CMU to host the Olympic Games
JANUARY, GESLING STADIUM – After decades of Carnegie Mellon nobly hosting sporting events and their most exciting approximations thereof – Buggy races, Booth build week, and occasional football games (I was able to attend one, when I happened to walk by Gesling Stadium after the halftime show caught my ear) – CMU was officially selected to host the upcoming Olympic Games. According to recent investigative reporting, the International Olympic Committee had approached Carnegie Mellon as the spearhead of a new program to engage major world universities in athletics.
As put by myriad CMU students we met on the Cut before the unveiling, the main campus square, students are “So-so” and “Maybe I’ll go see a little” and “Excuse me, I need to get to recitation” about the affair, with one observing, “This might make them finally put some of our endowment into campus beauty.”
Unfortunately, our investigations into the usage of CMU finances were politely dissuaded by administration. For those looking for increased financial aid and club funding as a result of the attention brought to campus, we wish you the best.
11:07 on the dot, the doors and finicky PRT system. open to the Opening Ceremony. Hundreds of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and local geese from the Flagstaff hills piled into the first column of stands, and even began to fill a second one nearby. I overhear excited chatter; professors are enjoying the break from teaching, having left students in their lecture halls to continue class, and engineers are remarking on doing some sort of “experiential learning”. The atmosphere is electric, the crowd in the front-middles of their seats. The Ceremony is beginning.
I am told that CMU tradition defines the starting times of major events to be “whenever AB Tech figures it out.” Fascinating! I am astounded by the patience that this attitude affords. Perhaps the young-looking AB Tech students nearly falling off of the rafters feel less at ease, but I am assured they are paid a handsome wage. After 47 minutes’ delay brought on by various Olympic staff members’ issues with CBORD, the athletes file in.
The Parade of Nations follows, with each country’s athletes marching through the campus square known as the Cut. Several delegations are ceremoniously rerouted through Doherty, and I am informed that they will “possibly” return for the closing. The United States team enters distantly last, their bus having been delayed, evidently by some combination of the heavy snow and finicky PRT system.
Next, the artistic portion of the ceremony. A squadron of bagpipers ambushes the stadium. A modern dance, composed of freshmen with soggy Revolution Noodle bowls failing to find CUC tables, stirs the crowd. And completing the demonstration, a rotation of speakers carries us well into the evening: a professor narrates CMU’s history, beginning with a reenactment of Andrew Carnegie building a mockup of Pittsburgh out of steel. Some sort of robot iPad, apparently “Hank” by the crowd’s cheering, then rolls onto stage to narrate how steel is obsolete in the modern AI-powered field. So continued a procession of professors, students, contraptions, and industry representatives sharing their stories to the crowd.
The sun set on Gesling Stadium as the ceremony reaches its final celebration: hundreds of fireworks and thousands of Tartan patterned balloons took to the air. The crowd cheers, invigoratingly dusted in smoking shreds of rubber. The IOC President takes the microphone one final time, and declares, “No matter how we may come to regret this decision, we are here to bring you an event like no other. Let the Carnegie Mellon Olympic Games begin!”