Washington DC—The Gelman Library was the scene of some uproar last Thursday night when whoopee cushion went off on the third floor.

The victim has been identified as a librarian, Naomi Kelter. Eyewitnesses reported that Kelter had been reshelving periodicals when she decided to sit down in a nearby chair, apparently unaware that just beneath her posterior was a live whoopee cushion just waiting to go off.

Eric Wu, a junior in the Elliott School, was studying just a few feet away from the site of the incident.

“It wasn’t terribly loud, as whoopee cushions go, but we all heard it,” Wu told reporters from the Ax before going on to describe the sound as similar to something one might, “hear in the bathroom an hour after eating gas station-sushi.”

Witnesses report that after the initial shock wave had passed, Kelter tried to regain her composure, but was forced into retreat when a tidal wave of giggles swept across the entire floor.

While no injuries were sustained, the stiff-lipped victim suffered a major blow to her pride which led to a rapid deflation of her ego. Her condition is now stable, though group of psychology majors estimate that she will need at least the entirety of the Thanksgiving break to recuperate.

The whoopee cushion in question is believed to have been placed as long as eight years ago, when custodian, Jason Roman, claims to remember a days long series of zany prankings surrounding the April Fools’ Day of 2007. By the time order had been restored, nearly every seat in the library had been rigged and no one was truly safe from triggering a burst of faux flatulence.

“I tried to sweep the place top to bottom for them, but I guess I couldn’t get them all,” Roman told the Ax tearfully. “They just sit there for years, until some poor somebody comes along—they get you when you least expect it.”

At press-time, no new information had surfaced though on a seemingly unrelated note, the George Washington University Police Department issued a security alert regarding a man seen wearing a hand shocker and Groucho glasses.