Greetings from the Flipside! I have had the pleasure of interviewing Evan, a Computer Science major at the McCormick School of Engineering, and he has convinced me that the recently reopened Las Vegas Sphere and the Northwestern tradition of Paint The Rock are “Basically the same thing, man…” You may be skeptical, but bear with me; the similarities are more glaring than you might think.

“It’s like, think about it man. Both involve projecting something on a massive canvas. One’s a rock, the other’s a giant sphere in the middle of the desert. Potato, potahto,” Evan said with a smirk that suggested he might be onto something.

“Just like how someone painted ‘Nyan Cat’ on the Rock, we’ve seen everything from ads to memes to existential crises projected onto the Vegas Sphere. It’s a canvas for our collective consciousness, man,” Evan explained, waving his hands like he had cracked the code.

Perhaps the most mind blowing idea comes from Evan’s assertion that this equivalency should make it legal for any Northwestern student to “Paint the Sphere”. Evan courageously took initiative and personally stood next to the Sphere for twenty four hours. Unbeknownst to security, he had just earned the right to hack into the Sphere using his programming skills.

“Yeah but I just guarded the Sphere, officer,” Evan reportedly said after the arrest. Evan has since been released and dropped of all charges after the city of Las Vegas issued an official statement that the Paint the Rock traditions indeed applies to the Vegas Sphere.