Rather than allowing our clocks to “fall back” because of daylight savings time, Walla Walla’s totalitarian mayor has decreed that all clocks be adjusted to Olin Standard Time. Olin Standard Time, or OST, is a measurement of time developed in Olin Hall that does not adhere to the laws of any regional time zones. Sometimes it jumps forward an hour, sometimes it falls back three and sometimes it doesn’t change at all. Instances of clocks on Olin Standard Time displaying different times in locations just 20 meters apart is not entirely unprecedented.

“I have been a long-time skeptic of time zones. I mean, come on. One-hour intervals? That just seems too precise for something as relative as time. I have comprised a formula that takes into account longitudes, altitudes, latitudes and gratitude and found Olin Time to be the most adherent,” said skeptical conspiracist and time enthusiast senior Chris Andrews.

Andrews famously developed the mathematical algorithm for calculating dogs’ ages just two human years ago. “It’s like those canines have Benjamin Button disease … only it’s accelerated and in reverse.”

In the three hours––or two days, depending on location––since the decree, there have been five plane crashes and three trains derailed.

“On an optimistic note,” said the mayor optimistically, “transportation is seeing an unprecedented rise. I didn’t even know we had train tracks and we finally managed to get more than two planes to Walla Walla in a day.”

In response to the public’s worries of greater repercussions, the mayor comforted them with the notion that Olin Time could push back the consequences.

“Remember Y2K? Well, imagine now that it was turned into Y3-or-4K. That’s what we did, in essence. Basically, we fixed the computers.”

Computers in particular have struggled to keep time in OST due to their inability to produce genuine randomness. Many students have found that older technology have better results in keeping up with OST.

“I have this old wristwatch I lost the batteries for, and since wearing it I have not missed a class. I’m ecstatic,” said ecstatic sophomore Terry Jeffers.

Students with less technologically regressive timepieces have struggled to make it to class on time. “My iPhone wakes me up at the most inopportune hours or not at all!” said first-year Siri Lee, an infuriated resident of Jewett 1-West.

Speculations on what the greater consequences of this debacle might be lack, like OST, grounding in anything concrete.

“I don’t want to say that this could be the start of something terrible, but I think it should be very strongly implied,” implied President George Bridges, strongly.

Those of us aware of the Mayans’ predicted demise of civilization can only sit back and wait for Dec. 21 to reach us, wherever we may be.  It could be a day of reckoning, or just five minutes of reckoning, depending on the variability of Olin Time.