By James “Jim” Dillon ‘26
Lately, news of PetroCat, the Texas-based fossil fuel company owned by Sprinceton University, has a lot of students confused. Though many colleges profit from connections with fossil fuels, it seems that Sprinceton is the only school to actually own a fossil fuel company. Upon learning about PetroCat, students asked many questions, which can be boiled down into three main categories. 10% of Sprinceton students asked some variation of, “Well, at least we’re hugely profiting from it, right?” (Editor’s Note: No.) 21.1% of students asked, “Why does it have such a stupid name?” But a whopping 68.9% had a very simple question: why? What possible reason could a university have for owning a fossil fuel company? But never fear! We have developed a list of five possible reasons for PetroCat’s existence.
- Anyone with any kind of power has to be involved in some sort of evil corporation.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? Someone who had a lot of power was like, “Wow, my life is awesome. You know what would make it even better? An evil corporation.” Naturally, everyone in the administration nodded, because to be fair, it probably feels pretty cool to be involved in an evil little secret.
- They thought it would be funny.
At some point, someone decided it would be funny to make up a really sinister business and then give it a ridiculously stupid name. As bad as it is to be involved in something that’s destroying the environment, it’s worse but also kind of silly if you name it something really dumb. Imagine if Yale owned a company called FuelBulldog. What a stupid name! Why would a bulldog be there?
- The university administration thinks the students are really stupid.
After taking a long, hard look at the student body, the administration came to the conclusion that Sprinceton students are not, in fact, smart at all. Instead of subjecting the world to the whims of a population they’d decided was so dumb, the administration kindly found a way to burn the world down before the current student body was old enough to come into power and ruin everything our own way.
- There was a really bad typo on a memo.
Hear me out here. Someone felt bad that the mascot is just “The Cat,” so they wanted to give him a real name. The name chosen was Peter Cat. Unfortunately, on the official document for the university president to sign passing Peter Cat into existence, someone wrote Petro Cat, and the president just assumed it said Peter and didn’t bother reading the fine print. Once he realized what he’d done, he was too embarrassed to admit his mistake, as was the guy that typed it up, so the official stance was, “No, actually, this was totally intentional. We actually completely wanted a fossil fuel company.” And so PetroCat was born, and The Cat never got a real name after all.
- There is actually no such thing as PetroCat, and Sprinceton students are being ragebaited.
Honestly, given the other possibilities, this seems increasingly likely.
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