Grantham, PA – What started as a noble attempt at curbing teenage hooliganism at Messiah Conference quickly spun out of control, deteriorating into a catastrophe of truly massive scope by the end of the week. After three nights of flawless, efficient curfew enforcement, on Wednesday afternoon the YMJA’s experimental new golem suddenly began terrorizing the campus, leaving a trail of minor injuries and major property damage in its wake.

While the investigation into the cause of this debacle is still ongoing, early reports indicate that it began when one or more YMJA leaders decided to expand the golem’s duties, amending its life-giving instruction scroll to include enforcement of all other YMJA rules as well as the curfew. The identities of the leaders in question have so far not been released, but those following the investigation have noted that much of the scrutiny seems to be directed toward newly elected YMJA President, Ravi Goldberg, and the now former YMJA Vice President, Danielah Blackburn.

Regardless of the culprits’ identities, what followed is beyond dispute. Upon receiving these new, considerably more complex instructions, the golem promptly went about hunting down and apprehending supposed rule-breakers, many of whom were clearly innocent of the infractions for which they had been targeted. “I just suddenly felt this massive hand on my shoulder,” said Jason Jenkins. “This unimaginably deep voice said, ’No drugs or alcohol,’ and next thing I knew I was being lifted up into the air and carried away. I kept trying to explain that it was only a cough drop, but the golem just wouldn’t listen.”

Jenkins was far from the only attendee to suffer the golem’s undeserved wrath. According to Nick Lewis, a member of the YMJA leadership team, he and his wife had just settled in for the night on Thursday when their dorm room door burst off its hinges. “Before we could even react, it walked over and lifted the entire bed over its head with us in it. It kept screaming ‘Purple!’ over and over again. Purple is YMJA code for someone being in the room of someone of the opposite gender, and apparently the golem didn’t realize that the rule doesn’t apply to married couples sharing a room.”

Even those beyond the purview of the YMJA weren’t safe from the golem’s enforcement, as the crowd in the main auditorium discovered on Wednesday evening. “Rabbi David Chernoff had just started his message when this giant clay monstrosity lumbered onto the stage behind him,” recalled Jonathan Rutter. “It yelled ‘dress code violation’ really loudly, then wrapped the Rabbi in a massive bear hug and dragged him off stage. I heard that when security finally tracked it down, the whole YMJA exec committee was yelling at it that a crooked tallit is not a valid dress code issue.”

The golem’s reign of terror and overly zealous legalism finally came to an end on Friday afternoon when it tried to apprehend a group of children for possession of toy lightsabers, which it deemed a violation of the “no weapons” rule. Upon being grabbed, a young girl named Joelle Hackett became fascinated by the star-shaped clay medallion on the creature’s chest. She pulled it off to investigate it more closely, not even realizing as she did so that it contained the words that gave the thing life. Once the words were removed, the golem immediately became inert, at which point it was a simple matter to smash the thing and burn its instruction scroll. In the end, no trace was left of it but the numerous bruises, smashed door frames, and traumatic memories that it had caused.

While obviously disappointed by the golem’s failure, the YMJA executive team has vowed to continue to perfect the art of rule enforcement in future years. “I seem to remember Rabbi Kevin [Solomon] saying something about training a pack of curfew dogs,” Blackburn was heard saying. “Maybe we should look into that.”

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