Campus Beat: Presidents, Playboy, and Plumbers
By Emily Rutherford - Sep 15th, 2008 at 12:00 pmYou might be a little sick of coverage of federal politics and presidents and that sort of thing, so the George Washington Hatchet brings up an alternative: a sprint run by four competitors dressed in giant foam president costumes. It seems fairly undeniable that henceforth all electoral contests should take place in the format of this event.
I know that it’s fairly self-evident that college campuses are exactly the right market for Playboy, but I’m still surprised to see the magazine’s antics getting noticed in the campus papers. The Indiana Daily Student seems rather proud that seven Indiana University students will be featured in Playboy’s “Big 10″ issue–amusingly enough, one of the models in question declares that she “actually always wanted to be in Playboy.” There’s a life goal for you. Meanwhile, Cornell has acquired its very own Playboy campus rep, following in the footsteps of Yale to become the second Ivy with such an individual. His job description includes sponsoring frat parties and getting people to wear Playboy clothing.
Don’t worry, though, if all this partying and hedonism isn’t your thing: you can always head over to Notre Dame, where women apparently enjoy filling traditional gender roles by baking, or BYU, which is promoting children’s hygiene à la Barney.
Yes indeed, there’s something for everyone at colleges around the country: this week’s nerd prize goes to UMass-Amherst, which has jumped on the “Go Cross Campus” bandwagon. GXC is a Risk-like game that takes place on an actual map of the eastern United States and pits rival colleges against each other. It enjoyed great success in the Ivy League last year, and now UMass seems quite delighted to engage in a little intramural competition.
Encouragingly, Yale might be making strides in the direction of equal housing opportunities for transgender students. Though administrators are using Yale’s somewhat complicated residential college system as an excuse for why they haven’t implemented gender-neutral housing yet, many Yalies recognize that change needs to happen. It seems as if it might not be too long before Princeton is, embarrasingly, the only Ivy without gender-neutral housing options.
Does anyone remember the Yale professor who couldn’t have a conversation with his plumber? If you, too, thought that article was utterly ridiculous, check out the Yale Daily News‘ “variations on a theme.”
And finally, allow me to present the “self-evident headline of the week” award: congratulations to the Missouri Maneater, for helpfully declaring that “Stereotypes unfairly judge everyone.” That’s certainly something I’ll bear in mind.
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