Quad Daily News - 01/26/2023
CHAMPAIGN, IL — UIUC's iconic bell towers fell silent on Thursday, January 26, amid a staffing shortage of its iconic hunchbacked bell ringers. "This truly is a sad time for UIUC", said University spokesperson Raymond Phillips, "We simply aren't able to hire enough of those deformed weirdos to be able to toll the bells every 15 minutes. In a break with tradition, our bell towers will fall silent."
The history of UIUC's longstanding relationship with hunchbacks stretches back to 1891, when the first UIUC bell tower was built, modeled after the French Notre Dame Cathedral. After a visit to France, then-Chancellor Artemis Montgomery was charmed by famed Notre Dame hunchback Quasimodo and resolved to bring hunchbacks back to Champaign.
He hired local hunchback Benjamin Scolios, and charged him with being the first of UIUC's hunch-backed bell ringers. Since then, UIUC has employed a total of 238 hunchbacks, with an average annual employment of 32 hunchbacks per year. Life hasn't been easy for UIUC's hunchbacks, and the hunchbacks have had to fight hard for equity. In 1968, the first female hunchback was hired, followed shortly by the first child hunchback. In addition, hunchbacks were originally classified by the University as 'subhuman mongrels', an offensive and dated misnomer. This was replaced in 2011 by the more equitable phrase 'hunchback'.
Though the University is rife with concern, the shortage is unlikely to affect current students as approximately 98% of them don't give a shit about bells.
UPDATE: In a desperate attempt to fill vacancies, the Office of Diversity & Inclusion has announced that it will open its applications to non-hunchbacks, though new hires will be required to undergo a painful back-hunching surgical procedure.
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