(Wednesday, February 26th.) After a long night of voting and the painstakingprocess of certifying the authenticity and integrity of the election–so secure that first-year member Sonny Noble even voted from outside the room–the results of the 2025 Flipside elections were announced to laughs, tears, and even a coup threat. Amidst the chaos, and amidst the accession of new president Kyra Lesmerises, the club’s real seat of power–Flipside Vice President and chief eunuch Benjamin Auby–went largely unnoticed.

Looking back as Ben Auby enters his second year as Flipside VP, his consolidation of power has been unprecedented. He’s set the venue for the executive transition to his own apartment and has implicitly threatened the president-elect to challenge him.

The extent of Auby’s devotion to eunuchry is currently unclear, but experts and political scientists alike are sounding the alarm.

“Traditionally, you have your president, and you then you have chief advisers, and then, all the way at the bottom, you have your eunuchs,” says Jick Bickerson, a Northwestern professor and expert on satire magazine hierarchies. “What Auby wants to do is essentially supplant all of that.”

According to Bickerson, although eunuchs’ traditional non-scheming vow is key to the integrity of the executive board, Auby, as of yet, has refused to disavow the great eunuch pastime. “It’s rather concerning, actually, and I would possibly argue that Auby is very much scheming right now.” At the present, there is no word from the executive board about whether Auby is scheming, with most members seeming to have assumed a wait-and-see stance. One thing is clear, however: if you start coughing after taking a sip from your goblet, make sure that Benjamin Auby is not giving you a sinister smile.