Razing the ivory tower: Student antics at the Wa

It is 3:21 a.m. on a Saturday night at the Wawa. A group of three female students — sporting rain-frizzed hair and halter-tops — stumble into the store. One bumps into the banana rack as the other two giggle incessantly.

Emerging unscathed from her encounter with the banana rack, she wobbles toward the register with half a spinach and cheese Boli wedged into the side of her mouth — casually complaining to her friends that she has to get up early the next morning to write a paper.

Each Thursday and Saturday night, hordes of students swamp the Wa to participate in what many view as the perfect precursor or capstone to an evening at the 'Street' — the "Wa run."

For employees behind the counter, scenes like these — which look like before-and-after photographs at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting — provide comic relief during what might otherwise be a dull eight hours.

Though heavy rain drenches the sidewalks outside, Saturday night begins calmly in the midst of the pre-'Street' warmup — with the exception of one inebriated student.

"You have to understand that I'm having trouble carrying a conversation right now," he confesses. "I'm so trashed I can't even hold up."

Eye of the storm

Soon, the customers migrate to the 'Street,' and the store falls quiet for a few hours. But as the clock-hands tick to 2 a.m., post-'Street' customers stagger back to Wa. Hours before, students purchased Gatorade and cigarettes. Now they opt for hoagies, Bolis and the occasional pack of condoms.

Rubbing their hands across their foreheads, eyes, cheeks, mouths and chins they recount their odysseys from room party to room party, club to club, until this final stop before returning home.

Not only Princeton undergraduates contribute to this pandemonium, however. One customer — wearing a pale-blue wool Columbia University hat — asks, "I hear that the Princeton kids run around naked every year. Where are they?"

A few hiccups and burps later, two graduate students become fiercely engaged in a drunken debate about whether Altoids or Nuttals are the "original curiously strong mints."

Later that night, one group tries to pay with "Caymanian money." Rebuffed, they pay in U.S. dollars, but drop a blue-dyed "Caymanian" bill on the counter anyway as they leave.

Forty-five minutes later, they are back — only to leave two more blue bills on the counter.

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At 6 a.m., the night's final two customers — visiting the U.S. for the first time — enter singing arm-in-arm.

"You are very handsome," one of them tells a worker behind the register. After spilling a cup of coffee, the other comes to the register, mumbling an apology.

Eighteen hours later, it's Sunday night — and as students across campus trade dancing at clubs for writing at computer clusters, their food selections at the Wa shift as well.

Some return three or four times in one night for coffee refills — making their purchases with bloodshot eyes reminiscent of those they sported the night before.

Another night passes. At 6 a.m. the sun slides over the horizon, and into the Wa strides a drowsy senior, who has just completed his classics department thesis.

Toting the pages still warm from the printer, he claims to have been awake for three days straight.

"D is for diploma in my book," he says.

And as he exits through the glass doors, with his completed thesis marking the close of his Princeton career, the strains of the next Muzak selection play faintly.

Students come and go, mere verses in the Wa's ongoing melody.