APRIL FOOL'S: This article was published as part of The News-Letter's annual April Fool's edition, an attempt at adding some humor to a newspaper that is normally very serious about its reporting.
University President Ronald J. Daniels announced on Monday that he will run for President of the United States in 2020. In a school-wide email sent out at 2:57 a.m. that only 12 people read, Daniels explained that his desire for power and control couldn’t stop with Baltimore.
“I’ve always said that ‘As goes Baltimore, so goes Johns Hopkins,’ but we all know that I really mean ‘As goes Hopkins, so goes Baltimore,’ and by ‘Hopkins’ I mean me, Ron Daniels,” he wrote. “Why stop with Hopkins or Baltimore if I could lead the entire country?”
Daniels’ campaign slogan will be “As goes Ron Daniels, so goes America.”
According to his new campaign website, RonnyDIsTheOneForMe.biz, Daniels moved to the U.S. to pursue his dreams of world domination.
“Living in Canada just didn’t provide me with the opportunity to wield a disproportionate amount of power,” he wrote. “I needed to move to a country with a history of imperial ambition, and I found one right south of the border.”
In a joint press conference with Michael Bloomberg, our supreme overlord, Daniels told the Hopkins community that he will be the candidate of the new Bloomberg Party for America.
The party’s platform includes lower taxes for billionaires like Bloomberg, a law mandating that Hopkins is ranked first by U.S. News & World Report, the reorganization of all American universities as corporations — Hopkins will become JHU Learning Corporation, Inc. — and the consolidation of all media organizations into the Bloomberg Empire.
“Listen, it’s no secret: Bloomberg is the puppetmaster,” Daniels preached at the conference as Bloomberg lurked in the shadows. “We all should have microchips inserted into our brains like the one Mike planted in me. God knows we have enough talented neurosurgeons, like Dr. Ben Carson, who would be happy to do the surgeries. As goes Bloomberg, so goes the world!”
Many expressed concern that because Daniels was born in Canada, he does not qualify as a “natural born citizen” of the United States and therefore cannot become president. Daniels argued that since he was born with an “American state-of-mind” the law does not apply to him.
“I believe in trickle-down economics, a post-racial society, telling the developing world what to do and unfettered financial capitalism!” Daniels exclaimed, as Bloomberg slithered around. “I don’t think there’s anything more American than that!”
Acceptance to Hopkins will now require incoming students to campaign and vote for Daniels in 2020. Instead of paying these volunteers, Daniels argued that these “unpaid internships” will build character and prepare students for a future of poorly paid, precarious work and unfulfilled expectations.
“Expecting to be paid for work in our economy is unthinkable,” Daniels said. “Don’t even think about receiving a living wage under my reign. If the contract workers at Hopkins can’t have one, neither can you.”
At the end of the press conference, Daniels announced that “Dark Lord Bloomberg has all the answers, just you wait.” Both he and Bloomberg suddenly disappeared into a flaming pit in the ground.
“Well I know who I’m voting for,” senior Montgomery Worthington III said after the press conference. “My chances of getting that next internship and that consulting job just went through the roof!”
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