Welcome back to Pittsburgh! A lot of you are new, so you’ve probably heard some rumors, and I… Welcome back to Pittsburgh! A lot of you are new, so you’ve probably heard some rumors, and I want to set you straight. When I hear lies running around campus, it makes me upset, because I feel like I could lie a lot better. That’s why before I separate fact from fiction, I’d like to separate fiction from better fiction.

1. Fiction: The Cathedral of Learning is haunted by ghosts.

Better Fiction: The Cathedral of Learning is haunted by banshees. Sometimes, late at night, shepherds on the Cathedral lawn will run screaming. Babbling in what passes as English for those of their rank and station, the shepherds try to put words to the indescribable, to that terror which transcends pain, time and reason. The mere self-preservation instinct alone fails to explain the unfading horror the banshees evoke — no man fears for his life sufficiently. The banshees, in craven frenzy, at first make men realize their souls are immortal and then conjure in one breath eternity as that humid tunnel of loneliness that knows no end.

Fact: Ghosts don’t exist.

2. Fiction: Left-leaning Pitt News opinion columnist Josh Green is a remorseless liberal, prone to lie in his columns.

Better Fiction: You can’t mean Josh Green, can you? Son, you’re mistaken, downright wrong. Now, I don’t know if you’re trying to trick me, trying to pull one over on an old timer getting on in his years, but I tell you what: It won’t work! It just can’t be! Why? Well I suppose it’s no secret ’cause you can read it down there at the archives: Left-leaning Pitt News opinion columnist Josh Green has been dead for 20 years! And God keep him! That kid was a remorseless liberal, prone to lie in his columns. Still, sad thing about his car stalling out on the tracks in Panther Hollow. What was it that made him run back anyway, like he was tryin’ to get somethin’ out? I s’pose we’ll never know, ’cause his prom date and sometime sweetheart right died of melancholy two days later. Funny thing, they say his columns keep runnin’ every two weeks just the same, though, like new music from that Tupac guy or somethin’.

Fact: Josh Green and I are rivals.

3. Fiction: History of Jazz professor Nathan Davis is Miles Davis’ brother.

Better Fiction: Chancellor Nordenberg is Miles Davis’ brother. After an unsuccessful fundraising event, your eyes search upward toward the source of those mournful blues notes. They rest on an heirloom trumpet traced boldly in the moonlight and the silhouette of two dapper shoes dangling freely over the edge of the Cathedral balcony. Pensive and restless, you pull the harmonica from your pocket to your frozen lips and blow. One by one, every heartbroken soul in Pittsburgh joins the night song, even the banshees.

Fact: History of Jazz professor Nathan Davis isn’t Miles Davis’ brother.

4. Fiction: College has changed a lot. Hazing and snubbing are out, tolerance is in. This isn’t your dad’s university!

Better Fiction: Your dad owns this university. You might have grown up the son of a common junk peddler in Mahanoy City, living hand to mouth and dreaming of a better life. But guess what: It turns out your dad just put you through that tough childhood, even the stint in the coal mine, so that one day you could appreciate the finer things of life even better, and so that you could know what it meant to be a Welsh immigrant in the early 1900s. Your family is loaded. Now buy a round, rich boy, and let’s go break everything in that Welsh Nationality Room you own.

Fact: There are still tools at college, just like in movies and high schools.

5. Fiction: The Honors College is a membership organization where certain kids are ‘in’ the Honors College and other kids are ‘out,’ depending on smarty-pants qualifications like SAT scores and GPA.

Better Fiction: Nothing could be further from the truth! The Honors College is a clan of assassins bound by shared culpability in Pennsylvania’s most deserved vigilante executions, and the ‘Honor’ refers to their bloody code of justice. The UHC is well-known as the first honors program to inflict penalties for cheating, ‘even unto the seventh generation.’

Fact: UHC offers more challenging courses that anyone can sign up for as long as he obtains permission from the Honors College by meeting with a UHC adviser. Although some people do have official honors advisers, anyone can schedule an appointment with one of three UHC advisers on the 36th floor of the Cathedral.

Well, I hope I’ve set you straight. I don’t want to hear anymore second-class rumor mongering on this campus again. Please e-mail me all your lies and legends for approval.

E-mail Lewis at [email protected].