In November we covered the leaked Operation Hidden Member, which revealed the original construction of Crosley Tower as a missile silo. After several months of silence, the US Department of Defense has reportedly ordered the University of Cincinnati to halt its plans for the demolition of the troubled landmark.

According to sources inside the Pentagon, the missile silo was retrofitted in the 1980s to house the newer LGM-30G Minuteman III in order to take advantage of more modern capabilities. The image above was recently obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request and shows the new ICBM being lowered into the center of the structure. While the Department of Defense has not explicitly confirmed the current status of the site, its directive to UC seems to indicate a still-active military installation.

So far it remains unclear if the University sought to have Crosley’s now-infamous missile silo decommissioned in time for the building’s planned 2025 demolition, or if the office of Planning, Design, & Construction simply didn’t know it existed. While the future of Operation Hidden Member is unknown, the US Air Force plans to maintain the Minuteman III arsenal until about 2030. It appears that the Crosley project will be placed on hold while a channel of communication between federal and university officials is established to determine the fate of Cincinnati’s iconic pillar of concrete.

Last Monday, UC’s housing department sent an email to students stating that housing options would be limited for those wishing to return next Fall. Students unable to make enough friends to secure a house lease in October were sent into a panic, trying to devise plans to land a contract for the next year. 

One student hacker, only known online as “B0LdLy_b@d," reportedly gave the university the following ultimatum: “Housing for everyone or housing for no one,” elaborating that she would “bypass their firewalls, hack into their mainframe, and shut the whole system down” if they didn’t open up more housing slots. President Pinto reportedly responded to her demands with, “we don’t negotiate with terrorists, let alone women.”

When the application went live at noon this past Monday, B0LdLy_b@d kept her promise and brought the entire housing website down, causing mass hysteria on campus. Students gathered and stormed the housing office located on the second floor of Marian Spencer Hall, only to find that the entire department was being run by a single, very stressed looking raccoon named Daryl. These students reportedly left soon after, feeling sorry that a creature with such small intellect was put in charge of all of UC’s housing.

Within the next few hours, Daryl the Housing Raccoon and UC’s IT department, composed of high school dropouts, were able to bring the site back online. By the time the bloodbath had ended, only 50% of students seeking housing this year were able to secure it. TNC will follow this story to see if Daryl finds a working solution.

Last week local campus space enthusiast club Cube Cats launched their  yearly high altitude balloon experiment, designed by their freshman team. The balloon’s payload was created to see if different strains of marijuana were affected by cosmic rays found at high altitudes.

The mission, named “Cattabis,” appeared to start well, but after the balloon launched many of the ground crew partook in what they described as the “control experiment,” by smoking the same strains found on the balloon in an effort to “get a baseline for scientific measurements, man.” The ground crew didn’t notice when their experiment drifted further away than expected, into restricted airspace. 

Hours later, the balloon made national headlines as it made its way across the United States and was misidentified as a Chinese spy balloon, causing the American public to panic. 

It wasn’t until several days later when the Cube Cats ground crew sobered up that they realized their mistake. The club promptly posted an apology on its Instagram page.

• You may destroy as much property as you want, as long as a Hughes high school student is nearby to blame the damage on.

• With the rising cost of eggs and toilet paper, students can throw pudding from On The Green at the houses of professors who had the audacity to grade their papers on time.