What I want to know is, why is it so fun to be bad? Not like dining hall food-bad, but naughty-bad. We were all brought up with manners, cotillions and instinctive dinner-table skills, and even the most rough-hewn of us has learned how to shake a hand and say "Bless you!" after living at Princeton.
Yet no matter how much joy I take away from holding doors open for strangers, it's just more fun to be annoyingly bad. Maybe it's because we never expect people to be inherently ill-intentioned. Evil is just something that surprises us. Not everyone has the talent to be evil — some people are just intrinsically good. But that's no fun, so here are a few tips for the nice guys out there on how to be evil:
The song "Cheeseburger in Paradise" by Jimmy Buffett can be found on every jukebox on the 'Street.' Make it your personal goal to program it into the jukebox whenever you enter a club. By late April, you should see results.
Ask the Dinky conductor if he wouldn't mind dropping you off at Good Friends on the way to Princeton Junction. Wave around a half-empty bottle of wine as you speak. (Not half-full — evil people shouldn't be optimistic.)
Order all of your Tiger Food to odd geographical locations around the campus, such as the Little mailroom, Nixon's Nose or Forbes. When you meet the driver there, wear a trench coat and look shifty.
Be a vegan.
Get as many parking tickets as possible using an SVC car. Wait until they are all outstanding, then leave an anonymous tip with the Borough Police. Implicate your favorite SVC board member.
Play other sports on the tennis courts. Croquet and lawn darts are my favorites.
Use the Dillon Multi-Purpose Room for only one purpose.
Hang your own banners on McCosh Walk marking events in your personal life, such as your birthday, a head cold or when you'll be eating dinner. Mention that Tiger Tickets can be used.
When involved in an intellectual precept discussion, pick a person in your precept and always refer to him or her loudly as "that guy" or "that girl" while looking at them suspiciously. Disagree with everything they say.
Place trip wires on the tow path, for those of you looking for an easy evil deed.
Actually steal books from Firestone. The security guards have been checking bags for so long without anyone attempting to steal that we owe it to them to create a little excitement in their lives. And if it works, then hey, free books.
Switch Whig and Clio around at night when everybody leaves for the day. Look around campus for confused debaters the next morning.
Major in psychology. Ask friends to fill out surveys that delve into their personal lives. Claim it's all for the sake of research. Bonus points for publishing the results.
Attend Hal Shapiro's office hours. Ask him lots of questions regarding your ECO 102 problem set.
Stand up and state that you have room draw during every precept or intimately small class. Leave noisily. Make sure to act out the proper emotions with the corresponding early or late time of draw.
Go to Murray-Dodge Cafe and ask only for a handful of raw cookie dough, rather than what they were going to make. For an added perk, ask for it to go.
Ban the Nude Olympics.
Play on the scaffolding around Frist Campus Center. If someone yells at you, ask them if they know where Albert Einstein's office is.
Try to pick up your preceptors.
With today's technology, entire books and epic novels can be found on the web. Print them out at your nearest cluster.
We're college students. It's like we're being given an excuse to be bad. And by keeping it close to home, it's great for school spirit. If anyone questions your motives, blame it on the "academic stress." It's just a little harmless fun, right? Jen Adams is a psychology major from Ogdensburg, N.Y. She can be reached at jladams@princeton.edu.
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