In a lengthy note posted online this Saturday, Snakes of UBC — a Facebook meme page that helped usher the “Sauder snakes” meme into the UBC lexicon — issued a long apology after reports began to circulate that Sauder students were booed and hissed at during the Imagine Day pep rally.
“I want to formally apologize to Daphne Tse (President of the UBC Commerce Undergraduate Society), Robert Helsley (Dean of UBC Sauder School of Business), Santa Ono (President of University of British Columbia) and the entire Commerce faculty for indirectly aiding this incident which has caused you all so much distress and embarrassment,” the post reads. “I am truly sorry for what transpired at the Imagine Day rally.”
The article goes into more detail apologizing to Tse, who published this letter earlier today.
“I especially want to apologize to Daphne, who is by all accounts an upstanding, compassionate and passionately-involved individual who sounds like she does deserve all the superlatives applied to her. You did not deserve a stadium of hissing.”
The anonymous page admin also condemned the jeers.
“I’m not pulling any punches: this was incredibly disrespectful of everyone from every faculty who hissed, booed or called out.”
Created in January 2017, Snakes of UBC quickly developed a small following thanks to its memes and statuses associating Sauder students with snakes — or, more specifically, the modern-day internet definition of snakes. Although the page has been almost entirely inactive in the past four months, the term “Sauder snakes” has nonetheless become a commonly used insult to refer to Sauder students. The phrase continues to be popular on r/UBC, even if their admins are getting sick of it.
Omg non-business kids hissed like snakes at the Business kids during the orientation pep rally at my old uni. LMAO SO MUCH FOR INCLUSIVITY.
— kelly ✨ (@kelaesethetic) September 8, 2017
Though most of Snakes of UBC’s posts were generally light-hearted, recent events suggest that the meme has turned cruel and sinister. For example, a recent post on UBC Confessions tells the story of a student in a science class who was booed and called a “snake” by her classmates after she mentioned in her introduction to the class that she attended Sauder.
In their letter, Snakes of UBC recognized that although students have a primal tendency to mock other faculties, each faculty still does important work that makes the world a better place.
LOLing so hard at all the sauder students who think being called a snake is the worst form of discrimination on campus
— Emily (@sea_en_emily) September 12, 2017
“Sauder students are sly and deceitful snakes who cut corners in their pursuit maintaining and improving the fragile economic glue which holds everything together (transport logistics students are trying to keep you from rioting because your avocados take a year to get here by donkey),” they wrote. “Arts students pursue BA’s with no hopes of decent income and a future of minimum wage service jobs, yet their varied fields are emblematic of the growth of our socio-cultural identity (yes, even Cognitive Systems).”
They also state that that the page will remain open on Facebook until enough people read their letter to understand their new perspective on the matter at hand.
“We need to hope people will be better than the vocal minority of IRL shit-disturbers and self-styled memelords,” they wrote. “Hopefully people will aspire to be more like the Daphnes (or Santas — both kinds) of the world.”
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