— PREDAWN —

The day’s skateboard tally began at 12:12 a.m., when a single skater coffined down the hill by Starbucks at top speed. The occasional thunder of boards on brick and the burble of the Memorial Pool fountains behind me were the only sound around at that hour.

Thomas Nazarro, a human resources junior returning from a game night, walked up at 3:23 a.m. to investigate our cuttingedge journalistic experiment.

“I always like to walk around campus. It’s probably not the safest, but I like to walk around campus at night. Honestly, I feel pretty safe...like, you’ll walk around at 3 a.m. and there’ll be like no people,” Nazarro said.

Then, he spotted the Mercury reporters with a blanket and a Twitch livestream.

“I just walked by and saw some people looking like homeless people sitting by the Plinth, and I was like, ‘hey!’” he said. “They had Temoc colors, so I was like, ‘they can’t be that harmful.’ Temoc has benevolent energy.”

MORNING —

"The library's my favorite spot, and the SU. It's nice passing through here on my way to the library, 'cause I see a bunch of music playing around and people talking. Back then [pre-pandemic] it was more crowded, and I guess more lively."

- Aulani Sanchez

single sprinter came through just after nine looking absolutely panicked on the way to a lecture…I hope that worked out for him. A tour group came through — we were never that short, right? — and the guide teaches them that the Plinth Fountain is called the “Fog Log,” a name that kicks off

Sahithi Chundu, a mechanical engineering and economics freshman, attributed her positive experience at UTD to its unique students.

“There’s a lot of college campuses where there’s like a spectrum from ‘nobody cares can from places, and [at] UTD it seems like there’s something new that I find every week.”

3:23 PM my second sidequest of the day: asking everyone who comes through what their name for it is.

One person toed the official “Fog Log” line, but the rest were a motley crew of “Alien Machine,” “Vape Pen,” “Steam Beam” and—my personal favorite—“Alexander.”

— AFTERNOON — — EVENING —

By 9:54 p.m., 22 hours into the marathon, I had to give in to the intrusive thought and send someone to ask if the person manning the Techknowlegy Bar could be called a “bartecher.” Sadly, that is not yet their official job title.

My 24 hours on the Plinth gave me a new appreciation for the University as a whole, but particularly the people who go here. Maybe it’s just the mere exposure effect of watching about anything at all’ versus ‘people are extremely individualistic and prideful’, and I feel like UTD is a nice medium,” she said. “We have people that are passionate about what they do, but we also have people that are kind.” it for this long. Maybe it’s the actual exposure of freezing outside. Either way, I know that something has shifted on campus, something that goes far beyond a single day.

Not the Plinth Fountain name, though; the jury’s still out on that one.

This story has been excerpted to fit the spacing constraints of publication. For the full experience—including a skateboard tally and a runin with the Californians—visit utdmercury.com.