Seven minutes in Princeton

Citing a recent uptick in campus roughhousing and sassback, strict new guidelines cracking down on chair tipping and gum chewing were unveiled by Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Hilary Herbold during morning announcements early Thursday.

"With students reclining 20, 30, even 40 degrees in one sitting, bumps on the noggin have reached unacceptable levels," Herbold said, couching the policy shift in terms of student safety. "And if one of our young ladies, delirious from excessive consumption of sugary gums, makes a mistake and kisses a snake, how many doctors will it take? One? Two? Three? Four?"

"We also encourage students to 'leave some for the fishes' when drinking from campus water fountains," Herbold added.

Under the "revised" policy, students may not keep packs of gum larger than Fun Size in their cubbies, nor deviate from a strict "four on the floor" rule. Tippers will serve mandatory lunch detentions picking up trash on Princeton's campus, while gum chewers will have their names written on the chalkboard, with underlining and circling for subsequent violations. Application of chewed gum to the noses of offenders by Public Safety is also possible.

This is not the first time the Princeton administration has enacted controversial new policies. In 1998, Band members playing daily "Magic: The Gathering" matches on the steps of Lewis Thomas Laboratory disrupted important owl pellet-dissection research, prompting an unpopular campus-wide ban on the game. The resulting trifold board, titled "What Owls Eat" and featuring a reconstructed mouse skeleton glued to purple construction paper, later won the All-Ivy Science Fair.

While campus reaction to the announcement was mixed, faculty were generally supportive. One anonymous professor stated, "While my students were supposed to be writing their book reports on 'The Giver,' Bobby Tollerson '10 was reading this," holding up a dogeared copy of "Goosebumps #66: Terror at Skull Mansion" by R.L. Stine. "Later, I found this note: 'Mr. George smells funny. P.S. Do you like me? Yes, No, Maybe.' I can't make these kids learn."

Some students offered a different perspective. Astronomy major Trevor Ely '08, doing thesis work on whether boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider and girls go to Mars to get more candy bars, said, "If I want to relax during lunch by reading entertaining Bazooka Joe comics, it is well within my rights to do so. Hey, want to join the Pen15 Club?" Herbold, skeptical of such criticism, responded, "Frankly, the complaining parties are exactly those whom, rumor has it, wantonly step on cracks, endangering their mother's backs."

Still, the two sides remain deeply split over whether gum chewing and chair tipping in higher education are a cherished tradition or a dangerous nuisance. "This kind of parietal in loco parentis is an artifact of paternalistic Victorianism," Ely opined, adding "By the way, your epidermis is showing. SIKE!"