UW HFS Will Provide Testing to All Incoming Dorm Residents
MJ
This Monday, UW Housing and Food Services announced that all incoming dorm residents will undergo mandatory tests of their breath-holding ability before moving into their rooms. Meant to determine whether a given student can successfully hold their breath for the length of a 6-minute elevator ride, these tests will be administered by trained medical professionals at pop-up locations around campus.
“We want to be sure that our residents are able to keep their pesky, possibly-disease-ridden breath to themselves for a solid amount of time,” said HFS officials in their prepared statement. “Many of these kids will be using the elevators (which, if you haven’t noticed, are confined spaces with very little air flow) multiple times per day. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that they learn to keep those stanky fumes locked in tight where they belong.”
In order to determine a student’s breath-holding capacity, HFS plans to set up several dunk tanks into which the prospective residents will be methodically immersed. The test administers will keep track of the duration of the students’ time underwater using the Clock apps on their iPhones, and students will be released from the dunk tanks when they cry for help by “throwing their dubs up.” If they must resurface before the required 6 minutes has passed, they will sadly not be allowed to enter the UW dorms. Their housing deposits will not be refunded.
When asked whether HFS will also provide incoming residents with COVID-19 testing prior to move-in, officials replied that “We haven’t decided about that yet. Or else we did decide, but we aren’t telling you about our decision. Could be either one, honestly. But the important thing is that we’re doing due diligence and testing our huskies’ lung capacity.”The dunk tank testing stations will remain open throughout all of autumn quarter, and will also be available to students who do not live on campus for a necessary fee of $100 per dunk. HFS has confirmed its awareness that elevators and other such confined spaces exist in many buildings across campus, and it wants the entire UW community to feel safe and secure in our collective ability to “just not breathe for a few minutes, if the need arises.”