Partly Cloudy, 64°
Police and students were left baffled three days ago when the hallways of Harvey E. Keeney Quadrangle were eerily devoid of any scent of marijuana. "As soon as I walked in the door, I was like, woah, something's up. Took me a while to figure out what it was," said Gordon Stiltz '14, who lives in Jameson house. Indeed, nearly all Keeney residents noticed and commented on the lack of ganja odor in their dormitory last Tuesday.
Department of Public Safety officers were soon called to the scene. "We received reports that there was some kind of disturbance in the Keeney residence halls, and quickly dispatched officers to the quad," Captain Matthew Henman stated to the press. "When they arrived, the disturbance was immediately identified as the absence of cannabis fragrance. The only question that remained was who was responsible for this."
Officers searched the quadrangle for several hours with no success of identifying a
perpetrator. "We told the kids that they wouldn't be punished, but nobody came forward. We
don't wanna get anyone into trouble, we just wanna keep 'em safe," said Officer Sherri Kert, one of the twenty-four deputies dispatched to the scene.
Even the Brown Police K-9 unit, known to students as "Cuddles," couldn't detect the origin of the reefer-less stench. There was a brief moment of hope when Cuddles excitedly led deputies to a second floor bathroom, but apparently the dog had misidentified the scent. Frank Porger '14, who was in the bathroom at the time, has refused to comment.
Further increasing the strangeness of the situation was the fact that even "cloaking" scents could not be detected. "Students usually use Febreze, perfumes, or those little pine tree things to cover up the smell of bud. But there was none of that, either," said Officer Kert. Keeney resident Stiltz corroborated the policewoman's statement: "Yeah, the halls didn't even smell like an Axe bomb or Hollister or anything. The air in Keeney just smelled like … air."
Because at least nine twelfths of the DPS staff had become involved, President Ruth Simmons was informed of the conundrum.
After rushing to the scene and taking a quick tour of the Keeney halls, President
Simmons stated, "Yes, the quadrangle definitely does not reek of chronic today. Poor old
Barnaby C. Keeney must be rolling in his grave - or turning, rather, because apparently nobody's rolling anything this afternoon."
Imploring the officers to get to the bottom of the crisis, President Simmons then casually strolled back to Dean Bergeron's presentation, "How I Defeated Fish Co," which she had been attending.
Following the President's statement, the Brown Police force redoubled its efforts to find the source of the enigmatic "air" odor. However, after eleven hours of extensive searching, no explanation was to be found.
In his seventh and final public address that day, Captain Henman stated, "While we can come to no conclusions today, we hope that all Keeney residents will learn from this event and make sure that their dorms don't not smell like weed ever again."
