“April showers bring May flowers” and … young freshmen? This past month has been characterized by finicky weather, the stress of finals and, most noticeably, tons and tons of tour groups. While these tour groups are to be expected during the month of high school seniors’ college decisions, the tour groups themselves were unpredictable and unprecedented.

The groups in question each had about twenty or so students in coordinated matching T-shirts. While the lack of under-eye bags should have been a clue, UC Berkeley students misinterpreted these tour groups as being the new freshmen.

One UC Berkeley student noted, “They were all just … really small. … I thought to myself, ‘Wow. The freshmen are getting smaller and smaller each year.’ Not in a million years would I have figured that they were actually just kindergartners.”

Another student commented, “They had such life in their eyes, which isn’t something I’ve ever seen in UC Berkeley students before. At first I thought it must have just been because they were younger than usual, but then I reasoned that it must have been the increasingly competitive applicant pools.”

A feeling of stress greater than the norm began to infiltrate the lives of each UC Berkeley student, leaving Golden Bears scared and threatened. The pervasiveness of the issue led to campuswide protests. Students held signs such as “Dear Admissions Committee: If they don’t remember Late Night, they’re too young for you, bro.” Some current students even went so far as to burn their acceptance letters on Memorial Glade on April 20, causing a large cloud of smoke that day.

The intensity of the protests caused the dean of admissions to speak out, explaining, “Those tour groups are not incoming freshmen, although I can see why UC Berkeley students may think that. I want to clarify that they are in fact just 5-year-olds. Do not stress. We in admissions are not resorting to admitting 5-year-olds, at least not yet.”

Unfortunately, the students’ stress had permeated several of UC Berkeley’s bookstores, in which shelves were already being reorganized to make room for the new UC Berkeley gear, designed with the misinterpreted smaller freshmen in mind and placed on lower shelves.

The impact of this miscommunication will be felt for years to come. On an unrelated note, UC Berkeley’s bookstore is now having a sale on T-shirts sizes XXS-S.

This is a satirical article written purely for entertainment purposes.