A tragic choking death of a woman occurred near The King’s College campus early Wednesday morning. Witnesses described a painful scene of a mass of twenty or more King’s students gathered around the woman as she lay dying (abiding by social distancing guidelines, of course). As she begged for aid with her eyes, they carefully and calmly reminded her that any attempt to help would break their TKC COVID pledge, one made with a solemn vow on the lives of their mothers. 

Dorthy Abicus, a senior English major, had this to say for her pause in the moment, “I am really sorry for that lady. I truly am. We all have to make sacrifices for the safety of the group. She made hers, and I made the sacrifice of having to watch her die. If I removed my mask for something that I felt was more important in the moment, for any reason, I would be committing a sin against the safety of the group. What’s more important one woman’s life or the feeling of safety for an entire college?”

Another student, Jeff Dahmer said, “I was wearing a face shield so I was able to get my face right up to hers while keeping us both entirely safe. I was so close that I could feel her breath, which didn’t make much sense because the college assured me that face shields were perfectly safe and equivalent alternatives to face masks. Either way, it was really tough for me to have no choice to help the woman, despite what my conscious told me.”

A member of the TKC administration had this to say about the incident: “we are sorry to hear about the loss of something important, that poor woman’s life, but we are overjoyed to hear that the students involved did not violate their COVID pledge under any circumstances. There is literally nothing more important than protecting ourselves from the Coronavirus. As much as we love sending students to honor councils, it is much easier to just have a bland, conformist mob as a student body.”