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USU Board candidate Joe Fidler survives Nerf gun assassination attempt

Decency lives to fight another day.

Image: USU

USU Board candidate Joe Fidler has survived an assassination attempt by a Nerf-wielding top-hatted assailant in the Holme Building.

Harrowing footage shows Fidler addressing the audience of the USU Election Soapbox yesterday, before a top-hatted figure interrupted Fidler’s response to a panel question. The man, known to Fidler as “Mr Pennyworth”, lambasted him as “not worthy” and “undecent”, before drawing a Nerf blaster and shooting Fidler at close-range.

Despite taking a foam dart to the chest, Fidler was able to return fire with a Nerf weapon of his own, wounding the assailant, who fled the scene.

“Decency doesn’t die that easily,” Fidler told the audience, to applause.

Video: USU

Sources close to Fidler praised his “steely resolve” and “deadeye shooting.”

“He’s the fastest man on Eastern Avenue,” said one admirer.

In a statement to Honi, Fidler said he had “many enemies in this sewer of a campus,” but that the dart “hit my copy of The Barefoot Investor, which I carry everywhere in my suit jacket pocket […] I’m mainly concerned how this will look on my Linkedin.”

“If the USU give me a plaque next to Gilgamesh, we can call it even due to their subpar security.”

The attacker’s condition and current whereabouts are unknown. Eyewitness testimony suggests “Mr Pennyworth,” who Fidler described as “my campaign patron, an oil baron from Alabama,” bore a strong resemblance to Fidler campaign manager James Wily. Honi makes no allegations of wrongdoing against Wily.

Fidler has promised a “return of decency” to campus, with policies including the fracking of the Quadrangle and the introduction of a USyd uniform. He has strongly denied claims he is a joke candidate, telling the Soapbox he would not “let these baseless allegations burn me down.” 

Little else occurred at an otherwise uneventful USU Election Soapbox.

Voting for the USU Board elections opens 17 May.