As the semester comes to an end, campus officials just released a report that found that misogynistic, anti-women persecution rates have spiked over 160 percent in the last two weeks. Curiously, this spike seems to be made up of the unusual and unprecedented insult, “H.A.G.S.” We spoke to a couple of crying women in the pit to get their input. 

Helga Nightingale, a UNC freshman (“I prefer freshwoman”) majoring in WGST, commented, sobbing, “I’ve never experienced oppression like this. It’s this weird thing where everything was fine at the beginning of the semester, even in the middle of the semester. Now that I’m thinking about it, even almost at the end of the semester too.”

But now that summer is approaching and people are wishing their loved ones adieu, Nightingale said that it seems like everyone has suddenly decided to buy into the name calling.

“I feel probably exactly like what the women in the Salem Witch Trials felt like,” Nightingale said. “Might as well call us skanks, or ugly.”

Nightingale’s anonymous petition, “Hags = Hate Speech,” has received three signatures so far, one of which reads Suque M. Coque. 

“People are just throwing around slurs left and right, grinning ear to ear while they do it,” Nightingale said.“Wishing me luck on my summer internship while calling me a hag… it’s honestly disgusting, and I really have never been more ready to Have A Great Summer, one far, far away from these skanks.”

Well, have a good summer, Helga. And to you all reading at home, here are some alternatives to “HAGS” to yell at fellow students as the year closes out—some that won’t get the WGST community’s panties in a twist:

• Annual Simulation Symposium (ASS) 
• Beautiful Intelligent Talented Creative Honest (BITCH) 
• Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine (OGRE)