He never saw it coming. When Jay Dednow, Class of 2023, was told that the new convenience store would begin stocking the lemon mint drink he loved and requested on Sept. 18, he had imagined writing a heartfelt email bemoaning the suffering he faced after three months of separation from his favorite sugary coping mechanism when this promise was not fulfilled. He was prepared to receive various unhelpful responses each week, such as: “we’re looking into it”, “there is no indication that this was ever requested” and “please stop holding us accountable to what we said. Nothing is certain in these unprecedented times.”

But when he walked into Day Mart bright and early after breakfast on the 19th, he was shocked to find the drink sitting conveniently on the cooler shelf at a deliciously reduced price. At that moment, his entire perception of the university flipped like his major in freshman spring after FoS.

“Has anything good or important ever arrived the day it was promised at this university?” he later asked his friend, alumnus and current research assistant Git Ovirit, Class of 2020, while procrastinating at the Library Café.

“No. Ever since Joan Shibboleth personally inaugurated the Downtown Campus in 2010, never has a bulletin been released, a long-anticipated decision been made or a flight ticket booked the day it was promised.”

At this moment, Dednow wondered if he should finally drop out to pursue his SoundCloud career full time. He told Ovirit about the prompt response to his request. “Some things… simply don’t happen. Not at this university.” Ovirit opened the Saadiyat Book of Revelations and found within its pages a prophecy: something, anything, happening on time on campus was the first sign of an impending apocalypse. It happened at Nale-YUS the year before, and now NYUAD’s demise was imminent.

He contacted Dean of Students Kale Parsley to talk about his suspicions. “We shouldn’t have let this happen. Unfortunately, within our oil-fueled maze of administrative bureaucracy and diverse inefficiencies, something slipped up. We are not quite sure what went wrong, we just have to assume good will,” he remarked. The end would be far from classically apocalyptic, unceremonious, in fact. The sequence of events (which had been available to senior administrators since July, but could not be communicated due to requiring approval from seventeen different sources) involved the Saadiyat campus dissolving into the Persian Gulf at an indeterminate point within the next year.

President Marinate Easterman’s response, in an email to the student body, said “[w]e are a resilient, adaptable and focused community. Even if we don’t exist physically, we will continue to build each other up. Thank you for making this moment possible.” Unsatisfied with this explanation, Stilgot Hope, Class of 2025, decided to team up with Dednow in charting a real path forward.

Their first strategy was to send several administrative emails listing possible ways that the campus may, in the end, not fall into the ocean. These included surrounding the Green Line with a perimeter of Lotus Biscoff cookies, creating an appropriately resonant frequency by gathering all campus cats in close proximity and hosting a chaotic Student Government forum.

However, every email was met with radio silence. “We are following up to confirm with you that your inquiry has been completed,” read the first ServiceLink email. “Completed? They never even responded,” bemoaned Hope. The next step was to email seven different administrative departments while CCing Easterman, Parsley, Associate Dean of Students Bichael Mocktinis and random mid-level figures chosen by throwing a dart at the university’s extensive bureaucratic map.

Unfortunately, this created more confusion than it could have ever possibly solved. Out of the six that responded, at least four directly contradicted each other. The student body has accepted its fate and its future transfer to an institution that will give them a lot less financial aid. But nuggets of hope still live on. One day before the slated disappearance of the Saadiyat bubble — confirmed by a model created by FoS students — a post on RoR is still telling the student body to “be grateful and work on your entitlement.” Hope remains in some dark corners as we await our final fate tomorrow.