Hurricane Stagthena

A freshman at Scripps in one of my classes recently told a harrowing story regarding CMCers’ poor attitude towards cleaning up. After attending an event on CMC’s campus, she tried to be courteous, straightening up the disaster left behind. To this, a CMC student responded arrogantly, “This is CMC; we don’t clean up.”

The general attitude on campus seems to be of ill responsibility when it comes to cleaning up.  I’ve heard students brag about their ability to simply drop their trash wherever they are standing. Though we have a phenomenal grounds crew, this does not give CMCers the license to completely disrespect our campus.  We parade around campus, smugly behaving like children fed by a silver spoon.   Instead of taking the initiative to keep our campus clean, we simply place the burden of our hard-partying lifestyles on the backs of the hard-working dorm maids.  In the midst of the Thursday Night Club fiasco, Dean of Students took note of our nonchalant attitude towards cleaning up. On March 24, students received an email from ASCMC stating that DOS would like to see students “taking the initiative to clean up after events.”  I believe the general consensus is that we should do everything we can to prevent TNC from being canceled.  So if DOS wants us to clean, I say we clean.

There may be some preconceived notion that because students are under the influence of alcohol, they do not have to take responsibility for their actions.  Next time you are in that situation, I must ask, are you so incapacitated that you cannot place your trash in a proper receptacle?  And if you are, why on earth are you out walking around on campus?

Have we already so long forgotten those values which were once taught to us by a giant singing purple dinosaur?  I think Barney really hit the nail on the head when he uttered those immortal words – “Clean up, Clean up. Everybody do your share.” (Even this girl knows what’s up.)

Supposedly, we are a bunch of kids that are really good at economics and accounting.  Dorm damages have already amounted to over $20,000 this year. Call me crazy, but this may not be the best allocation of our financial resources. Cleaning up better won’t make all of those penalties go away, but it will help cut down on those mysterious dorm damages for lounge cleanup that get passed along to the entire residence hall.

So, CMCers, take the two seconds to throw away your cup to preserve TNC – even in its now limited capacity. At the least, cleaning up is worth several more nights  of raging.

Multiple parties share responsibility in the policy shift. Fundamentally, students – and uninvited visitors – have been making a mess of the college’s dorms and quads. Out of $20,000 in damages quoted by Story House over the past year, 65% has been the byproduct of TNCs. “It doesn’t make sense for us to continue this pattern,” Dean of Students Mary Spellman said. “We’re not opposed to the event, but things need to be managed differently.”

Spellman added: “There’s reasonable damage and there’s throwing a chair at a window.”

Jim Nauls, Assistant Dean of Students, expressed strong feelings that the event had grown out of control. “Unless we do something about this, something drastic could happen,” Nauls lamented. “This kid that got his face beat in last week… it could have been a lot worse. It was a product of people not paying attention.”

The problem is twofold. Though big parties are often apt to cause damage, TNCs are usually hosted in spaces unsuitable for big parties. The result is overcrowding, impossible enforcement, and spillage into a secondary party outside the dorm. “The people congregating outside are just going to have to stay at home,” Nauls said.

Thursday Night Club, or TNC, was established only four years ago, originally as a small party revolving around a keg.

After informing them of TNC’s immediate suspension, DOS approached the new ASCMC administration with broad demands. In order to continue, the parties must be more tightly controlled, guests must be more strictly monitored, and damages that persist must actually be paid for.

Indeed, one major issue for the Dean of Students has been the debt ASCMC has accrued. Each year for the past four years, the student government has built up a massive Story House bill, putting off receipts until the end of their term – and often dumping them onto the next government, which is forced to pay a bill they don’t fully understand. The new ASCMC administration cannot then appeal the damage receipts, as most of them are from parties months past. “There’s also the issue of whether there’s downward pressure to meet your damages when you’re not going to pay for it – you’re just going to dump it,” said Vice President for Student Affairs Jefferson Huang. “Hansell inherited a bill; Isayas inherited one; Tammy is now inheriting one. It’s everyone’s problem.”

Story House has grown frustrated with the system, and has pushed the Dean of Students Office to press ASCMC on payments on an immediate basis.

“The expectation has been changed, and we’ll meet them on their expectations,” ASCMC Vice President Chris Jones said. “In the very least, we’re meeting the level that’s been met by past administrations. And if they change expectations, they should expect some adjustment time.”

Currently, the new ASCMC administration has been given a bill of $13,000 in damages for TNC parties.

“It’s not just because there’s a large debt owed. That in and of itself wouldn’t be enough for us to cancel [TNC],” Spellman added. “It’s just that, every week, more and more, there’s damage. And there’s a building attitude of, when the party ends, people can just leave garbage sitting. It’s getting worse.”

Jones and ASCMC President Tammy Phan would not rule out contesting portions of the $13,000 bill. But they were more concerned with taking preventative measures throughout their term, which started this week.

“The real problem is not the fact that the bills haven’t been paid,” Phan noted. “It’s the fact that we, as students, have caused thousands of dollars in damage over the course of a year. It’s that they have to be paid in the first place.”

Phan said, “We’re leaning towards any effort that will allow us to have TNCs, period.”

Jones went on to push back against the method of charging from Story House. “We’ve been mis-assigned charges very frequently,” he said. “It’s checking your rental car before you take it out of the lot. A lot of this is not ours.

Alexander Reichert, Dorm Activities Chair, has drafted a proposal that DOS has accepted as adequate. In response, DOS has lifted the ban on the assumption that his plan will succeed. But the implication is that ASCMC now holds full responsibility of what happens, and that the future of Thursday parties rests on their ability to curtail assault and vandalism.

“The first step is to increase security,” said Reichert. “The second step is to be more stringent on who we allow into our parties.” Reichert noted that TNCs would be smaller, and strictly CMC-only, with a possibility of a guest list for friends of CMCers from the other four colleges. But one goal is to avoid “Pitzer students coming in, and drinking the alcohol they never paid for,” he said. “We are open to making these 5C parties, but the other colleges will have to contribute.”

All TNCs will now card at the door for CMC identification, and will be fenced off. “Fencing sets a precedent,” Reichert added. “These parties can’t just be open and sprawling.” ASCMC will also be hiring security other than Campus Security, which has proven ineffective.

While Nauls, Spellman and Huang were originally in disagreement over whether to truly cancel Thursday Night Club for good, they have agreed to work towards a revised version of the event – knowing that parties will occur every Thursday, anyway.

“We were ready to actually pull the plug on TNCs to say stop,” said Huang. “It really came to a boil for us shortly before the ASCMC elections. I told Jim I thought doing that now would enter us into the issue of candidates, so we waited until after the elections were over.”

Dear CMC,

Welcome back from Spring Break! We hope that you got some R & R during the vacation. Back to reality, though… Recently, administrators in the Dean of Students office have canceled Thursday Night Clubs indefinitely. Why did DOS cancel TNC? For a lot of reasons. As you read in the last Party Inform, “This isn’t because of one specific incident, but as DOS examines certain policy issues TNCs will unfortunately remain off the Calendar.” And here are the some of those reasons:

• We aren’t taking care of our campus: Story House charges caused over the course of the year have amounted to over $20,000 of damages. Story House charges are incurred when:
  • Party hosts and attendees don’t clean up after the event and cups, cans, bottles, and other trash are left everywhere
  • Things get crazy–broken window screens, furniture, and glass, bloody walls, hand prints, etc.
  • Story House housekeepers clean things up for professors, prospective students, and visitors, often charging overtime for their work.
• Fights: TNC is actually a CMC-only event. When non-CMCers attend TNC (other 5Cers or off-campus), things tend to become unruly (AKA: people fight).

• TNC isn’t what it used to be: Once upon a time, TNC was a magical event for CMCers. Dorm presidents were responsible for creating an intimate event that facilitated small-scale social interaction. It was an opportunity for students to talk, dance, and relax from the workweek. Recently, however, things have changed. After the party ends, students congregate outside and campus safety isn’t capable of keeping things safe with such a large, usually rowdy, group.

What does DOS want?

1. An elevated expectation of dorm presidents and their responsibilities when they throw an event
2. Better containment at events, so there isn’t a large mob of people outside the designated area, or non-CMCers sneaking into the party
3. Facilitation of more efficient security with higher expectations for maintaining the events as CMC-only
4. Students (innocent bystanders, party guests, event host) taking the initiative to clean up after events and prevent dorm damages and holding one another accountable
5. All events not in private residents’ rooms, like Beirut tournaments, with a large number of students (20-30+) to be registered with Jim Nauls in advance

What is ASCMC doing to try and save our Thursday nights? ASCMC members have met with DOS and the DAC and SAC have submitted a proposal to the Dean of Students office. The proposal includes such measures as increased security, ensuring TNCs are CMC-only by enforcing CMC IDs, a greater variety of event locations, a focus on the quality of TNCs rather than the quantity of them, and incentive-based clean-up crews.

DOS wants changes or TNCs aren’t going to happen anymore. We’re hoping that these initiatives, although new and different, will allow CMCers to have our TNC-type events again and even improve the social culture of Thursday nights. Much of the proposal has been well received and DOS may grant one Thursday night event next week as a “trial run.”  

What can we do as a school?

• Register events.
• Take responsibility and clean up after ourselves.
• Listen to the RAs. They want to save Thursdays, too.

And now?

Our Dean of Students office believes us to be responsible adults.  We all know we have a social life unique from any other school and it’s important to take the necessary steps to preserve CMC’s long-standing social traditions.  Step back, put things into context, and understand that there is not going to be any significant change for the worst if everyone shows up and does their part.    Feel free to reply to this e-mail with any questions. Be sure to check the Forum and tomorrow’s Party Inform, where more information will soon be available.
Sincerely,

ASCMC

The same night, the Pitzer Student Senate was throwing their biggest party of the year up on their campus. They brought in a great mash-up group, Super Mash Bros, which cost them $5,000. There were some other expenses and the whole party was probably close to $10,000. I’m sure it was a lot of fun. I wish I could have been there.

A few weeks before the Pitzer party, ASCMC got an e-mail from one of the organizers of the party. In the e-mail, the girl, a Pitzer freshman, asked ASCMC to help fund the party. After a few more e-mails, the same girl came to request money from the ASCMC Senate. The ASCMC Senate wound up giving $200 to the party (the Senate budget is ~$10k for the whole year and receives a few similar requests a week). Andrew Cosentino added another $300 from his SAC fund, bringing the total contributed from ASCMC to Pitzer to $500.

To put this in perspective, $500 is a substantial amount for ASCMC to contribute to Pitzer for a party that relatively few CMCers would actually attend. Pitzer has given ASCMC less than $1,000 this year and we gave them $750-1,000 for Kohoutek alone.The Super Mash Bros contribution of $500 was given based on the premise that CMC students would not be charged or turned away from the event. We didn’t anticipate many students going to the Pitzer party over the Wedding Party, but we wanted to make sure students had another option anyway.

The day of the party, some organizers of the party at Pitzer contacted ASCMC again. They wanted more money — the party had gone over budget and they would be in debt by over $2,000. They asked for another $500 from multiple people within ASCMC.

When they unexpectedly called me, I was changing into my suit before hurrying back to help set up the Wedding Party an hour before the dinner started. I was rushed, stressed, and wearing 48 hours of Las Vegas (what a week). The conversation went something like this:

Pitzer Girl: Hey, this is *****, we need $500 more for the Pitzer party tonight.
Me (confused): Uh, who told you to call me?
Pitzer Girl: Andrew said he couldn’t give any more money from his fund so we’re calling you for $500 more.
Me: …but we gave you $500 total. The party is tonight. It’s not reasonable for us to make a split judgment for $500 more right now, I’m sorry.
Pitzer Girl: If we don’t get $500 more from ASCMC, we won’t let CMCers in. Or we’ll charge them at the door.
Pause.
Me: …Oh?
Pitzer Girl: Yeah sorry, that’s the way it is.
Me: Alright then.
Pitzer Girl: ?
Me: We don’t negotiate with terrorists.

Epilogue: We took back the initial $500 commitment and married some people instead. Pitzer charged CMC students $5 each. Few CMCers showed up. Definitely not 100. They would have been better off with our $500 had they cooperated. (And I’m reminded of my Game Theory midterm…)

This account of the story is obviously supposed to make me and ASCMC sound cooler than we really are, but let’s ignore that. The real point is, Pitzer really tried to extort ASCMC. Not cool, Pitzer. If we weren’t like the America of the Claremont Colleges Consortium (or like Rome when Romans were super chill and running the world) and sly econ wizards (interesting fact: 11/18 of ASCMC’s Board are econ majors), we might have just given into Pitzer’s demands. But not on our wedding day. Not in America.

*Props to Andrew Cosentino ’11 for coming up with the idea for the Wedding Party and executing it beautifully. Also credit to Ben Kraus ’11 and the rest of ASCMC for help with planning and execution. I sincerely hope ASCMC’s next Board of Directors makes even bigger moves.

I always attend speeches. I love a good election, and I like to see the candidates speak for themselves/make inside jokes about bias-related incidents/describe in detail how they’re going to distribute more “refreshments” than ever before.

If you weren’t at Snack last night to hear them, a lot of the speeches can be boiled down as such:

Chief complaint #1: No one knows where ASCMC money goes.   We need to put this on the online for everyone to see.

Chief complaint #2: Not enough event variety or creativity.  ASCMC doesn’t know what students like or need or want.  So I will somehow get in touch with you like no one ever has before.

Refreshing alternative: New ideas, I love CMC, vote for ____.

Wait did I miss something?  Since when has ASCMC been failing us? The speeches addressed concerns that I don’t think anyone actually has.  Many of the candidates decided to take the “gone Washington” approach and portray ASCMC as out of touch and corrupt. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt… maybe in the semester I’ve been abroad ASCMC hasn’t been planning any awesome parties and instead has been pimpin’ out the board room. But they have and they didn’t. In fact, ASCMC does a great job and is not funneling away money to undisclosed locations. And actually, their financial transactions and their board meeting minutes are available online already (though no minutes posted since April… wear it, ASCMC?).

Some may say that I’m not being vigilant. But I think of this from a cost-benefits approach. I want my ASCMC to provide me with a great college experience during the hours that I’m not doing academic-related stuff.  That means generally warming my heart and soul with CMC pride. Apparently, I involuntarily contribute $235 to ASCMC every year.  Spend a few months in the real world or just one weekend in Vegas, and you’ll find that parties so excellent will cost you more than $235 in as little as one night. For $235, ASCMC provides me with yearlong entertainment. Let’s say I attend 30 events: parties, TV shows, Hub quizzes, etc. That’s under $8 an event.   I would definitely have paid  more to see one of my favorite mash-up artists like the Hood Internet  and astronomically more to get into a club in any city. Furthermore, in the time I spend scrutinizing ASCMC’s cash flow, I could instead be making money at my posh on-campus job, pitching ideas of my own, or simply enjoying what ASCMC has to offer.

ASCMC officials live in the world they create. It’s not like Congress where disproportionately wealthy white guys sit and debate the semantics of a welfare program they will never use. This is college. We’re one community. There is no North Quad vote vs. South Quad vote. CMC is pretty homogeneous personality-wise. Involvement in student opinion doesn’t get much more active than sending out a survey. If I don’t respond to your survey, it’s because I don’t have any ideas. I challenge you to suggest a vastly-superior method of tapping into our ideas.

How to win my vote? Cut the general negativity. Come up with some legitimate criticisms if you have some, but realize you run the risk of alienating the audience and wasting time. Blow my mind with new and exciting ideas that I cannot possibly wrap my mind around, and do it all in 60 seconds or less. The most successful speeches were the ones that did not try to give us things to worry about and instead filled our minds with visions of sugarplums and possibilities galore.

Editor’s Note: Because the ASCMC Constitution forbids candidates from online campaigning and the authors of comments cannot be exactly identified, we have disallowed commenting on this and all other election-related posts.

The plan?  Deck the North Dorm courtyard out like the lair of a mad scientist.  With a host of science themed decorations and music provided by perennial favorite DJ, Mixed Reactions, the Mudd Goes Madd Party is slated for this Saturday evening.  But an event of this caliber doesn’t simply invent itself.  For that, much of the task fell to Harvey Mudd freshman Julius Elinson, who along with Jonathan Schwartz and a score of friends navigated the hassles of bureaucracy and fundraising to bring the plan to fruition.

“Mad scientists. It felt so right,” said Elinson, “It was surprising we hadn’t already done something like this.”

Mudders hard at work in preparation for the party. Photo credit: Daniel Crowley

The challenges of preparation can be hard for the uninitiated to appreciate.   Elinson began taking care of the laborious process required to hold an event this elaborate early in December.  There were several stages to the ordeal, beginning with budgeting.  Funds were needed to pay for alcohol, decorations, and music.  The social board had to grant approval, and then came the waiting.  As the 5C student governments gave funding to the event, Elinson had to be patient as his proposals were slowly accepted by all 5 colleges.  ”At Pitzer, I went to three different groups, there was some miscommunication, and I wound up having to go back a second or third time,” he explained, adding that all colleges contributed to the party funding, though some schools were more generous than others.

To help cover the cost of the party, Elinson and his co-conspirators also sold condoms in custom-designed wrappers at the Hoch-Shanahan Dining Hall at Harvey Mudd.  Available in a variety of bundles, the condoms have been wildly successful.  ”The general idea is t-shirts and shot glasses [at most parties], but we thought, ‘What’s cooler than a custom condom?’” said Elinson, who touted the merchandise as both humorous and useful.

The turnout could be fantastically high, with over 1100 students RSVPing as attending on the Facebook event and the party will occur regardless of weather, as the students have plans to cover the courtyard in the case of rain.  It’s comforting to know that regardless of what happens come Saturday night, the Mudders have made arrangements to keep us protected.

As usual, campus security was riding around in golf carts, sprinklers were watering the grass and sidewalks, and sketchy black cats were scurrying through the bushes by the Athenaeum and Heggblade. The weather was 65 degrees and sunny by day and as cold as 40 degrees at night. And it was really, really quiet.

On Saturday around 5 PM, a few stranded East Coasters at the senior apartments grilled chicken and steaks, played Beirut, and blasted really loud music. Nobody complained.

As our freedoms reached the peak levels of our college years and we started making some poor choices, we thought, what if more people were here? What if instead of a couple dozen students who have no choice but to be here, 1200 CMCers stayed on campus for a day or two before going home?

Unfortunately, CMC closes all residence halls at 8 PM on the Friday at the end of finals week. My guess is it would be expensive to keep the dorms open an extra day — energy costs, liability insurance, cleanup costs, etc. would all add up. I think it’s worth it. Dorms should stay open until Sunday at 8 PM, not Friday at 8 PM.  And here’s what we could do with the extra time:

An All-Campus Game of Capture the Flag

Each dorm puts their flag in their main lounge (or dunk hoops) and receives a target.  If you capture a dorm’s flag, they are out of the game and your dorm gets that dorm’s target.  Every student is equipped with either laser tag guns, paintball guns, nerf guns, or water guns.  Obviously, each potential weapon has its trade-offs and would need to be laboriously debated at the Athenaeum before any decision is made.  There might be problems with 1,000+ students running around campus with fake automatic weapons, but let’s ignore that for now. Other possibility: North Quad vs South Quad.  Blowout After-party: Senior Apartments.

A Community Service Project/Day

I don’t really know what this would entail, but I’m sure we could figure it out.  Some companies have a policy that requires employees to take a day off from work to do community service.  Some companies do it together and all on one day — that’s the idea here, but with CMCers instead of a company. Instead of the townies coming to us, we’ll go to them for once. Blowout after-party: Scripps Pool.

Color Wars

If you went to camp, you know what this is. If you didn’t, read here. Dean Deb Wood will not be happy about this one; I doubt she went to camp. Blowout after-party: Green Beach.

Ski Beach Day

This year, the weather was perfect on the Saturday in question. It was 80 degrees and sunny mid-day. We would take buses up to Mt. Baldy, ski, then go to the beach. We’d probably have freshmen and sophomores go to the beach, then ski, and vice versa for seniors and juniors. Maybe we’d meet in the middle and rent out some huge restaurant/hall in LA for lunch for everyone. Pomona does this to a lesser extent already, why don’t we? Blowout after-party: Mt. Baldy

Camp-Out on Green Beach

We get like 500 tents and put them all over Parents Field in a circle. In the middle, we build a giant bonfire (the environment be damned). At midnight, everyone gathers around in pajamas and passes around a megaphone, giving toasts to the semester and throwing in symbolic pieces of the semester (my Business Law textbook, for example) into the flames. In between some of the tents, we’d have fires for marshmallows, etc. Blowout after-party: Parents Field

The Longest Boat Race in the History of Claremont McKenna College and the Entire World and the Galaxy and the Universe

From the Senior Apartments to President Gann’s front doorstep. It’s an idea that’s been thrown around a lot… let’s do it. Blowout after-party: Pam Gann’s Backyard

Runners-up: Huge snowball fight, carnival day, Joshua Tree trip, Mock Wedding, Hula Hoop Day, Rodeo Day, Catalina wine mixer, Cross the Border Day (AKA Tijuana Day), Dig a Tunnel to Scripps Day, Hug a Townie Day

Sure, institutional changes don’t happen overnight, and they don’t happen easily. Usually it takes a $200 million gift or a 25 percent decline in our endowment for things to change. Regardless, I’m graduating in the spring and plan on enjoying senior week while you all take finals. But if I were a younger man, I might fight for the right to capture the flag.

After reading Carl Peaslee’s editorial on the dangers of playing CMC’s official sport, Beirut (or Beer Pong to those ignorant enough to think that BeerPong is not supposed to be played with four ping-pong paddles and four cups on each corner of a table), I was not phased… sorry, Carl. The story did, however, prompt me to begin thinking about the less flavorful but still very drinkable light beers that we go out and purchase to play Beirut. Keystone Light, Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite, Natural Light are among the multitude of light beers that we use in drinking games because (a) each has about 5% alcohol and (b) light–>less filling–>more room for more beer.

With rhetoric running through my head about how Keystone is really not that different from Coors and how each student around the 5Cs seems to have an opinion on whether or not they like one of the aforementioned beers and why, I felt that a groundbreaking Thursday Night Catechization was merited.

The Beers: Miller Lite, Keystone Light, Bud Light, Coors Light and Natural Light

The Setup: 5 unmarked SOLO cups with a quantity of beer roughly equivalent to that used in Beirut.

The Participants: 11 males (2 inebriated) and 1 female (also inebriated) for 12 participants.

Questions: “What is your favorite beer out of these five?” and “How many samples will you guess correctly?” (Measure of Estimated Expertise).

The Scale:

1. Color: Participants decide whether each beer is Light (1), Cloudy (2) or Dark (3).
2. Strength: Beer, in terms of alcohol content, is either Weak (1), Moderate (2) or Strong (3).
3. Carbonation: Carbonation level is Flat (1), Bubbly (2), Strongly Carbonated (3).
4. Hops: It’s like bitterness… Neutral (1), Bitter (2) or Lotsa Hopsa (3).

The Results: Running a regression became too complicated for me so I decided to interpret the most interesting results instead:

• Miller Lite was identified as Natural Light by 58% of participants; Coors Light was identified as Keystone Light by 33% of participants; Natural Light was identified as Coors Light by 33% of participants.
• 50% of participants named Coors Light as their favorite beer while 25% of participants named Bud Light as their favorite beer.
• 8.3% of participants preferred Coors Light; 58% of participants preferred Bud Light.
• Participants believed they would guess 60% of samples correctly. Participants guessed 20% of samples correctly.
• 25% of participants were able to match their favorite beer with their preferred beer.
• Color, Strength, Carbonation and Hops (the measures of interest) turned out to be completely irrelevant in the study as they were roughly equitable across samples.

The Implications: Granted, this is a sample of 12 randomly-selected CMC students, which inherently skews our results. However, the economic implications of the results cannot be ignored when purchasing 30-racks. Why buy Coors Light instead of Keystone Light (a difference of roughly $8.00) when one third of CMCers wouldn’t know the difference? How about the $10.00 you could save by buying Natural Light instead of Coors light?

The Conclusion: We are neither well-qualified enough nor do most of us care enough to make snobby declarations about the marginal differences between cheap beers – either buy better beer or stop bitching. What is important, however, is that beer money campus job check from CMC sitting in your desk drawer and how it will be best put to use at VONS!

There are a couple of reasons that are readily apparent: the close living quarters, the weekly fluid exchange we call TNC, student’s unwillingness to miss class because of sickness, but I’d like to focus on a more dangerous fact: CMC’s apparent Germ-a-phillia. That’s right, not Germ-a-PHOBIA, germaphillia.

And it’s not just that students here love germs, it’s that they are derisive towards those who don’t share their irrational lust for malevolent microorganisms. I, for instance, consider myself one of CMC’s few remaining sane human but for my beliefs I’ve been labeled with the cruel slur germaphobe.

Germaphobe? I don’t fear germs. I don’t walk around with a Camelback full of Purell, refusing to shake people hands. No. It is just that I, unlike the rest of my peers, seem to be one of the few remaining students who has retained a healthy aversion to bacteria.

Take beer pong for instance: I truly enjoy playing CMC’s official sport, yet I’m always disgusted by the local style of play. Dozens of people cycle through the same ten cups, each player leaving behind a few ounces of their own backwash at the bottom of the cups and some new viral strain on the rims. But wait. Don’t worry. Things aren’t that bad. Thank god we have the water cup, that tepid glass of human sludge in which every ball must first be sterilized.

Seriously, who thought the water cup was a good idea? I understand why you might hope to rinse off the dirt and dust from the ball — admirable, but don’t you think it kind of defeats the purpose when you continue to dunk the ball in that same dirt and dust tainted cup over and over again?! Guess what? you’re not doing your opponent any sort of hygienic favor by dipping your shot in a four-inch pool of water, rank with pubic hairs, body oils, and the occasional finger nail.

Disgusting. But guess what?! There is a simple solution. Just fill all the cups with water and drink your beer on the side. This seems entirely reasonable and yet every single time I play this way, even at my own table, with my own cups, in front of my own room, using my own beer, strangers and friends alike angrily complain:

“Why are you such a germaphobe?” “What is the point of this?”  “Just man up!”

And most articulately by some random Scrippsie–”Why are you such a pussy?”

Why am I such a pussy? Such a germaphobe? Because, foul friends and random taint-jawed Scripssie, I have seen what you do with your mouths. I have seen you licking the sweaty face of some random Boswell lounge beezy/bro. And I’ve seen you pass around that hookah hose you’ve had for three years and have never washed. And I’ve seen you eat those Mixed Bowl noodles off of the big brown stain on the middle of your carpet.

And I want no part in it.

E-603. Crazy name, right? Sounds like one of those new-age mash-up artists. Let’s break it down. E stands for Ethan. The 603, that’s an area code, but where? You guessed it: New Hampshire. Sorry if you misunderstood – E-603 is coming from New Hampshire to spin some of the hottest mash-up dance music of 2009.

You know the sound. Someone is always playing this interfused genre on campus. Rap and techno. Ludacris and Daft Punk. Notorious spitting on a Matt and Kim track. Nothing could be better for a dance party: your favorite lyrics with ecstasy worthy beats. But it is not just quality track sampling that makes E-603 stand out. Promise.

E-603’s real name is Ethan Ward. He is supposed to be a junior at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts. Instead, he took a year off from his film degree to explore his newfound success as a musical pioneer. Yet Ethan, well, he’s as old as we are. The man is down to earth and he is ecstatic for the opportunity to come to the West Coast. He’s just a guy from the Northeast who is passionate about music and has a talent for mixing jams.

A talent for taking other artist’s music? That’s what a hater would say about this new media- the mashing. How hard is it? You mean to make those timeless hits snuggle with the feminist’s nightmare, dubbed rap? I don’t know, judge the music. You have to really listen though because it is not just two songs playing simultaneously. E-603 runs as many as seven songs at once, which have been altered and refined to fit seamlessly, despite genre polarity. I said he had a talent. True. But what Ethan seems to have, more than anything, is a commitment to his art. His latest album, Torn Up, took him over 1000 hours to complete. A year and half. If he was working with Habitat for Humanity he’d have a house by now – in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. His advisor at Hampshire told him no more working on music in school. Fair enough. He took the year off. And that’s where we are now.

Ethan, E-603 rather, refuses to do shows for his school. Why? He doesn’t want to give off the persona of an outrageous chief who wiles out in front of a crowd. He has to live with these people. Sure, sounds good. Though it’s not likely he’s ever going to see us again. Right. So does that mean? Yes, it does. Get psyched. E-603 – we’ll call him E, a reasonable blend of stage and real life personalities. Well, let’s just say he buys the cheapest computers he can find and covers them in saran wrap. “Who knows what is going to happen,” he says. Damn. Dude doesn’t even have a hotel room. He’s going with the flow of the night. “I’ll probably end up sleeping on someone’s floor.” I hope not. Who’s got a couch? Ladies–he’s single, attractive, and friendly, do you have room?