements they place around campus the less culpable the institution is in perpetuating colonial harms. I think they genuinely think this is what reconciliation is.”

Asked by a lone reporter in attendance from a more reputable local news source about how far she might be willing to go to placate the student body, Bruce said that there is a very clear line to be drawn. 

“We definitely won’t just re-name Champlain College,” Bruce said. “We have to remember how many Trent students had their first alcoholic black-out in these very halls and how many of those alumni are about to kick the bucket and hopefully leave a substantial portion of their estates to this school as long as we don’t change anything about the school.”

Spying a potential Groarkian lapse in professionalism, Burns jumped in to try and salvage Bruce from ending up directly quoted in an Arthur headline talking about booze and general misgivings among the Trent body politic.

“Many of these people are very reputable members of society,” Burns said. “For example, where would Catharine Parr Traill College be without the well-respected lawyer and donor Greg Piasetzki (‘72)?”

“People like Greg are a prime example of Trent’s commitment to reconciliation,” Burns said. “Greg has certainly never openly defended the Canadian government’s genocidal residential school policy.”

Asked what they thought of the new stone and what they thought about Samuel de Champlain, a student who happened to be walking past told Arthur that they had never heard of him. 

“I just thought that was what the college was called,” they said, adding they’re a fourth-year history student at Trent and they’ve never been to Quebec and cannot speak French. “I will say I always thought it was weird that Lady Eaton College is named after a mall and our library has the same name as a shoe museum.”

Before they left, they claimed to be heading to a Canadian Studies seminar where they would be discussing the cancellation of Sir John A. Macdonald and Egerton Ryerson.

“Imagine going to a school named after a guy called Egerton?” they laughed. “Glad that’s never been a thing.”    

Editors’ note: Do not ever Google “Greg Piasetzki” and “residential schools” at the same time.