JONATHAN LERDAU

In a surprising turn of events, Burnett House has been replaced with a giant pile of sand. The pile is about 35 feet tall, and around 7000 square feet, essentially replicating the exact dimensions of Burnett House but in sand. It’s like if the house had never existed and instead there was just a house-sized pile of sand, but no one could live in it and it no longer had a dumpster where I could throw out the trash from my off-campus house.

Local student Catch Zarlson ‘26 was nonplussed, saying “It’s weird, I remember there being a house there but now there’s just a big pile of sand. Like, that’s a super logical place for a house, not a big pile of sand, right? I feel like it would make sense to see a big pile of sand on the beach or perhaps the desert, so to see one on Maine Street instead is definitely jarring. Also, I don’t see how students can live in a college house if it’s actually just a big pile of sand. Even if it’s a really big pile of sand, I feel like the logistics don’t work out.”

The Harpoon had considered a similar scenario. If the College Houses are a cornerstone of the Bowdoin residential experience, sometimes considered the living rooms of the college, what does it mean if one of the eight houses is now a big pile of sand? Will sophomores be able to host campus-wide events from lectures and film screenings to off campus trips and social gatherings in a giant pile of sand as opposed to a late 18th century Colonial home? And what does this mean for the House Committee? Are they now the Sand Committee? These are all questions we at the Harpoon, and the people of the general public, would be interested to know the answers to. 

Sources close to this author have confirmed that BSG and Safa Zaki are set to make a statement on the big-pile-of-sand-where-once-there-was-a-house shortly. It will be the first political statement Zaki has made since ascending to the presidency in the summer of 2023, so it seems fitting that it should be about something as important as the College’s new big pile of sand. She can pick her battles, that’s for sure. 

Anyways, I’m off to go play in the giant pile of sand. I thought Burnett House was cool as far as college houses went–my buddy Spencer lived there after all–but the prospect of a giant pile of sand on campus is simply invigorating. I’m going to build a sand-castle and a sand-Burnett House and a sand-square model of Noah Saperstein’s childhood bedroom and a sand-Peter Buck Center for Health and Fitness. I’m going to slide down the sand and bring water to create irrigation systems and maybe even dig a big hole. And at the end of the day, when I’ve played in the sand to my heart’s content, I’m going to go home, shake out my boots to get out the sand from the big pile of sand, put my clothes in the washing machine to wash out the sand from the big pile of sand, and curl up in bed with a good book. As I drift off to sleep, exhausted from my day of frolic, I will count grains of sand in the big pile of sand that used to be Burnett House. And my last thoughts will be “I wonder what happened to all the sophomores who lived in Burnett now that it’s a big pile of sand. I hope they enjoy the big pile of sand as much as I did.” And it will be a beautiful day.