St. Remedius Radio: “Finals and Lapels”

How St. Remedius Students Recovered From Finals

(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)

Many institutes of higher learning have traditions at the end of the school year, particularly around finals. Whether Caltech’s Ditch Day or Southern Methodist University’s Running of the Coke Dealers, most involve releasing stress just before or just before the main rush of final exams. St. Remedius Medical College took the theme to a whole new level: what about stress release during finals?

For decades until its disappearance, St. Remedius was famous for its Finals Prom, expanding upon concepts inspired by the only scientific award worth collecting. The Prom originally started with a group of Advanced Technologies students with a taste for pranking verging on desperation, who decided duct tape tuxedos and gowns were fine and good but needed additional pep. Seizing a batch of Faraday cage blackout cloth destined for a dumpster and enlisting a pair of transfer students wishing to expand their portfolios, four seniors showed up to their English finals in impeccably tailored formalware…that also changed color based on the relative strength of radio frequencies in the area. Not only did the professor not kick them out for disrupting the exams, she asked them for details once they handed in their tests. From that auspicious beginning, the concept expanded over the years to other departments, with Advanced Technologies and Metaphysics continuing their long friendly rivalry, and finally settled on several ground rules:

1. All materials had to be listed as otherwise unwanted or disposable, with no more than $50US spent on any individual outfit.
2. “Unwanted” was defined as “providing receipts upon request to prove it was being discarded,” so to prevent students from “liberating” department supplies.
3. At least 75 percent of each outfit had to be constructed by the student wearing it, although advisors both student and faculty were highly encouraged.
4. No outfit could be so disruptive, by means of light, sound, thaumaturgy, or psionics, that it interfered with other students’ test-taking abilities, and any specific effect had to have the ability to shut off, dampen down, or power down during the duration of the final exam.
5. No outfit could incorporate materials or components that risked life, health, property, or mental bearing (sadly incorporated after the Great Interdepartmental Cupcake Launcher Fiasco of 1981).
6. Participants were encouraged to produce outfits that utilized specific research themes or concepts.
7. Awards were available by student year and by department, but only awarded AFTER all final exams were completed for the year.
8. Any participant who sabotaged or neutralized another’s outfit was automatically disqualified from any awards and faced immediate sanctions, including banning from graduation ceremonies.

At its height, shortly before the College’s disappearance, Finals Prom was one of the highlights of the school year, with those unwilling or unable to make their own outfits demonstrating their skills with food, drink, and general entertainment. Music students with shoes that played the battle themes from the Irate Ian movies and Space Battleship Edmund Fitzgerald as they marched up stairs. Engineering majors whose dresses converted into tank treads. Jewelry made from artificially opalized dinosaur bone, both fossil and contemporary. Self-tipping top hats and bowlers. Camouflage in Texas bluebonnet boa patterns. Jackets and blouses designed to output lightning static electrical discharges made from pika pelts. Not all were completely successful (alumni still talk about the neural net fishtail gown incorporating alligator nerve tissue and the subsequent stench in the May heat wave of 1995), but even the spectacular failures had stories behind them. For a week, the St. Remedius campus was full of wild costumes, multiple iterations of St. Remedius pie (including the crunchy aerogel version that became a surprise sensation in 2002), and retro-engineered and retrofitted vintage soda flavors, and traces of the original Finals Prom continue in fashion events and collegiate competitions to this day. Indeed, some students found later fame and wealth for inventions first incorporated into their Prom attire, and everyone dependent upon anti-EMP insulation should thank St. Remedius for the inspiration.

And while you’re at it, the request lines are now open, complete with playlist.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

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