It’s finally that time of year; freshmen are flooding the campus, football ticket prices are soaring, house fellows and TAs are dusting off their favorite icebreaker games, and students everywhere are attempting to make new friends.
In these first few weeks, these new students will be forced to participate in many icebreakers and answer get-to-know-you questions. Out of all of these questions, the most common one is probably the classic “Where are you from?” The hope is that through sharing one’s hometown, an unbreakable bond of instant friendship will be forged, withstanding four years of football games, parties, classes, and financial instability.
However, at least half of the time, out-of-state students struggle to conceptualize where small Wisconsin towns are located. The next clarifying question then becomes, “Where is that?” and a nearby landmark city is provided.
More often than not, this landmark city is none other than Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Over the course of this tedious process, freshman Fargo Bunyan, hailing from the dense wilderness of northern Minnesota, soon began to recognize a pattern.
“Now, I don’t know a lot about Wisconsin,” Bunyan told us earlier in the week, “But, it’s like, everyone I talk to says their hometowns are ‘just outside of Milwaukee.’ I’m beginning to suspect that it’s some kind of conspiracy. Milwaukee must be expanding in area, absorbing other nearby towns into its suburbs. It’s going to take over the state of Wisconsin! We can’t stand for this.”
When asked to elaborate, Bunyan provided us with a list of towns he’s been told are “just outside of Milwaukee.” This list includes Whitefish Bay, Pewaukee, Kenosha, Appleton, Green Bay, Sun Prairie, the Wisconsin Dells, Chicago, and even the east side of Madison.
“I didn’t realize how broad of a term ‘just outside of Milwaukee’ was,” Bunyan went on to say. “I guess we’re all from ‘just outside of Milwaukee,’ in a way.”
Bunyan’s most recent statements encourage fellow students to help him fund the construction of a wall around the city of Milwaukee.
