Last weekend saw the arrival of nearly 5,000 new students on campus. Of course, this causes all sorts of logistical problems for the staff at UC Davis who have to oversee this operation. In addition to the more fundamental problems (thousands of SUVs all trying to unload stuff at the same time, traffic problems etc.) there are also the many, many questions from concerned parents who wonder if the 'one square inch of peeling paint' in the dorm hallway is going to prove a health issue for their darling John/Jane.
However, on top of all of these problems there are the things that you never predict. The events that can't be predicted. One of those problems is...what would happen if too many of those many thousands of students all try flushing their dorm toilets at approximately the same time? Apparently this situation is known as the 'big flush' and is usually more of a hypothetical concern of architects and plumbing engineers than a real-world scenario. But UC Davis likes to be a trend setter, and so it came to pass that on Sunday morning, the campus suffered a bout of rather unpleasant congestion as the 'nightmare scenario' of the big flush came true. I'll spare readers too many details of the after-effects. Suffice to say that things are now flowing smoothly again and the smell has almost dissipated.
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