Disclaimer: This story is a part of our April Fool’s edition, the Goofordian. This story was created by Guilfordian staff and is not based in fact.
Git (noun): a silly, incompetent or childish person.
See also: the source of the world’s problems.
That is the message the organizers of the first global “Don’t Be a Git!” rally are sending to leaders around the globe. To be held April 15-18 in the U.K., DBAG attendees will call for everyone to, quite simply, stop being gits.
“I don’t know why anybody hasn’t done this before,” said DBAG organizer and former Oxford University professor Allison Gross. “Why hold separate protests for global warming and the like when you can just hold one big one?”
The rally will be held in a field outside the small English village of Gittisham, about 50 miles south of Bristol. The small village’s roughly 500 residents have already begun preparations for crowds anticipated to number in the hundreds of thousands.
“It’s like Woodstock, only British,” said local shopkeeper Andrew Bartin as he boarded up the windows of his tea shop. “No, it’s more like the Bolsheviks in Russia. F—ing hippies.”
Gross and Guilford College alumnus Walter Lesly ’68 came up with the idea while Lesly was in London writing a book on Islamophobia. A chance meeting in a pub last year sowed the seeds for the event.
“The bartender gave me some disgusting swill instead of the craft beer I ordered, so I called him a git, among other things,” said Gross. “Walter was sitting next to me and asked what a git was. So we started talking about gits and came up with DBAG.”
Almost half a million people have already pre-registered for the event, paying the $1,000 fee for pitching a tent. Registrations have come from far-flung places such as Limbang, Brunei and High Point, N.C.
Dozens of Guilford students have signed up together as well.
“Man, I’m like, totally pumped,” said senior Burd Isabel, who helped organize the trip. “We’re going to, like, totally change the world. It’s pretty radical, you know?”
Several faculty members have already cancelled classes so they can go.
“It will be like the sixties all over again,” said Associate Professor of English Thomas Rymer, who remembers leaving school to attend Woodstock in 1969. “Officially, there won’t be the same level of drug usage as in White Lake. But if someone — I don’t know who — sneaks some in, we’ll see what happens.”
Many DBAG participants credit its popularity with its easy to understand and widely applicable message.
“The only people who don’t get it are the Americans,” said Gross. “They keep asking, ‘What’s a git?’ Everyone else in the world knows exactly who we’re talking about.”
The rapid spread of the word about DBAG through Tinder and Snapchat has caught the attention of world leaders.
“Count me in,” said Pope Francis during a press conference while wearing a tie-dye cassock. “Gits just get my goat.”
In the U.K., DBAG has become a social phenomenon. Minister Matty Groves recently introduced a bill in the House of Commons to ban being a git.
“It turns out ‘git’ is considered unparlimentary language,” said Groves. “So, the act’s full name is ‘An act to prohibit the state of being a certain-derogatory-term-that-we-can’t-say-in-Parliament-but-feel-we-need-to-make-a-law-about-anyway.’”
However, not everyone has been so supportive.
“How did you get this number?” said President Barack Obama.
American conservative media figures have taken to making fun of the event as well.
“Who creates an event called DBAG?” said Rush Limbaugh on his radio show, The Rush Limbaugh Show. “Next thing you know, they’ll be taking away our guns, money and booze because we’re ‘gits,’ whatever that means.”
However, Gross and Lesly remain optimistic that Americans will turn out in droves.
“It’ll be just like the commune I joined after Guilford,” said Lesly. “We’ll all live in peace and harmony, free of gits.”
Isabel reminds students that they can still sign up for the trip in the lobby of Founders Hall between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. on April 6.
“It’s going to be a totally crazy experience,” said Isabel. “Like, we’re going to sleep in a tent, you know?”
