Jake Touchbottom was surprised to find a new restaurant open in the fishbowl on Wednesday. But when he moved in close enough to look at the menu, he was accosted from behind. “VACCINE CARD PLEASE,” Brent Buterbaugh yelled through a Statesmanship bull horn. The rest of the cabinet was seated against the wall looking supportive and affirming.

After New York City Mayor, Bill De Blasio, enacted a city-wide vaccine mandate for entering restaurants, events, shows, or the hallway outside your apartment door via executive order, Mr. Buterbaugh got the same idea for the King’s campus, according to people familiar with the Student Body President’s thinking.

There was one challenge, however, a King’s SBP does not have the power to issue executive orders, but Mr. Buterbaugh is a proponent of the unitary executive theory which states that presidents can do whatever they want. After shadowing Colin Phillips for a year, Mr. Buterbaugh became confident that a King’s SBP could do essentially anything he wanted to as long as he did not criticize the administration or fight for student’s interests in any way. The Student Council also announced plans to release a “Good, Docile, and Vaccinated” app to allow students to easily provide verification of their vaccination status to Mr. Buterbaugh. 

While there was initial pushback against the initiative, students quickly realized that Mr. Buterbaugh was using PRS money to buy extra Chic-fil-a for his restaurant and quickly abandoned their convictions about individual freedom.

Dorthy Picknicker, a senior SBA, who has been wearing two cloth masks over an N95, even while in her home alone, objected to the restaurant for another reason: “I’m all for mask mandates, extended quarantines and sensible things like vaccine passports, but when a conservative man tells me I have to do it it just rubs me the wrong way!”

“If anyone else had told me to do this I’d have ordered here every day, but since It’s Brent, I’m going to chance my convictions”