Sophia Zhang

Editor-in-Chief/ Literature Editor

Overworked and underpaid, it was a surprise to no one that Sophia Zhang, Editor-in-Chief (and Literature editor) of the Bandersnatch newspaper, was found dead in her room. The scene all but indicated that the girl died of alcohol poisoning, which was soon corroborated by the coroner’s office’s autopsy report.

The spiral she went on was a direct result of overexposure to the poor grammar she was forced to endure as Editor-in-Chief. Faced with misplaced commas, misused words, and verbose prose, her round of editing for the final issue of the semester broke a fundamental part of her brain, and her resulting alcoholic bender was one such manifestation.

Experts believe that, on top of her essential role in fixing typos and awkward phrasing, the stress associated with formatting the newspaper and all the projects of her graduating semester contributed to her psychotic break. Her descent into madness was remarkable in that the only thing that could have saved her was time buried in her room with no responsibilities other than getting through the books collecting dust on her shelves.

She will be remembered not only as the final Editor-in-Chief of Bandersnatch but as a girl undone by language, not her own, but everyone else’s.