Whitman College would like to honor the amazing work done over break by first-year Jenna Lindell. Lindell, a Lyman resident, managed to negotiate the release of prisoners held in North Korea by convincing Colombian drug lords to give up selling drugs and to donate all their money to her shelter for North Korean orphans. The drug lords cited the three volumes of lyric poetry she wrote earlier this year (the first books of lyric poetry ever to top the New York Times Best Seller list) as their primary motivation for this action.
“I really felt a connection with her poem ‘Love, War, and Humanity.’ All our petty in-fighting has to stop. We live in one world now. It was the least I could do to sell my mansion to feed the starving––I only wish I had read Lindell’s book earlier,” said Pablo Escobar’s successor.
Others too have been touched by Lindell’s words. Long-standing rivals have begun working together for the betterment of mankind with her as their guide. Bloods and Crips have begun laying down their guns and joining together in book clubs and poetry circles throughout south-central Los Angeles. Republicans and Democrats have spent the last few weeks trying to figure out fiscally responsible and compassionate legislation to better the country as a whole. Even whalers and hippies have sat down for constructive discussion of the challenges of balancing cultural heritage and environmental needs.
Even hard-core members of al-Qaeda have been moved by Lindell’s message of hope. Instead of spending their money on weapons, they have started implementing infrastructure for education, medicine and trade to make their communities prosper. They have also started planting trees, and the lush forests that have sprung up in the Middle East have not only helped combat global warming but are also attracting blue herons back to their natural habitat, which had so recently been ravaged by war. This means the blue herons have stopped eating the near-extinct Himalayan tree frog, believed by many leading scientists to hold the key to curing cancer. However, the modest Lindell has taken no credit for this, and she even declined to accept President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize with his name crossed out and hers written over it.
Lindell spent the last few days of break healing the blind, deaf and illiterate with a molecule synthesized for her General Chemistry final project with Associate Professor Bill Sangui. The byproduct for this molecule is an oil substitute that produces clean drinking water when burned, and it is twice as efficient as gasoline and 200 times cheaper. She plans to spend next semester tackling the problem of world hunger.
The college would also like to congratulate sophomore Mark Stevens for spending break reading books, visiting old friends and catching up on his sleep.
