Like many of you reading this, I often find myself pining for the good old days, before newfangled technology like printing presses and disease immunization made our lives so long and complicated. Who doesn’t get a little misty-eyed looking back on the days of Charlemagne and Harold II Godwinson, when there was no 24-hour news cycle of angry headlines, because the only people who even knew how to read were monks? Alas, only 1090s kids recall.

Though the golden centuries of medievalry may be behind us, I believe that there is one great thing that came out of them, a bygone that the citizenry of this fair college should turn into a came-back. Call me a romantic, but when I look around me, I see a campus crying out for a moat.

The possibilities the Whitmoat holds are as endless as they are obvious. It will be a place to dip your toes in on balmy days, a racetrack for ducks and paddleboarders, a scenic aquajogging venue for injured track athletes – the list exceeds the real estate of the parchment on which I compose it. Frankly, I can think of no one who would object to it, least of all local motorists and homeowners.

College Creek, with its emerald banks of ivy and pebblishly charming streambed, is a marvelous geographical feature of this fine institution. One might assume, given its centrality and widespread appeal, that a Whitmoat blueprint would leave it to run its course as it always has. However, that would result in the bisection of the Whitmoat into two half-moats, each of them compromised by numerous footbridges. To remedy this gap in security, every footbridge would need to be dynamited, which, in addition to being a distastefully modern form of destruction, would displace the troll population. Of course, this will not do. Instead, the creek itself must be split into two half-loops that together circumnavigate campus and reconverge in the vicinity of Sobriety Bridge. Footbridges will be left as they are, with the installation of a sprinkler system in the now-dry creekbed to keep the trolls’ skin moisturized.

For those who see, as I do, the urgency with which the Whitmoat must be constructed, a volunteer canal-digging campaign will begin this Sunday at 4 a.m. outside J-Caf. We move with the fluidity of a single well-oiled mind and we ask forgiveness rather than permission. Bring your jackhammers.