TSA-TSA Mixup Causes Dangerous Situation
Recently, a mixup occurred on CMU's campus at a recruiting event for the Transportation Security Administration, the agency responsible for securing air travel to, from, and within the United States. The event was booked for the Danforth Lounge, for 6 PM on Sunday. But in the neighboring Danforth Conference Room, another TSA was setting up for a GBM: CMU's own Taiwanese Students Association.
Due to the ensuing confusion, the entirety of the bodies of the two organizations were swapped overnight. Pittsburgh's hotels are swamped as over 60,000 former airport security officers are celebrating Taiwanese heritage, while the nation's airports are in chaos as around 100 East Asian CMU students attempt to operate the security infrastructure spread across the US's 480 international airports.
We talked to one exhausted former CMU student at Baltimore/Washington International Airport, who was attempting to scan the luggage of over one thousand passengers per hour. "I'm supposed to be responsible for Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC," she said. "I've been alternating between them every hour, but many flights are still being missed."
Other airport security agents have simply given up. "I just watched a full passenger plane blow up thirty seconds after takeoff," the former president of the Taiwanese Students Association told us. "I saw bodies fall from the sky."
Back at CMU, every lecture hall is filled to capacity as former security officials educate themselves on Taiwan and its rich cultural history. Many are former veterans. "I feel slightly out of place on a college campus," one said. "I haven't patted down someone's crotch in weeks."
Many on both sides of the mixup hope it will be resolved shortly. "We keep trying to reserve the two Danforths on 25Live in the opposite direction, but they keep denying our reservations," says one student. Some have appealed to CMU's registrars directly, but received no reply from the administrators, who are swamped by paperwork from the tens of thousands of new students.