Throughout the years there have been only been a handful of questions, such as “When are the Asian tourists finally planning on staging the coup?” “Where do they keep the safe that holds the endowment?” “Inside which tree is the demon-hole from which all the squirrels keep spawning?” or “Who in God’s name actually thought Spellman was good-looking?” that have remained unanswered about the old and mysterious underbelly of the Princeton University campus. And although we often assume that such questions will remain endless enigmas, on a rare occasion an answer will emerge from the darkness like a light in the darkness and light up the darkness as would a light. And just in case you missed the anagram there, our unanswered question is the darkness, and the answer is a light that comes to light up the darkness. This is one of those darkness lighting occasions.
Ever since the Princeton Inn, now Forbes College (which according to the history books was renamed in honor of either Henry Ogg Forbes, British ornithologist, botanist and museum director, or Gary Forbes, Panamanian/American basketball legend – the origins are not clearly known) nobody has really known why the University first decided to place the building so far away from the rest of campus. There are vague rumors about how the building used to be a hotel for visiting parents and whatnot, but everybody who’s anybody knows that that is no more than a cover story. The Forbesians themselves have the unbiased opinion that housing wanted to place all the nicest, most sociable beings on campus in one location. Others speculate that the real reason was to separate those who the administration considered “mentally unfit to socialize with the rest of campus”, or that Forbes was just simply a dumpster college for the students who didn’t really fit in elsewhere – the Hufflepuff of Princeton.
However, as I was investigative journalisming over winter break (winter break is the best time for investigative journalisming, as almost nobody is there[1], and when you break into a building to snoop, P-Safe will just assume that it was the wind that smashed in the window or broke in the door), I cracked the lock to the man-sized safe in the office of a current president of Princeton University (who shall remain nameless in order to secure her anonymity), and next to some large, heavy, black bag that smelled like rotting flesh, which I decided not to look into because I thought it was safe to assume it was just Thanksgiving leftovers that current president of Princeton University Shirley M. Tilghman had forgotten about, I found some very incriminating manila folders marked Top Secret and labeled: “The Truth Behind Forbes College.”
Not until I began to read through these world-shattering, life-changing, sock-knock-offing, earth-shaking, ground-breaking, tooth-aching, hopefully career-making, stick-shaking, cookie-baking, snow-flaking documents did I realize the true extent of what lay inside their insides, and the extent of the secret unknown legacy of an often overlooked and unacknowledged former president of the University: Woodrow W.[2],[3] Wilson.
Yes. Woodrow. W. Wilson.
His legacy: the true reason behind Forbes College and why it stands so far from the rest of campus.
This reason: Forbes College is secretly harboring an underground nuclear weapons facility deep in the labyrinth that is the Forbes basement.
The documents reveal it all – when Woodrow W. Wilson was president of the university from 1902 – 1910, he set forth a plan to establish a secret facility for the manufacturing of nuclear weapons that he called F.O.R.B.E.S. or Forget[4] Our Regulations, Blow Everything to Shit! He started this plan with his attempt at establishing the residential college system (which he called the Quad Plan), but he experienced a setback when the alumni and Board of Trustees opposed this plan. He therefore left instructions as to how to carry out the development of the Forbes institution for future college presidents, laid[5] out in the documents that I have found.
How did Woodrow W. Wilson plan on developing a nuclear weapons facility in the first decade of the 20th century when nuclear weapons weren’t invented until the Manhattan Project in the 1940s? Well, as everybody knows, before Manhattan was Manhattan, it was New Amsterdam, and accordingly, before the Manhattan Project, came the New Amsterdam Project, run by colonial Dutch scientists residing in Princeton, New Jersey and collaborating with Woodrow W. Wilson. (Woodrow W. Wilson was originally collaborating with Lenape Indians, but, just as the Dutch bought Manhattan from the Lenape for approximately 27 cents worth of beads[6], they also bought them out of this project for the modern-day equivalent of the corresponding amount’s worth in corn-shaped Silly Bandz[7]). Remember, it’s all in the documents.
Today the Forbes UNderground Nuclear ICBM Production Station (or F.U.N. N.I.P.S. — not all of his acronyms were brilliant), manufactures over two-hundred and fifty thousand[8] ICBMs every month and, not only arms a handful of the weapons themselves to target at countries considered a nuclear threat, such as Iran, North Korea, Harvard, Texas, and Papua New Guinea, but also distributes them to war-torn countries such as Papua New Guinea, Sweden, Madagascar, New Zealand, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Luxembourg, Finland, Slovenia, Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Qatar, Kamchatka[9],Yugoslavia, Northumberland, and Papua New Guinea.
Yes, the implications of this are astronomical, and would be even astronomicaler if I were to tell you how to get to FunNips by crawling deep into the 3rd washing machine from the left in the laundry room in the basement of the annex, and knocking in rhythm to the chorus of Hilary Duff’s hit song “Come Clean” from her breakthrough album Metamorphosis, but I plan on withholding that information in order to secure the security of FunNips.
And now we know the truth about why Forbes is so far away from the rest of campus – because it harbors FunNips in its basement, and the Nips needs space to branch out; it can’t be too close to other legendary basements such as those of Firestone and Murray Dodge, otherwise they might rub up against the tip of the Nips, which might then get exposed, and nobody wants their Nips exposed. (Ed. note: Really? That was the entire point of the name, wasn’t it.)
But what happens now that we know this cold, hard truth about the Nips of Forbes? (Ed. note: Yes. Yes it was.) The answer to that question, my dear, is nothing. We must continue with our daily lives and pretend that we never knew that there ever was a secret about Forbes; as if the Nips had not been revealed. Because the problem about revealing the Nips is that once somebody has seen the Nips, everybody wants to see the Nips, and the Nips would no longer be able to go on erecting large rockets for Papua New Guinea, and keeping the world safe. This is why I didn’t reveal that the chorus of the hit song “Come Clean” from Hilary Duff’s breakthrough album Metamorphosis is the code to the facility, and I hope you can respect that.
So, to conclude this revolutionary article: the cat is out of the hat, the rabbit has flown its nest, but, the Nips must live on. And, as I write these last words, the cyanide is seeping into my bloodstream leaving me about ten minutes to live. Thus, the secret code to the facility will come with me to my grave, as I plan on making a trip to Home Depot for some firewood and burning the documents in forty-five minutes or so after I finish editing this article for tipos.
-ALCJ ’14 (A Forbesian and proud of it!)
[1] Or at least nobody that speaks English – it’s mostly international students
[2] Pronounced: Dub-yuh
[3] Added for dramatic emPHAsis.
[4] This word has been censored for the protection of your innocence in the reverse of how that guy from Gnarls Barkley uncensored that awesome song “Forget You” from Glee
[5] The presidents are not getting laid – my apologies for the dangling modifier
[6] My sources (Wikipedia) originally stated that it was actually around $1000 worth of goods, but 27 cents seemed more accurate to me, so I made an account and changed it.
[7] Silly Bandz are older than you’d think…
[8] This number, although just a rough guess, can be assumed to be accurate within a margin of error of 0.3-0.5 ICBMs per month.
[9] Kamchatka wasn’t listed in any of the documents, but I believe this can be safely assumed considering that it is widely known to be Woodrow W. Wilson’s favorite territory in Risk.