So, a lot of us have the swine flu. Since swine flu apparently amounts to fun-sized mono, Vandy has hop-scotched over hysteria and right into traditional ironic ambivalence.

Things have changed, though, and it all comes back to one forgotten secret: Swine flu is a plague of morality, y’all. Before, H1N1 was just after a few nights of raging. But now it’s attacking sex!

It started when the Health Center coined the term of the young century last week, offering the non-swine students “preventive Tamiflu, if the exposure is ‘intimate’ (intimate partner or roommate).” Intimate partner? It is a term straight out of the woe-be-gone histrionic tale of, like, Brian and Jennifer and their flannel and acid washed denim and poofy hair back in “She Said No, He Said Yes: A Rad Approach to Solving Sexual Harassment” and other early 1990s health videos.

Now, rumor has it that the gynecologist at the Student Health Center is only seeing one girl a day and canceling appointments. So if you’re looking to play some October baseball, become somebody’s intimate partner, if you will, you’d better have all the t’s crossed on your prescriptions.

But, damn these times, finding an intimate partner can be difficult anyway, because, shocker, everybody has swine flu. Nothing like putting a solo cup and your ENTIRE hand into a frat formal cooler with a handle of Everclear, the misbegotten dreams of becoming someone’s intimate partner, a handle of vodka and red Kool-Aid to brew up the swine flu vapors.

“Attack of the Swine Flu” may be like the 700 Club sequel to “Mission Impossible II.” No romance, no fevered working against the clock in close quarters, no doves flying in slow motion as Tom Cruise’s hair flaps up and down, just a lot of sad, lonely people in rain boots Facebook stalking wistfully and watching the Food Network, crying and eating and saying to no one “I hate everybody.”

The villains, as always, rise from the ranks of conservative mobs. Stowed away somewhere, sitting in folding chairs stolen from your grandparents in a random field in the Midwest, a contingency of hardcore social cons devised the virus to instill morality among them morally bankrupt youths—like “Good Girls Go Bad,” except in equally horrifying reverse.

Soon, we’ll all be sitting around trilling, “It’s this war madness, isn’t it?” “I’m awfully sorry, darling,” to our intimate partners, Merchant Ivory style. “Let’s make love and not think about the future.” “Think about the war.”

Will Vandy let swine flu defeat the right to rage? Not if history teaches our intimate partners and us anything. Seriously, if it history taught one thing, it would be that. So, fight on, Commodores. 

—Katherine Miller is a senior in the College of Arts and Science. She can be reached at katherine.m.miller@vanderbilt.edu.