At around five on Thursday evening, the booming of artillery guns begins to die down and the constant whistling of mortars that have fired for three days and three nights slow to a trickle. As what seems like a tenuous cease-fire to the battle dawns on the academic spine, the acrid, low-hanging smoke gradually starts to waft away.
A sprawling scene of carnage is laid out from the waters of Lake Lasalle all the way to the pile of rubble and protruding rebar that was once the Math Building. Shards of pavement and metal jut from the earth at severe angles, hardly covering the writhing limbs of the poor souls trapped underneath.
Bodies lay prone over the crater-pocked landscape releasing the putrid, sweet stench of death—not unlike that of roadkill that has been left out for too long on a hot summer’s day. The troops encamped at the newly seized Ellicott Complex have set up impromptu memorials for the lost brethren whose bodies could not be recovered under fierce fire; a row of unfolded cell phones and iPods gleam in the setting sun.
One young soldier sits, clutching her knees to her chest in a dug out trench across from the Student Union, her helmet removed to reveal a side ponytail and a fading orange tan. She stares blankly ahead, silently crying and gently rocking herself when a mortar explodes harmlessly 30 yards to her left. It shocks her from her reverie, and a cry of “Oh my gaawd!” can be heard over the din of the dying struggle.
“We got those bastards runnin’,” said Mark Zither, an infantryman and junior political science major. “It won’t be long now before we sweep onto the spine and liberate North Campus.”
The siege on the North Campus, which ended Thursday, was the bloodiest battle in what is becoming a drawn out and entrenched civil war between the University at Buffalo’s North and South campuses. The conflict, which has so far claimed the lives of over 2,500 UB students, faculty, and staff members, may be at the beginning of its end after this latest skirmish.
This new campaign, dubbed “Operation Flying Bison,” marks the Democratic Alliance for a United University at Buffalo’s (DAUUB) first recapturing of North Campus ground since President John Simpson was forced to flee to Hayes Hall in mid-February. In 72 hours of intense firefights and bombing attacks, the DAUUB was able to drive North Campus troops from the strategic stronghold of the Ellicott Complex to the spine, while also liberating the Long Islanders who had been trapped within since the conflict’s start. Many analysts see it as a watershed event that may ultimately turn the tide in the bitter, hard-fought struggle for the future of UB.
The Great Rift
The conflict’s roots can be traced back to late January, when Simpson announced plans during a meeting of a UB 2020 committee to privatize the University Police on campus by the year 2016. Simpson’s plan called for the fazing out of ten percent of the New York State Troopers currently employed by the university each year, for the next ten years, ultimately replacing them with safety officers from a private security firm.
“When you look at top universities around the nation, you see that most have privatized public safety forces,” Simpson said in a statement to the press. “We want to follow a similar model because not only do they treat student infractions of the law as internal university matters, but also because, frankly—excuse my French here—those trooper assholes hand out bullshit parking tickets left and right on my campus, and half the money goes to them. This amounts to over $30 million a year in lost revenue. The university is getting dicked by the middleman.”
John Grela, director of the Public Safety Department and chief of police at UB, came out in opposition to Simpson’s initiative. “President Simpson’s plan is shortsighted and shows little-to-no grasp on the reality of the criminal nature of the student populace at UB,” he said at an impromptu press conference held the next day. “Mark my words, if you remove the state troopers from this campus, the place will be overrun by warlords, violent youth gangs, and rapists within a week.”
At the end of the press conference, Grela announced that he was forming the University at Buffalo Security Party (UBSP), a political action group that called for the immediate resignation of Simpson and his administration, while also committing itself to the “protection of the University at Buffalo and its interests, at any cost.”
UBSP gained support in the local media, most notably through a series of editorials in The Spectrum that echoed Grela’s sentiments. It was later revealed in wiretapped conversations between Spectrum Editor in Chief Jeremy Burton and Grela that the paper had secretly pledged its allegiance to UBSP in return for Grela’s promise to “beef up” their weekly “Safety Report” by framing prominent campus figures for conspiracy to commit crimes against the university. The campaign proved to be incredibly effective.
Simpson and his administration laughed off Grela’s claims and dismissed the UBSP as “the political grandstanding of a man afraid of losing his job—much like a middle-aged white guy who buys a giant SUV as if to say, ‘Hey, my dick’s not that small.’” They then enacted a policy of ignoring all UBSP activities and press releases.
By early February, Grela had denounced several key administrators, and membership in the UBSP was rapidly rising. The organization began holding daily press conferences in which they would release the names of suspected “enemies of the university” and keeping a list of students, staff, and faculty members who had “shown a clear and salient threat to the wellbeing of the UB community.”
At the same time, The Spectrum began running a series of front page articles warning those on North Campus of the “present threat of the lawless savages on South Campus.” Many students in Ellicott and Governors were induced into a state of panic and constant fear, and little to no doubt remained as to where The Spectrum’s loyalties lay.
Simpson ended his public silence on the morning of Thursday, February 16, after it was revealed that Vice President of Student Affairs Dennis Black and Student Association President Dela Yador had joined the UBSP.
“I can no longer sit idly by and watch while the campus is engulfed in a climate of fear amid the propaganda of the UBSP,” Simpson read from a prepared statement. “I am hereby calling for the peaceful disbandment of the UBSP by Monday; anyone still claiming membership in the organization by then will no longer be affiliated with this university.”
The Shot Heard ‘Round the Campus
At 6:13 a.m. on Friday, February 17, an explosion ripped through the fifth floor of Capen Hall—the location of the president’s office. Simpson, just returning from his weekly colonic, was not in his office at the time of the bombing, and was quickly whisked away to South Campus by his aides before any further attempts on his life could be taken.
Minutes after, with debris still falling on the spine and Capen Hall ablaze, armed troops wearing uniforms identifying them as the UBSP army stormed several buildings on campus. All able-bodied residents of the Governors and Ellicott Complexes were conscripted into the UBSP forces as they marched on.
As the morning’s Spectrums were delivered around campus, it became clear to confused onlookers what was happening. The issue—produced and printed the previous night—was filled with news telling of the “assassination of the spineless coward John Simpson,” and the assumption of power by, “the great and venerable John Grela, new Supreme Commander of UB,” and his “Undersecretary and War Minister Dennis Black.”
By noon, the UBSP army had set up its base of operations in the Student Union and had successfully invaded and captured almost all of the buildings on North Campus—save Clemens Hall, where the heavily armed guerilla forces of the Liberal Arts Revolutionary Party (LARP) barricaded themselves into the building.
During these intervening morning hours, Simpson hurriedly armed his administration and banded together with a militia of the dorm residents and architecture students of South Campus to form the Democratic Alliance for a United University at Buffalo (DAUUB). When the UBSP troops finally marched south in the late afternoon, they were met by Simpson’s DAUUB at Main Street, where the first bloody battle of the civil war was fought to a stalemate.
Battle Lines Have Been Drawn
Over a month and a half into the conflict, the division lines have become clear. Supreme Commander John Grela rules over North Campus from his watchful perch in the Student Union. Minister of Propaganda Jeremy Burton publishes the now daily party mouthpiece UBSP Spectrum from the same building. UBSP’s troops—consisting mainly of former University Police officers, the undergraduate Student Association, and residents of North Campus—split time in weeklong rotations between their base at the spine and the Main Street and Flint Road fronts.
UB’s Greek organizations were originally enlisted by Grela to perform espionage operations from the Heights, however they proved useless after trying to throw a massive “spy-themed” kegger and were subsequently captured en-masse by UBSP forces during their attempt to flyer the Ellicott dorms. Sources from inside the spine say that they are currently being held in a concentration camp in Lockwood Library, but this was uncorroborated at press time.
In contrast, DAUUB is not actually one large army, but several small, independent militias united together in the common goal of defeating Grela’s regime. Their tactical base is in Hayes Hall where President Simpson acts as the de facto General of the alliances fighting forces.
In addition to the South Campus residents, students, professors, and administrators who fight on the traditional fronts, a pair of rebel cells are fighting for the DAUUB from within fortified enemy lines. The LARP—a group of English and comparative literature professors and TAs headed by Distinguished SUNY Professor Bruce Jackson—conducts nightly guerilla raids on the spine, attacking UBSP forces. The Generation Liberation Front—a band of rogue Generation staffers—sabotages UBSP facilities and delivers the magazine to North Campus despite the fact that its production staff had to flee to Talking Leaves Books on Main Street after Grela’s coup.
An End in Sight
Until this past week, most of the major fighting had been relegated to the fronts on Main Street and Flint Road. “Nobody was really giving up too much ground until we decided to lay siege on Ellicott,” said Marcus Alverez, a sophomore biological sciences major and DAUUB sergeant. “There was that one day in March when the UBSP almost destroyed the entire battalion at the upper Flint front, but they ended up missing us by a few miles and carpet bombing the Sweethome Village instead. It was pretty much a win-win situation that day.”
But, with heightened pressure on North Campus, many feel that the UBSP is ripe to be toppled. “The campus’ isolated location in Amherst is a tactical plus in once sense because it’s easy to defend,” said UB Provost and DAUUB Head of Intelligence Satish Tripathi. “But at the same time, it’s hard to get extra supplies and goods onto the campus with such tight borders. Do you have any idea how long those people in the UBSP have been without recreational drugs or alcohol? They’ve got to be just itching for this war to be over.”
No matter what the final outcome of this ugly civil war though, one thing rings true for both sides: UB will never be the same after the fight. “I guess it will be pretty nice to be able to go back to classes on North,” said DAUUB soldier and senior accounting major David Weinberger. “College life is going to be a lot better. It’s like, ever since PJ’s shut down and the Greeks left, I’ve been having the time of my life down here on Main Street. It’s great, all of the assholes are gone.”
Christopher Ahearn is a junior English major and editor in chief of Generation. It should be noted that the idea for this story may have been inspired in part by an unpublished novel by Todd Natti. It should also be noted that Mr. Ahearn has never read the novel.
