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In response to their poor exam grades, several University of Maryland students have been observed doubling down on their project grades and taking a more aggressive approach to recruiting people to complete surveys they created.

For students needing one little bit of actual effort to snag that prestigious B- for the semester, their assignments to create and collect data from surveys on various topics aren’t formalities; they’re life or death.

DATA200 student Sinus Petyshen reached out to the Hare with an explanation for the trend: “My professor found out about all of my burner email addresses before I could use them, and my family still won’t talk to me, much less answer my questions about the frequency of squirrel attacks.”

Few surveys have been posted to the r/UMD page on Reddit.com this semester, which Petyshen attributes to the low quality of the data collected: “Forty thousand willing internet participants are worthless to me if all of their answers are ‘Meine Poopenfart ist gigantisch’ interspersed with quotes from The Amazing Digital Circus.”

Students have been observed invading office hours, interrupting exams, waiting in the backseats of cars, pirating SECU Stadium jumbotrons, and phase shifting through dorm walls to reach prospective participants.

“I took a page out of the GVPT school’s book and made taking my survey a graded assignment for the students in my section,” class TA Aiyma Leech confidently revealed. “Yeah, it’s shameful, but so is mysteriously getting a zero on your quiz, right?”

At press time, the restroom stall I was writing this article in was invaded by an anonymous student asking me how clean I think the toilet is on a scale of one to ten. I told him six so he would leave me alone.