Wheeling Jesuit University/People/Smelly Bison
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Chief Smelly Bison, the alter ego of Priscilla Cronk, was the Supreme Eagle Chieftain of the Library of the Damned of Wheeling Jesuit University from 2003 to 2006. One of the most controversial directors in the library's history, Smelly Bison was ultimately removed from her position by the efforts of Dr. Ubermann from the Churchill Society, Wheeling.
Early life and childhood[edit | edit source]
Smelly Bison was born Priscilla Elaine Cronk in Dickinson, North Dakota, on 17 December, 1973. Spending almost nine years in Dickinson Elementary, she was finally graduated by the school on account that "the school lunches were no longer big enough" to feed the growing Cronk, and that she was having trouble sitting down at the little tables. Cronk worked as an assistant in her father's auto repair shop for a few years, but was very unsatisfied with such a line of work.
The calling[edit | edit source]
At the age of nineteen, Cronk received a "spiritual calling", and left her family and her home town, wandering the frozen plains of North Dakota for fourteen months, subsisting only on roots and road kill. One winter's night, a particularly fierce blizzard hit the state, and she was left trapped and alone in the middle of nowhere, her cellphone battery having died some weeks earlier. It was then when she reportedly had a vision of a golden bison charging towards her, filling her body with warmth and inspiring her very being.
By her own accounts, she fell into a slumber, and she was visited by a man who told her to "follow the bison, for it will lead you to your rightful place". Cronk did just that, and she followed a vision of the golden bison for months until she arrived at Wheeling, West Virginia.
Ascension[edit | edit source]
Cronk lived as a vagrant for many years in Wheeling, competing for resources with Moondog and the other homeless people there. In the spring of 2003, Dr. Donna Tompkins, the then-director of the Library of the Damned, passed away, having served the library for almost forty years. Although her triple PhDs in history, literature, and nuclear physics made her unpopular with El Presidente, she was widely regarded by the faculty of WJU as one of the best head librarians the library had ever seen.
By the fall of the same year, El Presidente has not succeeded in finding a suitable librarian for WJU, and he began to grow anxious. After a night at the local Sheetz with Great White Mother, Cronk came up to them and begged them for money to buy booze. Moved with pity, Great White Mother suggested with tears in her eyes that Cronk should be hired for the position of head librarian. El Presidente agreed.
Cronk was then hired under the "Go Native!" scheme, in which homeless vagrants who could prove that they were at least partially Native American would be paid double any full-time staff member. At that point, Cronk adopted the name Smelly Bison, eschewing her "captive" name once and for all.
Wheeling Jesuit University[edit | edit source]
Smelly Bison was signed on as the new full-time head librarian of Wheeling Jesuit University, reportedly earning a starting salary of $75,000 a month. Smelly Bison's changes were harmless at first, although several new policies, including "Stop at 75 pages", were met with frustration by faculty and staff.
In 2004, Smelly Bison renamed the position of "head librarian" to "Supreme Eagle Chieftain", tripling her own salary. In order to sustain her wages, she agreed to sell priceless artefacts from the library's storeroom; a sarcophagus of Julius II was sold on eBay for $200, to which she reacted in a very pleased way, having sold "some dusty old shit to some moron" for a few hundred dollars. In the same year, Smelly Bison signed on as a member of the League of Evil.
Her most controversial change was in implementation of "Operation Reverse Manifest Destiny", in which it was decided that "literature which suppresses or makes light of the plight of the Native American peoples must be destroyed". While her initial destruction of the library's catalogue was systematic, Operation Reverse Manifest Destiny eventually evolved into an exercise in "bureaucratic coin flipping". Although the plan was praised by both El Presidente and Great White Mother, faculty and student tensions became so high that the WJU Board of Governors threatened to mobilise ITS Deathbots should matters get any worse.
Fortunately, Smelly Bison was stopped with the intervention of Dr. Ubermann, who duly informed Smelly Bison that the Water Spirits were telling her to go to Hong Kong and never to return to Wheeling again. Smelly Bison abdicated her position in 2006 and did as he instructed, and has not attempted to contact Wheeling Jesuit University or the Library of the Damned since.
Currently[edit | edit source]
While on a routine trip to China to stop left-wing extremists from raising Mao Zedong (again), Dr. M encountered Smelly Bison by chance. She told him that Hong Kong offers many more opportunities for homeless people than Wheeling ever did.