The week following the inauguration has had all sorts of lovely claims and ideas floating about, and one of these concepts brought to light was the “alternative fact.”
Alternative facts, for those who are unaware, are what the new president’s team calls something that’s not true, potentially imagined several minutes prior, but that they really want to be true.
In this week's case, it was the number of inauguration attendees. In a Jan. 21 press conference, White House press secretary Sean Spicer stated the crowd held 420,000 people, “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” as a response to photos tweeted side-by-side by news outlets, including The New York Times, comparing the size of his crowd to former President Barack Obama’s in 2009.
When the statement was disproven by news sources and Spicer faced criticism for spreading falsehoods, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said the statement wasn’t a lie, but provided “alternative facts” in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Jan. 22.
In light of the idea that facts can simply be made up, as long as you place “alternative” in front of the word "fact", I now present some alternative facts, Longwood University edition:
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The construction will be done by the time I graduate. All students are confident in the pace of the construction.
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I enjoy paying out-of-state-tuition.
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There are hundreds of activities to do off-campus in Farmville.
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Everyone cared deeply about switching the pizza place to healthy food.
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It doesn’t bother me when I see people step on the rotundas.
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In fact, we have no eccentric traditions or superstitions at all at Longwood.
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We are proud students of Norwood University.
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As a whole, Farmville’s weather, just like Virginia’s weather, is completely predictable and makes perfect sense.
At the end of the day, of course we should be grateful for this charming new concept. After all, nothing could possibly go wrong by being able to make up things and call them facts.
Have a #LUAlternativeFact? Tell on Twitter @longwoodrotunda or on Facebook at the Longwood Rotunda.
The opinions in this article do not represent those of The Rotunda.
