The Kingsmen followed their annual tradition yesterday by interrupting classes with song-o-grams.  After sneaking into a class to catch one of their performances, Bwog stalked the group to more serenades, really learning the power of large groups of people in brightly colored jackets.  They explained that friends or members suggest people to serenade and provide a time and place to do it.  The main motivation is to embarrass the receiver, but the Kingsmen admitted they probably have more fun that the person being serenaded or the person who set it up.  Decide for yourself by checking out the scene:

And for another view, check this out.

Tell us about your mother's NSOP week

The moment of move-in day (supposed to to start today) after your parents leave and before Orientation really begins is pretty terrifying. The Klimt posters securely tacked to your John Jay wall are not substitutes for human-person friends, and you don’t have any of those yet. One Bwogger remembered calling an older friend at this very moment three years ago and asking what to do now that he was moved in and alone. “Go downstairs and hang out with the people outside your dorm smoking cigarettes,” the friend advised. She wasn’t wrong.

There will be many moments of Orientation that make you feel unsettled and vaguely sad, epitomized in the forced march of Orientation activities that you will quickly realize are not-really-mandatory but still sometimes kind of fun in spite of themselves (especially if you are drunk). For the third year in a row, Bwog takes a look at the Orientation activities scheduled at other colleges around the nation, in hopes you, freshperson, will be encouraged that your NSOP week could be worse.

UPenn is hosting a “Girl’s Night” that is, allegedly, “not just for girls!” Complete with s’mores-making, Wii-playing, and saying stuff like this.

Brown’s Class of 2015 Meet & Greet offers the opportunity to “sculpt Brown bears out of Play Doh.” You may also win temporary tattoos and take a photo with Cubby the Brown Bear at the First-Year Festival. “No one is too cool for ‘donuts on a string,’” the orientation schedule declares. We beg to differ.

Harvard engages in some typical navel-gazing with a screening of Good Will Hunting. Also available that evening: pretzel-making, “hanging in the HappyNest” which we can only assume is code for some kind of drug-fueled all-night celebration, and mini bowling.

Wesleyan has a “Bigger Crazy Fun Night” scheduled. You can make your own street sign.

Johns Hopkins, already famous for 2009′s “Beer Goggles Challenge”, hosts a “Sexcapades” meeting.

UMiami offers a “Welcome to Miami” fete sponsored by the confusingly-acronymed BACCHUS, which apparently stands for “Promoting Alcohol Responsibility to You.”

Evergreen University’s alcohol-awareness performance is titled “Thinking Outside the Bottle.” They’re also hosting a make-your-own-doormat party. There will be a performance from the “Heart Sparkle Players” one evening.

Hänsel und Gretel

They came, they saw, they clung to their nametags. We’re sure we conquered their hearts and minds with our extremely desirable and hip aloofness, sporadically pleasant weather and immaculate study habits… But really though? More likely you did one of the following things, because you were amused by their fresh-faced naïveté, and took a sick pleasure in crushing it.

General purpose

• Physically
• Introduce them to the sketchiest grad student in 1020
• Sexile them
• Ask them if they’ve read it in the original language; scoff
• Neglect to tell them to switch to the 1 from the 2 or 3 at 96th.

Columbia

• Tell them about Frontiers / “FroSci”
• Sign them up for the Earth Institute listserv
• Wake them and stare into their soul with your blood-shot, Red Bull-fueled 4
  am Butler-eyes
• Feed them John Jay’s vegan “riblettes”
• Leave them in Mudd
• Bombard them with acronyms
• Pressure them into smoking their first Butler cigarette

Barnard

• Hand them a flyer that says “go green: use a diva cup!”
• Tell them that boys aren’t allowed in the dorms
• Take them to Lehman instead of Butler
• Make them steal kosher brownies for you at Hewitt; wait for them to get yelled at
• Use the phrase “strong, beautiful barnard woman” more than 5 times in an hour
• Burn your bra in front of them

A cautionary tale via Wikimedia

Midterms do not always bring out the best in us. It is common knowledge that Aeneas was knee-deep in exam season when he killed Turnus, “aflame with rage.” And on Carman 12, no stranger to shenanigans, the primal urge to tear things down from bulletins boards has been indulged without mercy.

With midterms approaching, seats in Butler come at a premium.  The number of alternative options is growing, but whether it’s the pleasing symmetry, or its world class ranking we can’t help coming back for more. So for dedicated Butler-ites, and also for those who are just trying to cram a half semester’s worth of reading in one week, Bwog presents a Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Butler Morals.

Only counting waking hours, I wonder if I have spent more time in Butler or in my dorm room.

1. Leaving Your Shit
   • Need to go pee? Universal sentiment drives you to it, so Hume says it’s A-Okay.
   • Need to make a food run? Hobbes recognizes that it mutually benefits everyone if we allow each other to get some food every now and then. But apparently life isn’t the only thing that is nasty and brutish (looking at you Butler Cafe coffee…) It’s okay to make a Starbucks, Oren’s, or Joe’s run. Food is allowable as well, but please don’t bring back overly fragrant Indian food, and save those loud crackly Sun Chip bags for the hallway.
   • Need to leave for 3 hours so that you can watch Lord of the Rings? Machiavelli sez we should ruthlessly jack your shit.  If you notice that someone has been gone for over an hour, then feel free to wave over that distraught freshperson who just wandered into the room, and reassure him or her that the MIA person’s spot is now free.  Now he or she owes you…
2. Moving Peoples’ Shit
   • Apparently there is an official policy about kicking out campers.  We can treat that like Eastern philosophy and ignore it.
   • Only a few books? Kant rambled incoherently for 30 pages about this problem.  Not really sure what he meant, but let’s say that I have a duty to not waste my life trying to figure it out, and I’ll just satisfy my inclination to move aside those books.
   • A few open books and notebooks?Ask the people who were around when the person left.  Use your judgement. But what is judgment? Can we trust reason?  What if the books don’t really exist? What if I don’t exist?
     

     "Be inhuman out of pity and love of humanity!"

   • Laptop chained to a chair/lamp messy papers all around? This is one is tricky because people most often chain their laptop if they plan on being gone for an extended period of time.  Again, ask neighbors.  If it has definitely been over an hour, arrogantly push aside everything and assert your natural right to ass-chair association.  Then murder everyone who you suspect disagrees with you.  At least that’s what the French would do…

The bottom line is that we have limited space to work with, and so we need to use it efficiently and morally.  What would we do without the Core?

The New York housing market really is insane! This flyer, spotted in McBain, offers nearly a thousand dollars each to upperclassmen willing to throw in their lot with rich but ridiculous rising sophomores. Of course, plenty of upperclassmen use freshpeople fears about the housing lottery to score some sweet suite singles, but it seems few realize just how much of a literal goldmine their priority numbers really are.

Identity of poster blocked! You're not really supposed to do this...

Freud doesn't wanna do this stuff, either

Orientation can be fun, provided you’re drunk or Kenneth the page. Columbia is very nice to you during NSOP (relish it!) and rents out the Met and everyone smiles and tells you where Pupin is when you ask them. There is, however, the underlying problem that you don’t know any of these people, and there’s only so many times you can ask someone where they’re from. While NSOP at Columbia has its rough moments (never-ending ice-breakers, your first John Jay breakfast), it could be much worse. Feel better about everything as you discover what people at other schools are forced to do.

At Wesleyan, the delights are endless: there’s a play called Booze and Lose: “find out what happens when a group of students get together for a party. See how quickly common sense, good judgment, and emotional control evaporate when mixed with alcohol.” The program promises to provide impressionable young-things with a sense of “how to make better choices or face the consequences.” Zoinks!

There’s also a square dance, and a “Bend It At Beckham Dance”– “come prepared to bend the gender binary in fun and fashion.” A change of pace from the same-old, same-old Orientation activities at Beck University, certainly.

Brown has a truly baffling pre-Orientation program called The Third World Transition Program. Brown says we can call it TWTP for short. Thanks, guy. Heaven knows why we’re surprised to find out about the existence of a Third World Center at Brown, but surprised we are all the same. TWTP will help people who have, presumably, lived in a wolf pack, or perhaps a far-off ring of Saturn for their first 18 years, make sense of all the big bag “-isms” out there. Under1Roof is looking better everyday, right?

Yale clearly doesn’t have time for this shit: the first day of their “Opening Days of College” (that’s we’re-better-than-everyone-else slang for “Orientation”) program contains little besides a $10 “Express Lunch”, a $20 dinner in the Dining Hall, and a 4.5 hour immunization program for everything from measles to German measles. There is also a performance showcases Yale’s diversity called “Kaleidoscope,” a title we could not have anticipated.

UPenn also shuns subtlety with an event titled “Laws Related to Alcohol In the United States.” There’s also a toga dance party at the Archaeology Museum. Best toga gets a $50 giftcard to the bookstore!

Johns Hopkins had a “Beer Goggle Challenge” obstacle course last year. This time around, they’ve decided to be a little more obtuse: all we know about the “Playfair” is that it’ll be a night of “insane fun,” but “we can’t give you any more details.” There’s also a “Pimp Your T-Shirt” event, and a play called Sexcapades about a boy who travels into the future from the 1950′s and learns about “STIs and the best places to have sex on campus.” Those attending HorrorFest are asked to come in costume. Later, Tom DeLuca, the Corporate Hypnotist, will do a Hypnosis show.

Being asked to dance with a thousand strangers who you will eventually become friends with and have sex with seems to be the theme this Orientation season. Cornell will host its first-ever (!) Hoe Down, with music from a local bluegrass band. Bizarrest of all: the Class of 2014′s Official Ice Cream Flavor (!!) will be unveiled at the event.