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Campus squirrels march on The Plaza

The Campus Squirrel Alliance rallied on The Plaza March 30 to celebrate the first full week of a student-free campus.

Unaware of the global pandemic because squirrels boycott the media, the CSA released a statement declaring their long-awaited victory over the students. 

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“For too long we’ve been forced to live in trees and have been shooed away from our ancestors’ meeting space, the Stump,” Squirrel Mayor Gregg Flufftale said. “At last, our campaign to push back against the students has succeeded, and we can roam free once again.” 

Flufftale has led the movement to rid the Colorado State University campus of students for five years and based his 2018 mayoral election on this promise. 

Press Secretary Cynthia Squire, who has lived on campus for nearly 12 years, said each time a squirrel nearly trips a student, attempts to steal a cookie or corners new students in Sherwood Forest, they are asserting their dominance and instilling fear in adults, young and old. 

CSA waited until March 30 to hold their first celebration, as they wanted to verify the true absence of students and ensure it was not some fluke called “spring break.” 

Multiple times in the fall of 2016 and spring of 2017, Flufftale’s predecessor, Nicolas Nutt, held festivals during the students’ fall and spring breaks, falsely believing the students were gone for good.

“The festivals Nutt hosted were absolute ragers,” Squire said. “I’m talking more controversial than the students’ ‘Undie Run’ or the presidential (squirrel) elections. We had our youngest squirrels starting grass fires and our oldest squirrels scaling the building walls. We lost a lot of good squirrel folk during those terrible weeks.” 

When students returned after spring break in 2017, many squirrel advocacy organizations, including CSA and Squirrels Against Students, petitioned for a special election to remove Nutt from his position as mayor. 

Nutt, who was exiled to the University of Colorado Boulder, declined to comment on the events. 

CSA President Siobhan Hay said they put strict guidelines in place for the March 30 celebration but could not be held accountable for any crude acts committed by squirrels.

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“We are asking that all squirrel folk refrain from acorn throwing, whether in celebration or anger, avoid scaling buildings and trees under 20 feet tall and not to graffiti tree bark,” Hay said. 

Squire said reports of these incidents were minimal, but there were some accounts of a group of young squirrels attempting to break into the Lory Student Center’s automatic doors. 

“The students are always bringing out crispy, greasy potato sticks from that place,” squirrel youth Scotty Squeak said. “We figured that if we managed to get them off our lawns, we could take over their food storages too.” 

Squeak said he and his buddies were unsuccessful with their first attempt but would be trying again each day. 

“We’ve been fighting against the students for as long as I’ve been alive,” Squeak said. “And that fight proved to be worthwhile, so I’m not giving up on this fight either.”

Serena Bettis can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @serenaroseb.

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About the Contributor
Serena Bettis, Editor in Chief
Serena Bettis is your 2022-23 editor in chief and is in her final year studying journalism and political science. In her three years at The Collegian, Bettis has also been a news reporter, copy editor, news editor and content managing editor, and she occasionally takes photos, too. When Bettis was 5, her family moved from Iowa to a tiny town northwest of Fort Collins called Livermore, Colorado, before eventually moving to Fort Collins proper. When she was 8 years old, her dad enrolled at Colorado State University as a nontraditional student veteran, where he found his life's passion in photojournalism. Although Bettis' own passion for journalism did not stem directly from her dad, his time at CSU and with The Collegian gave her the motivation to bite down on her fear of talking to strangers and find The Collegian newsroom on the second day of classes in 2019. She's never looked back since. Considering that aforementioned fear, Bettis is constantly surprised to be where she is today. However, thanks to the supportive learning environment at The Collegian and inspiring peers, Bettis has not stopped chasing her teenage dream of being a professional journalist. Between working with her section editors, coordinating news stories between Rocky Mountain Student Media departments and coaching new reporters, Bettis gets to live that dream every day. When she's not in the newsroom or almost falling asleep in class, you can find Bettis working in the Durrell Marketplace and Café or outside gazing at the beauty that is our campus (and running inside when bees are nearby). This year, Bettis' goals for The Collegian include continuing its trajectory as a unique alt-weekly newspaper, documenting the institutional memory of the paper to benefit students in years to come and fostering a sense of community and growth both inside the newsroom and through The Collegian's published work. Bettis would like to encourage anyone with story ideas, suggestions, questions, concerns or comments to reach out to her at editor@collegian.com.

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