In the northern hemisphere lies a country called the United States of America, and tucked into its Southeast sits North Carolina. Head southwest and you’ll stumble upon a flashy little “Queen City” named Charlotte, home of the NASCAR Hall of Fame and the Carolina Panthers. But don’t stop at the roar of engines or the misery of Panthers fans—keep going north, and you’ll find a neat cluster of suspiciously brown buildings that people proudly call Davidson College.
The fall semester here starts with calm and steady steps. On this thousand-acre campus, packed with young, stubborn souls, “lively” isn’t just an adjective—it’s a lifestyle.
Take her, for example: staring blankly after yet another calculus review session, convinced that textbooks are the real masterminds of intellectual property theft. It could be him whose heart beat so fast and was sure from his bottom of his heart that this girl in front of him will be the love of his life where they will eventually be slept in one mausoleum but broken up on the second week but with his words still true in his heart, at least one of the many he possessed. Nevertheless, look at this scene, all poets, playwrights, literati, and many other intellectuals back in our time will stop and praise the liveliness of the campus from top to bottom.
Then there’s Karl Sentelle, elder rodent of the legendary Sentelle Hall, who holds… shall we say… contrasting opinions. Our reporters were honored (and slightly terrified) to visit his historic domain.
Karl greeted us in the so-called “Rodsidents Lounge” on what he firmly insisted was the “third” floor.
“Elder Karl,” we ventured cautiously, “by Davidson-provided floor plans, this is technically the second floor.”
Karl’s whiskers twitched. “No, I have ample evidence to prove we are on the third.”
“I hate to say this,” one reporter piped up, “but the slope makes it confusing. The first floor is really a basement.”
Karl slammed his paw dramatically on the armrest. “Basement? Sir, when golden sunlight and bleached moon pours through your window, do you dare call it a basement?”
“Presence of light,” our reporter argued, “shouldn’t be the sole evidence for determining a basement.”
Karl sipped his tea, eyes gleaming. “My cousin lived in Belk Hall. Their so-called first and second floors have no light at all—just the depressing hum of fluorescent bulbs. If Sentelle’s sunny level must bear the shameful title of ‘basement,’ then Belk deserves to be called a bunker. Perhaps even one designed for nuclear fallout.”
The balcony is roomy, potentially capable of bearing a few lads and maidens. But thanks to Davidson,” answered Karl, “this building bears no gates for humans—only a window. And guess what? That, my friends, is our balcony.”
With that grand proclamation, Karl escorted us down the dim hallway, across creaking tiles, and into the restroom. He marched with the solemn pride of a tour guide at the White House, except our destination was not a gilded chamber but the innermost shower stall. There, like a relic from some lost civilization, he handed us the shower head.
“In Davidson,” Karl began, holding the shower head aloft as though it were Excalibur, “every student is required—nay, mandated by the sacred scrolls of the registrar—to fulfill the Ways of Knowing. Thus, the atheist engineer must wrestle with religious texts, and the pious theocrat must grapple with the mysteries and filthiness of STEM.”
He paused, turning the water on for the shower head for the drama.
“Just as this college demands completeness, so too does this shower head strive—heroically, yet tragically—for wholeness. When the water runs, it flows from two sides. But here’s the cut! The greater stream does not come from the shower head, but from the broken connection between the head and the metal pipe.”
He sighed, as though he were lamenting the fall of Constantinople.
“Thus, we are left with an obsolete shower head,” Karl continued gravely. “The greater power of the water is wasted in rebellion, gushing sideways instead of downward, refusing to serve its purpose to wash your body. In this way, my friends, the shower head is Davidson Itself: ambitious, demanding, yet forever leaking brilliance in the wrong direction.”
What we have our eyes on, as we pass,” Karl said in a slow and steady voice, “are only visitors of this time and place. Soon, every young folk you see will graduate and leave this place. Every building you admire may one day be swallowed by the rage of fire. Every car you notice will eventually find itself in the scrapyard.”
“I bet you borrowed that from Australia,” one of our reporters answered. “Of course, Mr. Karl, we are all visitors to this place.”
“But me, my friend—” Karl paused in his walk and turned back, “I will be here forever. I may die before many of the freshmen here graduate, but there will always be a batch of rats who look like me, think like me, and carry a piece of my spirit onward.”
Karl reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, but it was empty. He smiled faintly and said: “For my life, I cannot live with cats, nor can I live in fear of them. Of course, I bear no ‘CatCard ’issued by the Board of Trustees. Everything else may leave, everything else may go—but I will remain forever. You see, when travelers arrive here, they might think the round dome of Chambers or the Honor Code oath is what is permanent. But perhaps the everlasting ones are
us—a million rats, squirrels, grass, soil, and many others who will never occupy a headline on the Davidsonian or lead cast on a Davidson postcard.”
Elder Karl halted, raising one paw signaling us to stop and to sit upon the gentle slope of the hill. “Pause, my friends,” he squeaked in a tone of grave anticipation, “and prepare yourselves to behold the daily fireworks.”
The silence was soon broken by a sudden crackle and a shower of sparks leaping from the old telegraph pole.
“Pardon me, Elder Karl,” ventured one of our reporters, adjusting his spectacles with polite skepticism, “but is that not merely a trifling electrical fault?”
Karl’s whiskers twitched, and his eyes glimmered with something between amusement and reproach. “Ah, you poor mortal, chained to the illusions of utility! To you it is but a simple malfunction of wires and currents; but to the height of mine, it is no less but a lightning of a thunderstorm. Do you not perceive that even in the frailty of rusted metal, the heavens may conspire to scatter embers of truth? These sparks, though humble, rise at my behest—for without my word, would you have lifted your gaze at all?”