By: Russ Friend

The monitors glowed softly in the darkened room while the rat-a-tat rapping of keyboards provided an unsteady rhythm, the white noise reflections of riders hanging ten on dc wires. The air was tinged with the scent of java, while java scripts were loaded into headers. Tonight they are cracking the hash.

“Hey, I got one,” Smokey said, his lips still clenched around a half-smoked cigarette supporting an unimaginable length of ash.  “This is his last semester, he’s s’pose to be graduating. Correction — was,  ha ha ha.” With that, Smokey began spoofing email and began withdrawing the student from his classes.

“Don’t forget to take care of the teachers’ emails too, and don’t let snail mail trip us up this time,” Wirefire said. “I doubt the teachers will notice. They rarely reply to any emails, but it’s best to c-y-a.”

Wirefire enjoyed practical jokes, and this one was really fun.  The recent changes in Akron’s class withdrawal policy allow a student to withdraw from classes without obtaining a teacher’s signature. Students can now withdraw online. This has given Wirefire and his friends a new game to play.

“How many does this bring you to?” Wirefire said. “I’m at four, about to hit five with a freshman.”

“Hey, freshmen don’t count! Who knows if they’ll even be in class by the drop date? I’ve got three, so far.”

“Fine, she won’t count. Instead of dropping her classes, I’ll change her teachers,” Wirefire said.

With that he took another sip of java, and the rat-a-tat rapping continued.