HAPPY VALLEY, TENNESSEE - At the start of the new school year for incoming Freshmen at Southern Adventist University, a mixer welcoming new students brought a strange new ritual.
"Dr. Bietz gave us different color stickers that we were supposed to put either on our foreheads or the back of our hands to put us into different groups for the game," said Freshman film major, Junius Ortiz. "To tell you the truth, I took my sticker off my forehead to check whether it had a barcode or anything on it. But it didn't, so..."
Almost immediately after students began to receive the stickers from university president Gordon Bietz, students started calling the dots "The Mark of the Bietz."
Some parents who came to help their children settle in to university life were not pleased.
"This seems like a harmless little game, but it's not a laughing matter really," said one concerned mother who asked not to be named.
"This is a direct fulfillment of Bible prophecy that in the Last Days there would be scoffers. Well, here they are getting the 'Mark of the Bietz' and treating it like some joke. This is serious stuff!"
A university relations spokesperson issued a statement on behalf of the university the following day, saying,
We take seriously the concerns expressed by parents and constituents of the university. We want to assure all those with concerns that what students received was not the actual Mark of the Bietz. The real Mark is a red, hand-shaped mark on the forehead resulting from repetitive face-palming brought on by all the false crises, students "gifting" the president magazine subscriptions as a prank, and fake news stories on the Internet with which the president must contend.
Asked whether the statement did enough to alleviate concerns, the un-named mother said, "Kinda, not really."
