Great Room Hell

August 23rd is the start of orientation for the class of 2016 which means 500 freshies and their various parental units are currently on campus moving in etc. What this roughly translates to is great room hell via you guys have NO idea what you're doing. As much as we will grow to love you, we maybe hate you the first few times we encounter you in the great room because we are hungry college students and you, yes you, are standing in the way of food. Below please find a list of great room etiquette aka how to not be hated

• Yes, you do use your student ID to swipe in. Just hand it to them. Say thank you. It's that easy.
• Yes, you can use it to swipe in parents/sibs/friends/so's or slutever.
• Don't make the aforementioned people pay for their own food via money. It is so much easier to just swipe them in and you are a freshman with a freshman meal plan. You will never use all of your blocks anyway.
• Please don't stand at the front of the line and have a big conversation with the whole family. Do that before. Oh my god.
• Have your ID out and know how many swipes you need
• If you are waiting for someone either wait outside of the great room area entirely or by the cubbies because if you stand in the middle of the food area I hate you.
• Boxes exist. You can take food out of the great room with them. They are nice. Ask for one when you swipe in.
• You can go back as many times as you want. 
• Big T makes the best crepes 
• Yeah that means you can get more than one huge chocolately crepe
• You're welcome
• Spiced chai is the bomb
• Just be a big kid and put your dirty dishes where they're supposed to go. If you leave them at the table i hate you AND you're an asshole.
• ALWAYS go to midnight breakfast
• At the end of the semester upperclassmen WILL try to mug you for blocks. If you are smart you can receive payment in form of beer which is super nice.

I think that is all you need to know for now. Feel free to add things I forgot in the comments for the education of first years.

-Natty Ho (da intern~)

Gum Tree

I was browsing the twitterverse the other day (@SMCMLOL) and noticed some rumblings about a 'gum tree'  I wasn't really sure what a gum tree was so I did some INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM on the subject and some GONZO JOURNALISM via taking photos of this elusive tree.

I scoured my sources as to where I could find this tree.  After tweeting a few of my followers they left me with one clue:  the path to the Campus Center.  I slowly made my way towards the pond, it was a cold day.  Suddenly I looked to my left, and there it was.

A colorful tree, with fucking gum on it.  Why the hell is there a tree with gum on it?  This is the weirdest thing I have ever heard of.  But apparently it's thing in Philadelphia, and now it's a thing here via cultural appropriation.  The Philly Gum Tree was a tree on South Street in Philly that had gum on it.  Then in 2008 it got cut down for some reason.  I think that pretty much sums it up.

Oh man look at all that gum!  So, I am judging this attempt at a tradition, but I bet that when people started throwing shoes up in the Shoe Tree in the year (whenever that happened) people probably thought it was dumb.  And to be honest I still think this is dumb because it is littering and I don't like littering, but whatever.  But it's kinda cool and different, and I guess I can't fault someone for trying something new.

Also I don't like gum and literally don't understand the appeal of gum.  Why not just eat food.

Alumni I met

So, I went to this party with my Dad down the street (we played beer pong but lost) and the guy's son graduated SMCM in 02'.  He was around for The Greens riot and other cool stuff.

One thing he told me about was 'The Lemon', a anonymous newspaper published by two students that made fun of various professors and administrators.  Anyway, according to his story, eventually they figured out who was publishing it, and Goldwater/J Board had them expelled, until the students took the story to the press, and then they were unexpelled.  We were both pretty drunk so portions of the story may have been embellished a bit or slightly inaccurate, but it was an interesting event.  His name was Jay or Jason or somesuch.

Oh and he also informed me that people used the moniker 'Joanne Bongwater' back then as well.