Please Stop Having Sex On My Grave

By Hannah Arendt

I would (sadly) like to announce that I, Hannah Arendt, am rising from my grave to write for the first time in over four decades. For years, I have watched generations of Bard students laugh, grow up, and awkwardly canoodle in the graveyard where my body is buried. Although each cohort of students has its own quirks, fashion choices, and methods of getting nicotine into their bodies, all Bard classes have one thing in common: they won’t stop having sex on my grave.

I don’t know how this got started. I’m not sure why every American Spirit-smoking, Communist Manifesto-skimming freshman since the seventies has felt the need to take the first girl he meets who “loves Ken Burns” to my specific grave and have sex on it. I don’t know whether each one comes up with the idea on their own, or if it’s a tradition that has been passed on through word of mouth for decades. Either way, I am sick of it and would like all Bard students to stop having sex on my grave.

Perhaps the most insulting aspect of this situation is that I, when made uncomfortable by freshmen fornicating on my grave, am forced to leave the graveyard and come back in five to ten minutes (do they think about dead political theorists so they can last longer? Is that it?) when the disappointing sex is inevitably over. That’s right: Bard students are sexiling me from my own grave. I can no longer be at peace there.

But it’s not too late to help me! You can help me out by to restoring the honor and dignity of the woman upon whose grave you probably had at least an awkward dry-humping session. Tell your friends, tell your classmates, tell your dealer: please stop having sex on Hannah Arendt’s grave.