Bear Naked Lady

October 18, 2014

My Tenure For A Tweet

After being disinvited from a panel on campus about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Associate Professor Max Weiss wrote in The Daily Princetonian, “Princeton must remain a place where open debate and academic exchange is encouraged and allowed to flourish, even on the most controversial issues.” It would be a lot easier to take him at his word had he not just convened a panel on academic freedom the week before, to which he invited zero dissenting voices.

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Back to Basic

The word “basic” was dead by the time Kreayshawn said it in 2011: “Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, Fendi Fendi, Prada / Basic bitches wear that shit so I don’t even bother.” But in the word’s afterlife, “basic” has ceased to apply just to “basic bitches” and now affixes itself to all sorts of actions, objects and people.

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Healthy Masculinity

“If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we are—we can all be freer.” When Emma Watson made this call for freedom before the United Nations at the launching of a new gender-egalitarian pledge for gender equality, she knew what she was getting into.

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Terms May Apply

When one freshman sat down with the dean of her residential college last winter to discuss a medical leave, she was not expecting to spend the next eight months at home.

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Drunk and Hungry

It is Saturday and a drunk Princeton student is stumbling home through Frist Campus Center on one of the many nights on the Street where an eating club’s theme demands no pants, just boxers.

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Jewish Wisdom

Dear Aron & Josh, Someone in my frat is making me fast for a week. I really don’t want to drop out of the frat but I don’t know if I can make it a week with just water. Help?

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A Short and False History of Bowling

The wind in the west blows across the Sioux prairieland, bending the wheat stalks at their waists. Nelson Elling lies beneath the swaying stalks, and from where he’s sprawled the wheat fields are dusted in a purpling haze.

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All That Glitters Is Not Goldman

One day, not long after competing in the USA Mathematical Olympiad, thirteen-year-old Greg received a letter from a premier New York trading firm moving $8 billion in equities a day. They had noticed his excellent performance at the Olympiad, and wanted the middle school student to keep their name in mind. Included with the letter were a Frisbee and a deck of cards.

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On Screens & Esteem

One day this summer, sitting in a blank white apartment that was not mine, I felt a strange weariness. This apartment was full of more books than I will probably ever read and I had fellowships to apply to and emails to write and the whole Internet in front of me and all of New York City clamoring outside.

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Verbatim

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Overheard in Campus Club

Eager frosh: Is this where all the hipsters hang out?

Overheard outside East Pyne

Older man, authoritatively pointing at East Pyne, as if giving campus tour: And this is the Hershey building.

Overheard at Terrace

Man at urinal to other man at urinal: Do you have Netflix?

Overheard in Spelman

A’s senior: Can you dance?
Sensitive AEPi: If I could dance, I wouldn’t have to write poetry.

Overheard outside Walker Hall

Boy 1, calling from window to boy on ground: We’re thinking of different balcony scenes.
Boy 2, on ground: Which balcony scene are you thinking of?
Boy 1: The one from Les Miserables.
Boy 2: Oh. (pause) Which one was I thinking of?

Overheard at Terrace

Anarchist: I am the exact same person I was when I was fifteen. I literally have not changed in any way. No growth whatsoever.

Overheard in Firestone

Grad student, to grad student: Hey! We have matching teenage Marxist glasses now!

Overheard in Wu

Future investment banker, picking up phone at table: Hold on one second.
Future investment banker, on phone: Hello? Hey. Three million.

Overheard on the Street

Small drunkard: She rushed Pi Phi twice. That’s the most basic thing you can do.

Overheard in Robertson

Senior girl, concerned, to friend: I’m not sure it was a good idea to have sex with your thesis advisor...

Overheard at Terrace brunch

COM major: I don’t want my parents’ marriage because they don’t understand the concept of cultural relativism.

Overheard on Spotify

Cloying voice: Hey! You’re listening to Spotify, so it looks like you’re a fan of making good decisions! Another good decision is eating Slim Jim meat sticks!

Overheard by the Frist TVs

DiSiac junior: Do you guys do verbatim?
Cap senior: Like send them in to the Nass?
Cottage senior: I don’t do technology things.

Overheard in a Nass meeting

Writer: My mom likes reading young adult novels, like Fifty Shades of Grey.

Overheard in the 1970s

Cottage social chair: Women are like pizza: if we want them, we send out for them.

Overheard on Prospect

250-lb. TI junior: No girl is safe from my non-sexual rage. Your vagina is safe, but your skeleton is not.

Overheard near Joe Canal’s

Theta senior, balefully, while driving: I actually went to that Hooters on Valentine’s Day last year.