Last week, the Students’ Administrative Council issued a press release, something it does on a fairly regular basis. But this one was different.
“SAC launches plan to buyout [sic] APUS and GSU,” the March 31 memo said. It went on to detail the takeover plans, in which SAC would buy out the Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students and the Graduate Students’ Union to form one big student group.
An ambitious plan, no doubt, but of course it was all an April Fools’ Day prank, sent out one day early.
In its Monday, April 4 edition, The Medium, the student paper of U of T’s Erindale Campus, published a deadpan story on the takeover, falling for it hook, line, and sinker.
Later that day came another SAC press release: “…our press release…was indeed an April Fool Day [sic] prank,” it read. “SAC has no intentions to buy out APUS or the GSU nor have we ever passed a motion saying so. We regret any confusion this may have caused.”
“We didn’t think anyone would fall for it,” said SAC VP University Affairs Howard Tam. “I can’t believe it went that far.”
“SAC is too serious at times,” said President Ranjini Ghosh. “We thought it would be funny to play a little joke.”
Medium editor Adrian Barek was chastened but a good sport about it.
“Apparently, we got had,” he said on Monday evening. “It was the last issue of the year and I guess we weren’t doing all the fact-checking and verification we usually do. I can’t believe we got taken.”
