The Grand Saadiyat Social Experiment has found itself in jeopardy since March 2020. With restrictions on in-person events and gatherings, there have been fewer outlets for students to clash over arbitrary nonsense and collectively work to decipher the latest Vice Chancellor emails. Not content with this, students have taken advantage of the fact that NYU Abu Dhabi might be the only university that runs on Facebook by proving their moral righteousness to every single person who checks their phone more than twice a day.

“Living in this university feels like a reality show based on a dystopian fever dream, but daily life is still not spicy enough,” said Novelti Seiking, Class of 2023. We can see this in Seiking’s most recent weekend. Not content sitting in his room experiencing FOMO, he spent three hours wandering the High Line petting cats and wondering why the sardine train-like crowding in D2 never translated to a feeling of activity on campus. It turned out that unplugging had actually disconnected him from the latest RoR controversy.

“To the morally bankrupt person who did the thing I don’t like (you know what it is and you know who you are), I hope you get ghosted by every assistantship on Handshake and go to sleep on a bed of Legos tonight. I’m better than you and I hope you know that,” posted his brother, Aprooval Seiking, Class of 2024.

But Aprooval’s thoughts were no match for the ruthless mob of students with nothing to do on a Thursday night, so the post was taken down almost as hastily as it was posted. Wondering why everyone was showing up to the RoR battleground every day but not to any of their Zoom events, the Programming Board team thought of ways to pit socially indebted students against one another to determine the most terminally online student on campus.

The first Virtue Games will take place — virtually, of course — starting on November 30, as boredom runs high over a break in classes. The initial challenge is not too difficult or controversial. Whenever a friend or someone you aim to impress requires something, it is required to reply “bump” after the optimal level of time. Not so soon that the post disappears into the Arabian Gulf and not so late that the need for a frying pan or graduate school advice passes. A deceptively simple art, it is estimated that about forty percent of participants will nonetheless miscalibrate and will be cancelled as a result.

Immediately afterwards, the stakes become higher and controversy will erupt . Game 2 is yet another deceptively simple act of forwarding information: teams of several students are given a brand-new policy change brought about by the NYUAD administration and must communicate it in the most effective language possible. Only the first to do so can advance to the next game. Remaining cuttingly cynical yet passionate is the key to success in this round: losers either fizzle out in their anger and trigger calls to “check their entitlement”, or fail to inspire much of a reaction.

The third game, in which the pool of players severely narrows, involves responding to a policy change. Any student who receives a minimum of ten likes and successfully threads the line between channeling jaded sentiments and toeing the administrative party line advances to stage four. This has proven to really distinguish the losers apart from the potential winners. Many say that extensive experience in Student Government, Dean of Students’ Office and Vice Chancellor’s Office is hugely pivotal for contestants in this round. It provides them with specialized ability to veneer their jadedness with plentiful “This is a tough spot even for the administration...We must understand the contextual constraints at play here…We understand! We’ll be meeting the Deans today to forward this concern...”

The next round involves making the most sweeping generalizations possible regarding others’ lived experiences without crossing the lines into overt offense.

“The fourteen countries I’ve moved between have all taught me a lot about what to say in any given situation, and it really helps me when I can shame the people who didn’t get those opportunities,” smugly commented Glowbel Sitizin, Class of 2022. Sitizin will be publishing an Op-Ed on The Gazelle next week outlining the appropriate occasions to cancel another student, acknowledging that sometimes the most hateful voices are the hardest to actually eliminate from the game.

The last game pits students against students in a contest to post the most unhinged anti-administrative rant possible. There is no official metric of judgment, but the ideal Global Leader rant is approximately the length of a First Year Writing Seminar rough draft and appeals to everyone’s inner Facebook activist by, at a minimum, using the words “unacceptable” and “problematic” while making knee-jerk remarks about the university’s deterioration.

What happens when the Virtue Games are over? Unfortunately, monetary debts cannot be fulfilled through the game in response to recent regulations. But all social debts will be cleared and the lucky individual will be free to live a fruitful, fulfilling life on campus without ever having to prove to the online hivemind the quality of their thoughts again.

“Sign me up,” you may think after reading this. There is actually no sign up process. In fact, there is no opt-out process either. All students will be automatically enrolled in the Games. Have fun.

Ethan Fulton is Columns Editor and Satire Columnist. Email him at feedback@thegazelle.org. .*