It has come to my attention that Pomona College faces a serious threat. It seems like everywhere I turn, from the hallowed halls of the Smith Campus Center to the stately greens of Marston Quadrangle, this campus is overrun with hippies. Frankly, I am a bit disgusted. There was once a time in my life when a hippie or two would not have caused me pause, but what we've got here is bordering on infestation, and I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only one who notices. I fear that if this situation is allowed to fester any longer, there may be nothing we can do to overwhelm this mass of peace-loving, dirty-haired flower children that threatens our happy existence.

There is nothing that churns my stomach so much as the sight of someone with a disdain for the rules of social conduct, and what has begun to emerge here over the past four years in relation to decent human interaction is an offense of the highest order.

There can be little doubt that the hippies were always here - their kind has been running in underground circles for decades - but not until their recent uprising has there been any reasonable cause for alarm. In the years immediately following the fall of the major communist regimes in Europe, the number of self-identifying hippies dwindled. However, I fear that now that we are considerably removed from that threatened era, those who were driven into hiding are gaining confidence, and it will be only a matter of time before they burst forth like fetid weeds from the soil, their tangled network of roots choking off the grand sustenance of an ordered community, their breath stinking with the rot of social decay.

It troubles me that so few of my fellow citizens have taken action to prevent such an affront to our moral values. The openness with which people have embraced hippie-dom is striking, and one would think that any concerned, upstanding member of society would show outrage at the brutal offenses that have of late tarnished the face of our fair campus. In the name of opening eyes to the horrors that surround us, I will offer a few painfully obvious examples of these felonious goings-on.

It is not uncommon for one to see congregations of hippies at events that were once proud reminders of the strength of our school's social fabric. But now, like the torn garments and unwashed hair that has become the de facto uniform of the filthy minority, that fabric has been ripped and sullied by the perpetual company of those with a painfully alternative agenda. Is there nowhere that lovers of starched order and cleanliness can go to escape the oncoming tide of earthiness?

At one point in my college career I would have pointed to the sturdy walls of the Kappa Delta fraternity to provide a safe haven from all that was politically and socially alternative, but even their once comforting odor of sweat and testosterone has become infected with the unmistakably foul stink of reefer and free love. The proper response to the denigration of such a pillar of the community would no doubt involve bloody riots, but we sit listlessly as our very foundation crumbles.

This is just one example of the travesty which surrounds us and an indication of just how far the hippies have burrowed into the collective consciousness of the public. If our most treasured organizations cannot help but to succumb to the compromised ideals and misguided notions of a socially destructive movement, then our situation is far worse than any could have imagined. But the infection hardly stops its deadly course there. These hippies, though they flaunt the ideals of peace and non-violence, have become so accepted as harmless within the eyes of the American people that they are, as a group, all but immune to the proceedings of justice that rightly govern the rest of us. There is no doubt in my mind that at any given time within the past six years, there have been anywhere from seven to thirty-five card carrying hippies holding public office within the state of California alone, some holding positions as influential as Deputy Mayor or Third Circuit Court Judge. These may not seem threatening yet, but when one considers that the basis of the entire hippie movement has been "grass-roots" social action, a frightening specter begins to show its form.

I have no doubt in my mind that, under the guise of protecting our environment, it has been the hippies that have driven up the price of gasoline to its recent staggering heights. But immunity is something we cannot afford to grant any longer.

That hippies intend to conquer America, starting with our most basic human levels of interaction, cannot be denied. The Internet, with its ease in dissemination of ideas and lack of rules or fundamental organization (this characteristic alone should throw up a giant rainbow-colored hippie flag), has given the few hippies that still existed at its inception the opportunity to commune electronically. And as there is no insurance that anyone on the World Wide Web is even remotely as they present themselves, it would have been easy for this small collective of hippies to infiltrate unknowing groups of young Americans and taint their impressionable young minds with the sickness that now spreads like plague.

If we are to combat this disease, if we are to truly wipe it out before it consumes us all, action must be taken without hesitation. Dress codes must be enforced. Holes in clothing that do not serve a specific and socially acceptable purpose must not be permitted. No groups of three or more people with unwashed hair must be permitted to congregate, unless their prescribed activity is athletic in nature. Kicking a sack filled with beans is not an acceptable athletic endeavor.

These are but examples of the lengths to which we must go, but if only to display our resistance to a culture that threatens us all with eternal submission, Pomona must act as a symbolic space of refuge from the moral famine that sweeps the land. This school must be a beacon. Rules must be enforced with an iron hand, and any diversion from the norm must be punished with lightning quickness. We must communicate to the rest of the world that hippies will not be tolerated.