Battlefield report from the War on Fun

This is Powell Fraser, reporting from the front lines of the War on Fun. I'm on assignment for The Daily Princetonian, sent to cover the war in my own Hunter S. Thompson "gonzo" fashion. Like George Orwell in Catalonia, however, I consider myself both a reporter and a soldier in this epic struggle against tyranny. I'm here to report that the battle's just begun: many have been lost, but tell me, who has won? The answer is, as of yet, unclear.

I've joined the insurgent forces, labeled as "rebels," "drunkards" and "anti-intellectuals" by the imperialist occupying power. Many of the fighters have been declared "underage combatants" under Article 21 of the Trenton Convention. They do not bear the identification that would give them protection under the law, so they are at the mercy of the aggressors. A good insurgency, however, is flexible: beers are no longer carried openly but rather in plastic cups, and frequently a benign-looking Gatorade or Snapple bottle can be made into an IED (Improvised Equipment for Drinking).

The insurgency has evolved in response to the strengths and weaknesses of its opponent. Engaging the enemy in the open, for instance, has proved to be disastrous. I was present on one such failed mission — a cookout in 1903 courtyard, otherwise known as a "Beer-B-Q," but dubbed "Operation Dinner Out" by the rebel high command. The mission objective was to have fun despite the Street-wide blackout that was in effect due to the presence of pre-frosh. The mission, however, was about to go terribly wrong.

As we played Bad English and Journey out of a courtyard window, we aroused the contempt of some of our loyalist neighbors. They placed a discreet phone call to Robespierre's Bureau of Public Safety and lodged a "noise complaint." This is a secret code used by informants to report ongoing fun in their vicinity. Unbeknownst to us, an elite unit began moving into position at the various exits to 1903.

A young fighter, as of yet untrained in the construction of IEDs, went to the cooler, removed a Coors Light, and snapped it open. Hundreds of miles overhead, the Herbold-1 Standard-Orbit Basic Electronic Reconnaissance (SOBER) Satellite snapped pictures and relayed data to Nassau Hall. Before our compatriot could even taste the sweet suds on his lips, uniformed commandos swarmed our location. He became the first martyr for the cause. One of the commanders, formerly a powerful politician before the outbreak of the war, was also captured. Worst of all, the raiding team confiscated all of our Silver Bullet ammunition.

Some of us, however, escaped. Taking command of the cell, I began to plot a rescue mission to extract our coolers from Abu "Stanhope" Ghraib Hall. Although we didn't follow the rules of war, the enemy sometimes did, meaning that we could rightfully demand the return of our "medical coolers." At the prison, we were interrogated and tortured with bureaucracy. One of our leaders was to go before a military tribunal, they told us, where a Dean instead of a jury would decide his fate. When we protested this miscarriage of justice, the enemy only laughed. We were forced to retreat with our coolers, now aware that open war would not be our path to victory.

The enemy knew that our Independence Day, April 24th, when we would pay homage to Paul Newman, would be a rallying day for the rebels. In a bold move, they promised to apprehend any civilian wearing the number 24 and/or bearing tick marks on his arms. After reading Mao Tse-tung's treatise "On Guerilla Warfare" for Jason Lyall's national security class, however, I had learned the power of an insurgency capable of blending in with the civilian population.

The insurgency had adapted. While enemy patrols roved outside, we fortified ourselves in the lawless zones of Dod and Brown, stacking beer cans in the window to create barricades. From these Fallujan strongholds the warriors harassed Orange Key tours and wrote incoherent emails. One Canadian, who had crossed the border to join the jihad, remarked that his beer count that day had exceeded his thesis page count. We smiled at his bravery and prepared ourselves for the long fight ahead. Powell Fraser is a politics major from Atlanta, Ga. He can be reached at pfraser@princeton.edu.