Purity is the hobgoblin of small minds

The Princeton experience is one that we will never leave behind. The four years we all spend here are uniquely "Princeton" — a quality captured in "The Mother of All Princeton Purity Tests" created by Danielle Lindemann '02.

Now a graduate student at NYU's Draper Program in the Humanities, Lindemann graduated from the University with a degree in English, concentrating in Creative Writing.

She created the test over the summer while she "was in this weird haze of nostalgia and had too much free time on [her] hands."

Princeton legends

Lindemann came up with many of the questions herself, based on her own experiences at the University as well as those of her friends. She also included references to so-called University urban legends, such as the "Foulke screamer."

"I also had a lot of help from friends and friends-of-friends," Lindemann said in an email. "People got really into it. It came to the point where we were phrasing our emails to each other in the form of purity tests . . . Wow, we're dorks."

Questions on the test range from those as innocent as "Have you ever been out to an eating club?" to those as debauched as "Have you ever gone out to the Street not wearing underwear? . . . and have you ever gone out to the Street wearing underwear and walked home NOT wearing underwear?"

Other questions are so impure that they cannot be mentioned in this article.

Pure feedback

Lindemann has received many comments about her purity tests, including one which she described as an "extremely bizarre email in a bright pink font, from what was clearly a junior high school girl."

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Lindemann said she was advised that she was "wasting [her] time writing purity tests and that [she] should be doing more constructive things as a Princeton alum, like watching MTV."

On the page of purity test results, Lindemann keeps a record of the scores of people who email her their results. The average was around 65 to 70 percent pure, or a whopping 30 to 35 percent sinful.

"I also suspect that some people I know were doing scandalous things just because they made interesting purity test fodder, but I can't prove anything," Lindemann said.

Other purity tests Lindemann has created about Princeton include "The Charter Purity Test," "The Princeton Nerdity Test," "The 'How Much More Debauched Have You Gotten In College?' Purity Test," "'Wa Purity Test," "Hoagie Haven Purity Test," "The Princeton Summer Purity Test," and just to be fair, the "Grad Student Purity Test."