Your housemate’s rotting groceries are an embodiment of Donald Trump in the Republican Primaries. No one is willing to touch either and we have a problem. 

I came to this realization over the winter holidays in my hometown of Blackstock — a beautiful, rural idyll in the middle of Ontario that, to my constant horror, lacks high-speed internet. My inability to watch American Netflix forced me to leave my room and seek food. To my shock, my family put our fresh clementines next to our apples. 

As you may know, apples emit ethylene gas — an odourless, colourless substance that causes other fruit to ripen quickly. Left unchecked, the gas corrupts and destroys everything that’s nourishing about other fruit. That’s when it hit me: America has an apple problem. 

They’ve named this bad apple “Donald Trump” and it’s gotten too close to the Republican (GOP) clementines. I quickly ate all of my family’s clementines to bravely save them from corruption, and then ran to my room to write this article to save us all. 

What, specifically, makes Trump a bad apple? Instead of ethylene gas, Trump spews a more nefarious gas in the form of racism, xenophobia, ableism, sexism and Islamophobia. Trump’s gas isn’t odourless or colourless; it’s on TV for the world to see, but it might as well be invisible. Trump faces zero repercussions for emitting his gas. Instead, he thrives off of it. 

When Trump called for a ban on the entire Muslim community in the United States, he started polling 11 points higher. The other Republican clementines raised alarm against Trump, but in the last 

CNN debate, each clementine tried to emit the same level of noxious fumes about Muslims to mimic Trump’s ability to spew and rise. 

Even if Trump collapses in the polls tomorrow, and is promptly removed from the fruit bowl, his damage is done. In five years time, the next wave of GOP nominees will all be apples. They’re currently watching how well the bad apple does in the polls. The xenophobic gas is an inspiration, as CNN never fails to tell us, and it’s working well as a political strategy. 

“Okay, but I’m not American. Stop boring me with American problems.” 

My friend, look at our border. Kingston, Ontario, sits uncomfortably close to the fruit basket of America. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been side-eyeing Lake Ontario ever since Trump announced he was going to run for president. I have nightmares of my neighbours letting the gas coming out of Trump into their homes, their res rooms and their classrooms. 

If we let Trump spew his gas into our city without fanning the toxic substance away, we risk our Canadian fruit basket going bad. Our campus, our traditions and our happiness are at risk. 

We especially need to protect our conservative clementines on campus. We need to save them like I saved my clementines. This isn’t a call to arms to eat the Republicans. I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy to eat each Republican nominee. 

Nor should we eat the conservatives in Kingston to save them. Please don’t repeat my brilliant actions with the clementines. Instead, let’s focus on keeping Trump’s gas out of Kingston. 

Let’s hire StuCons to keep Trump supporters off the Kingston ferry. Let’s hire engineers to turn the Wolfe Island wind turbines around to fan the noxious gasses of Trump back into America. Let’s ask CompSci students to replace every online video of Trump with 30 seconds of a tricolour squirrel giving us a thumbs-up. 

I know, I know: this plan doesn’t seem practical, effective or cost-efficient. But when has that stopped Queen’s University? My plan is easily as realistic as most projects undertaken by our student government. 

Queen’s students, we have to consider the natural consequences of letting the apples live so close to our city. I’m not saying we should ban Republican apples like Trump from our city and campus forever — just until our country’s representatives can figure out what’s going on and how we can deal with the gases at home.