Free glow-in-the dark footballs at what cost?

I learned a valuable lesson this August during OA leader refresher courses. I attended a session on "leave no trace," given by a traveling team sponsored by Subaru (and believe me, I think the irony of that situation cause for its own editorial). At one point during the presentation, one instructor asked for a volunteer to aid in a presentation. As we all know from various, uninspiring precepts, an appeal like this only works when there's a very anal and overly grade conscious person in the audience. After about a minute of silent waiting, one girl timidly raised her hand. Her reward? A candy bar tossed to her. The instructor asked for another volunteer and it only took a few seconds for a raised hand to appear. This one too was rewarded with a candy bar. When she asked for a third volunteer, about a third of the hands shot up. I was the last lucky, "volunteer," to get a candy bar; it was an Almond Joy.

I wondered what they were going to do with us, what presentation they would make with so many people. Then it sank in; that was the demonstration. We'd just witnessed animal behavior modification through food. It was a powerful example of why one wouldn't want to feed bears in the backcountry. Princeton students were not above the inducement to embarrass themselves through food, so there was no reason to expect more from our furrier friends.

This alone made me think, but when there was a rush at the end of the presentation for free Subaru socks, the point was firmly driven home. None of this is to say that the Princeton craze for and expectation of freebies, food, apparel and toys, is new or unknown, but it troubles me that none of us seem to analyze our actions enough to approach this torrent of useless stuff into our lives enough to try to stop it.

With still some time before job fairs and the like, let's re-evaluate this unstopping, overwhelming influx of free frisbees, T-shirts and pizza into our lives, consciousness and dorm rooms. Look around your room. Chances are you've got several things from Frist, Ford or whatever with giant corporate logos for you to play with. Is there any room for you in the room, or is it so full of stuff, free stuff in fact, that you can hardly live in there?

So what's the harm in all this free stuff? It's free, right? De facto good. After all, we're poor, starving, struggling, spoiled college students, right? Well, maybe spoiled.

Have you ever stopped to think about the environmental impacts? While I can't say I have any firm numbers, there's no way you can tell me most of the stuff doesn't just get thrown out in the end. What's the point of taking these toys if you're only going to leave them in your closet to contribute to clutter for a few weeks before you finally throw them out?

Even worse, I would think, would be the embarrassment factor. We are Princeton students. We live the life of the mind, right? So why exactly is a glow in the dark football enough to make us crowd round a company's table, oh, and incidentally be roped into working for them, slaving away for the summer or maybe even for life? Isn't our time more valuable than that? Shouldn't we be curing cancer or something? Aileen Ann Nielsen is from Upper Black Eddy, Pa. She can be reached at anielsen@princeton.edu.