A butt-insky at heart

I am reluctant to give my two cents about how to make campus life better. After all, I'm only one person, and I realize that as I enter my post-thesis denouement, the campus isn't really mine anymore. It belongs to the new crop of pre-frosh who invaded campus last weekend. Who am I to tell these people how to live their lives? Maybe the beat of too loud Sheryl Crow music really does make some people feel like they're in a Greenwich Village coffee shop. Still, it's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, and I remain a butt-insky at heart. Thus, after the best four years of my life to date, here are my humble suggestions for what the administration could do to improve this wonderful slice of heaven we call Princeton.

First, get rid of the Frist piano. If it's the night before Dean's Date, I can guarantee that some jackass will start playing Chopsticks at 3:00 a.m., completely oblivious to the pain he's causing others. Seriously, has this piece of equipment ever provided anyone with an ounce of happiness? I am convinced that it is only played during reading period, exam week and in the depths of thesis hell — and only by someone who has never touched a baby grand before. Somehow, in a campus center that encourages us to watch Nancy Grace's vitriol on the TV and subjects us to Cafe Viv's playlist, the piano remains the most annoying source of noise pollution. I say ditch this token attempt at making Frist a cultural center — the next Mozart ain't hanging out in the C-Store.

Subsidize Small World. We get it, Small World, you have a good ethos. That doesn't mean you can charge $2.50 for a Rice Krispie treat. Moreover, the condescending tone with which you charge your exorbitant prices ("we're such a virtuous company, you should feel honored to pay seven bucks for an ounce of granola") makes me want to drive to Wal-Mart in an SUV and buy five pounds of artificial sweetener for 99 cents. If it's manufactured by an impoverished child, all the better. The world is flat, and I love it.

Expose special needs housing for the fraud that it can be. Laundry services aren't an inalienable right. And I'm pretty sure that "frizzy hair" has been used as a legitimate health concern to bump someone up from a single in Brown to a penthouse in Dod. Claustrophobia, mold allergies, insomnia and dust aversion may all be serious medical maladies, but if someone claims to have three of the four, I think a picture of that person should be run in The Daily Princetonian, accompanied by the true ailment: "Cute sorority girl wants a three-room double."

Require charm school for the Marquand harpies. Why do these ladies have to be so mean? You can take a rack of lamb into Firestone. The Green Zone has lighter security. If the books in the art history department were that important, smarter people would major in it.

Psych department: Make yourself less available. If I emailed girls as often as you email me, I would be alone for a good long while — especially if I offered them 10 dollars for 30 minutes of their time. Don't studies show that people respond better to those who play hard to get?

So there they are. Five suggestions: quick, easy, simple. Nothing that an enterprising campus leader should have too much difficulty implementing. Feel free to take the credit, too. It's not like I'm running for the Crystal Tiger Award or anything like that. Although, if you want to nominate me, my room phone is 6-7651. Tyler Allard is a senior history major from Washington, D.C. He can be reached at tallard@princeton.edu.