This past week, our campus saw a massive cultural reform which was spearheaded by local student Austin Baker.

“It all started when I realized I’ve been calling everybody ‘dude’ regardless of their actual gender,” he told us in an exclusive interview. “I tweeted about it, and it got like 20,000 retweets. I feel like I started a movement.”

“A movement” only scratches the surface of what Austin has done for this city. Practically overnight, the rates of sexual assault have plummeted to almost zero. “Me and my roomates, Dane, Cody, and Chris, figured out that rape culture is actually really bad. Like, 10 minutes after my tweet blew up, we realized that if you were willing to force yourself on a girl, and girls are dudes, then you were also willing to force yourself on a dude, and that’s pretty gay.” Upon that realization, Austin followed up his original tweet with his shocking revelation, which got an additional 15,000 retweets.

But this change isn’t just confined to the county. Austin’s roommate Cody realized the political implications of what they discovered, and tagged their state representative, David Leland. Within 3 short days, Ohio got both paid full-year maternity and paternity leave. Transgender rights have also reached an all-time high in Ohio. “When you think about it, we’re all just dudes,” David Leland said as he passed a constitutional ban on transgender employment discrimination, ensuring that Ohioans will have their identities respected.

But Austin has no intention of stopping there. “My new goal is stopping racism,” he told us before we even got to ask about his future plans. “I want to make an alternate version of the N-word that white people are allowed say so they can drunk-scream Thotiana at Midway.”

Sometimes progress is won through struggle, sometimes it’s won in a flash. Activists used to say that it was not enough for men to not be sexist, they must be anti-sexist. But Austin has proved that real change can be made with no effort to evaluate gender roles, or support people who might not conform to those roles.

Written by Zach Levy, Staff Writer