Intense tremors were felt rippling through Smith Union early Thursday afternoon, leaving students and staff scrambling for cover. The source was not a shift in Earth’s tectonic plates, but rather the sheer force of the Men’s Lacrosse team’s flip flops.  Tyler Davis ‘26 made the terrible choice this morning to wear flip flops to class, blissfully unaware of the power each one of his steps would have.

The choice in shoe is a popular one amongst many of the male sports teams, ensuring that you can hear them approaching, no matter how far away you are. In the past, the shoe has served as an excellent indicator for when a team is approaching the line at Throne, allowing the humble NARP to get a hamburger patty or two as before the linebacker behind them takes five.

This afternoon, however, the reverberation of a flip flop was a sound of destruction, not of warning. With each step he took, the lack of support between the shoe and Davis’s already large foot created a shockwave capable of knocking over desks and creating a sizable crack in the IT Hub. With electrical wires knocked loose and the entrance to Fast Track blocked, chaos erupted throughout Smith Union. Serena Wiley ‘29 was one of the unlucky few to be in Smith when the earthquake struck.

“It was one of the scariest experiences I’ve had during my 4 weeks at Bowdoin, even scarier than whatever they’re giving us at Sunday dinners.” Wiley explained that she and her group of 9 other friends blocking the hallways with couches had to form a makeshift shelter to protect themselves from the falling debris. “We were able to make a fort out of chairs and tables,” Wiley shared, “thankfully we had just made a C-Store run so we had enough food to hold ourselves over until the rescue teams arrived”.