To the Dean and Board of Trustees:

Thank you for submitting Miskatonic University’s proposed COVID safety plan. We have a few brief comments and questions.

Social distancing in classrooms

You write that “through queer and monstrous perversions of geometrical laws, students will be seated at blasphemous angles outside the curves of our dimensions, thus remaining safely six feet apart.” Please clarify whether safe distancing could be achieved without resort to “loathsome horrors beyond human conception.”

Food services

We agree that students need not wear masks during meals. However, please revise the final plan to say “while eating,” rather than “while slobbering and ravening with delight.”

Data reporting

You propose to report how many students become “squamous,” “ichthyic,” or “batrachian.” Please instead report how many students display fever or respiratory distress. Also, clarify why you have included a 15-page contingency plan for a potential outbreak of “waxy membranous wings.”

Student arrival and isolation

To comply with Massachusetts travel orders, you propose to “quarantine all out-of-state students deep within the hellish stygian abyss, for a fortnight of indescribable fungoid terrors.” Please note that students from the other New England states are exempt from quarantine.

Library services

You note that all of your library’s holdings have been digitized for online reading, including certain “foul, repellent, and irrudinous tomes that bespeak eldritch accursed rites and which, once made public, may unleash nameless aeon-dead horrors.” The board is extremely concerned that “irrudinous” is not a word.

Mental health impacts

You note that you expect increased incidences of stress, anxiety, and “abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy.” What about the students?

If you would like to speak further in person, you will find me crouching and gibbering in the darkness.

Sincerely,
Herbert West
Health Inspector