It pains me to say so, but it looks like P. Diddy was right.
Early returns from today’s election show that thousands of students who attended Mr. Diddy’s Vote or Die events and pledged to go to the polls – but decided not to – have indeed died.
Police have begun an investigation into Citizen Change, the group that organized the Vote or Die rallies and founded by Mr. Diddy, a.k.a. Puff Daddy, a.k.a. Sean Combs, a.k.a. That Dude Who Was With J. Lo before Ben Affleck.
Investigators say that the deaths come from a variety of causes, including heart failure, bus accidents and car bombs. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said there was no indication of foul play in any of the cases. “Car bombs go off all the time. It’s no big deal.”
News of the deaths has sent many students scrambling for the nearest polling locations. Justin Grimely, a junior theater major who had just finished voting, told me, “I just went to that Vote or Die thing to see if I could get one of those $40 T-shirts for free. I didn’t think Puffy was serious about the whole dying thing.”
He said he had no idea who to vote for and just “hit buttons until the thing told me I was done. I think I may have voted for SpongeBob SquarePants for attorney general.”
Temple has been desperately trying to keep up with removing the bodies of students who didn’t vote. In an unrelated development, the Charleston Market in the Student Center announced today that it would be serving “Sloppy Joe Surprise” for the next several weeks.
University officials tried to put a positive spin on the widespread carnage across campus.
One official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named, said that the deaths of students had “freed up spots in a lot of hard-to-get-into classes. Students should check OwlNet for openings.”
“The reduction of students on campus should also make TUMail work a lot faster and stop those annoying midday Internet slowdowns,” said Vice President Edgar Furnelli, the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Blackboard still won’t work for more than 10, 15 minutes a day. Unfortunately, this rash of deaths hasn’t hit the colony of gremlins that keep turning Blackboard off and canceling people’s classes.”
Parents of the deceased non-voting students were upset by the news of their children’s deaths, although more than one expressed relief that they wouldn’t have to spend hours on the phone with Financial Aid next semester after the department feeds random student loans to the gremlins.
Mr. Diddy denied any involvement in the deaths.
He said all he did was “maybe suggest there might be some consequences if you said you were gonna vote and then you turned out to be a liar. Maybe I did say ‘Vote or Die.’ Maybe my group does employ lots of convicted violent felons. Maybe they did work for my get-out-the vote-or-die effort. That doesn’t mean we killed anybody.”
There are still a few hours left before the polls close. Vote while you still can, even if it is for SpongeBob. It could be worse. At least he is promising a pineapple under the sea for everyone in America.
Brian White can be reached at zapata@temple.edu.
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