All Wesleyan undergraduates received an email this morning announcing the cancellation of October classes. There was no one reason for the decision, says President Michael Roth, but the largest contributing factor was that the Wesleyan administration hasn’t been “feeling it.”

“This semester’s been kind of a wash,” said Dean Louise Brown. “Some people feel okay about school. They read and write what professors tell them to. But many students feel aimless. They don’t care about their classes and sometimes they don’t want to go to them.” After talking about her October plans to have a few dinner parties and spend more time with her dog, Brown added, “Everyone could use some time to figure stuff out.”

Both professors and students have welcomed the change. “My syllabuses have been kind of a slog,” said Professor Timothy Nelson of the Government Department. “All September we’ve been going over ethical justification of war and its application to Balkan conflicts, and I can’t help but think, ugghhh.” Physics Professor Natasha Bethem agreed, saying, “I wish I were in bed. My feet were so cold this morning.”

The sudden hiatus presents a problem to upperclassmen with research projects, particularly in the sciences. But that’s not a big deal. Henry Wu ’11 said, “So my bacteria die. What does that really matter, long-term? There’ll be more bacteria. Better to go home, see some people, catch up on Mad Men. I haven’t been to the doctor in a while.” The prevailing attitude seems to be that there’s more to life thanWesleyan, and that’s all too easy to forget.

The administration stresses that things will be better than ever when we come back. Some class material will be sacrificed, but only the unimportant stuff. “This won’t happen every year,” Roth said. “The University just thinks, having felt it out, that we should press the reset button, so to speak. Take a nap. Have you seen the foliage this autumn? Have you woken up in an orchard and eaten an apple straight off the bough? Now you have time. We all have time.”

Last Monday, College of Letters major and well-liked Hewitt resident Emily Bristol ’13 excitedly announced her plans to begin blogging while abroad next semester. Bristol plans to spend the spring semester in Bordeaux, France, which she expects will be “basically pretty chill.”

“I just figured, you know, why not try something different while I’m abroad?” Bristol explained to close friends and family. “Why not create a venue through which I can share thoughtful multicultural insights, like how hot my host brother looks without a shirt, or how low the sinks are in France?” Bristol’s familiarity with French culture is already “pretty much magnifique,” she says, as evidenced by her enthused participation in last semester’s “Tour de Franzia” night.

The 19-year-old Boston native has not yet settled on a name for her blog, though brainstorming has yielded some promising contenders. “My top choice right now is Bitch in Bordeaux,” she revealed. “It’s sort of ironic, `cause I’m not actually a bitch, haha. But I kind of like the idea of A Broad Abroad, because, like, I’m going abroad and also I am a broad.”

“Or at least my uncle says I am. But he also eats Cream of Wheat with a fork and knife. So whatever.”

Bristol admits that her blogging experience is a bit thin, but says frequent contributions WesBreasts have given her a solid familiarity with Tumblr. “I haven’t had my own blog since, like, eighth grade,” Bristol recalled wistfully. “And that was just a Xanga site where I posted my favorite Evanescence lyrics.”

“I’ll try not to post Evanescence lyrics on this one,” she added, grinning. “But no promises.”

Several audience members at Thursday night’s benefit performance of Destiny Africa Children’s Choir expressed great outrage upon learning that the concert was not, in fact, a reunion of Destiny’s Child, the R&B group from the late 1990s.

The concert, which took place at the Memorial Chapel on High Street, asked for an optional donation to the Kampala Children’s Centre, a Ugandan orphanage. Once it became apparent that Beyoncé and her cohorts would not perform, people began to ask for their money back.

“When I heard Destiny’s Child would be playing a concert in September, I was even more psyched to come to Wesleyan,” said Keelin Ryan ’14, during the show. “But what a let-down.”

Joan Cooper Burnett, the designated Protestant Chaplain at the university, said that at the beginning of the concert she had been hopeful. “Even an hour before the concert began, people were lined up all the way down High Street in order to get seats; I thought, finally, something we’re doing, it’s getting people’s attention. But,” she added mournfully, “after two songs, people just started leaving.”

“The Chapel is simply not large enough to house the number of people who planned to attend the concert,” Mother Burnett said, “but as dissatisfied customers started to leave, more room opened up inside the hall. And yet, almost as soon as the new people entered, they left. So what ultimately happened was this rip tide effect with the people going out saying ‘It’s not Destiny’s Child, don’t go in there,’ and the people coming in just too eager and not listening and trampling over everyone else. It was utter pandemonium.”

Once it dawned upon the large crowd outside that they would not get to see a revival performance of “Say My Name” or “Bootylicious,” people began to riot. One unidentifiable junior shouted, “I came to see Destiny’s Child, not orphans!” A small group of sophomores wearing DC apparel — including shirts, headbands, and sweatpants — were weeping in a huddle.

Inside the concert hall, the pandemonium was even greater. In the middle of the second song, students started hurling tomatoes and apples at the orphans who were dancing on stage and the performance eventually had to be cut short.

After the concert was halted, one child testified to a university reporter: “This is even worse than Uganda.” Another child replied, “No, it’s not.