This past week, the Carleton College water polo team was disbanded permanently after a practice game went horribly awry, resulting in the loss of their full stable of horses. The team was already on thin ice after last spring’s incident of horse drowning during a friendly game with St. Olaf College. After being frozen out of their Workday accounts, the team said in an official comment to The Carletonian that they were ‘simply horsing around’. 

Horses have long been a staple of Carleton Water Polo, perhaps another expression of the oft-mentioned Carleton quirkiness. The difficulty in teaching the horses to swim is a cost borne out in the numerous equine losses per year, but this system was pushed to its limit this year as the water polo team began acclimating the horses to the extreme world of winter water polo. While the initial results were promising, as the horses took to the pools like horsefish to water, as the temperatures in Minnesota plummeted, so did their odds of survival. After a particularly long overnight endurance test, the team was shocked to find all but one of the horses frozen in a solid ice block. When the lone surviving horse was asked if they would ever repeat this experience, they simply replied ‘nay’. 

On the urging of the CCCE, BonApp has announced a special new ‘Iced Horse Burger’ meal to run all week. Students initially protested on humanitarian grounds but realized that there wasn’t really anything else that they would rather have in the dining hall. They were, in an opinion poll, reportedly just happy it wasn’t more chicken tinga. The surviving horse, now named Snowflake, has been given permanent residence in the hidden bunker beneath Nutting House and has been officially recognized as Carleton’s seventh mascot.