A call for first-rate mischief

I fear deeply for Princeton. I fear that our sons and daughters, reading the annals of Princeton in 2004, will, after deep reflection, have only one thing to say of us: we were boring. Thursday night antics may bring Friday morning lecture giggles, but will the next generation be amused, once all the names in question have faded from memory? Mulling about the Street as the blurry curtain draws across your eyes may be entertaining in its own way, but when was the last time someone threw an obnoxious freshman into the Robertson fountain? Do our capers even merit allusion in the "Nass"? We all know that poor publication is starved for material, but who can blame the thing? It is your fault, undergraduates.

You are a timid and worried creature. I suspect the reason the beer flows so freely down your gullets is that you need to oil your souls with alcohol before you loosen up enough to enjoy yourselves at all. Here is an example: My roommate and I habitually run at night. The end of our route takes us down Prospect. On a typical weekend night, we hear "Run Forrest, Run," five times between Charter and Campus. Even the less witty revelers usually muster an inarticulate roar.

One afternoon, however, we changed our plan and went running at five o'clock. Shortly before turning onto the Street, I spied a framed painting wedged between two garbage bags on the curb. Naturally, I picked it up. I held it a safe distance away from my sweat, and we continued our run.

Dinner had called nearly as many students to the Street as Thursday and Saturday nights do, but of that tight-lipped crowd, not one made a remark about the peculiarity of two runners jogging with a large acrylic of a seated woman. Not a single student glanced askew at us. Even if we weren't very justly tossed into a fountain, at the very least I was expecting a jibe or a jest. But from the collar-popped to the nose-pierced, they kept their silence.

There are two problems with this manner of behavior: First, "Run Forrest, Run," is not a clever thing to say to a runner. Though the little drunken coterie whose shoulders are keeping you from face-planting may think you are Oscar Wilde himself at the time, the tragic truth is you must be a little sober to be at all funny. Even stupid boorishness is better than silence, however. Do only the tight-lipped upperclassmen go to dinner at the clubs? Or, as Ovid noted, does wine lend courage, miraculously bestowing upon the repressed the ability to heckle strangers? There is a catch-22 at work. The Princeton student must be drunk to be mischievous, and must be sober to be clever. As a result, all the mischief at Princeton is second-rate, and the "Nass" has nothing to publish.

The solution, I believe, is a rebirth of eccentricity. If you are accustomed to strange glances even when you have full motor control, wit comes easier. Moreover, if every student develops a peculiar mannerism, Princeton will be interesting enough for some talented sophomore to write a sequel to "This Side of Paradise." Perhaps we will admit students to the University Medical Center at Princeton to have their legs casted after defenestrations rather than to have their stomachs pumped. I may be asking too much, but maybe we can even start incorporating our intellects into our fun.

And so I beg you, for the sake Princeton's glory, for the sake of our generation's reputation, and for the sake of the "Nass," stop drowning yourself in drink for a few minutes and start wearing a top hat, quote Joyce Carol Oates obsessively or at least carry around a teddy bear named Aloysius. Then find a freshman to toss into a fountain.