Joe's List: Forget '4/20' here's some other things we shoudl ban

by Joe Lazauskas

Tuesday April 8, 2008

In light of the administration’s push for not allowing the PETA event on ‘4/20’ (see front page…no seriously, go do it now, you probably won’t really understand this column if you don’t, and it’s a pretty interesting story anyway), I thought it might be useful to suggest some other things to ban on campus instead, as a compromise. After all, everyone knows that banning things is fun, and so is fighting against a ban. Student Life had a fantastic time almost banning smoking on campus earlier this year, and all the smokers had fun with their cigarette butt scavenger hunts and ash jars and briefly reconnecting with Rebel Without a Cause in a very deep way. Some girls on campus enjoy placing a ban on Sarah Lawrence men in general, and the handful of romantically unsuccessful SLC men place a ban on ever admitting to their friends back home the truth about their love lives here. Ever. (Especially when they showed their jealous friends those insane pictures of the SleazeBall some guy posted online six years ago). The point is, bans are inherently fun, and we shouldn’t take that joy away from our fine administration.

1. Ban on relating everything in your seminars back to your theatre life

In every seminar or group conference, there seems to be one person who relates everything the class is discussing back to the time they played Ophelia in sixth grade or The Fiddler freshman year. Whether it be psych (“I know that, deep down, inherent within me, is the truth that I am an actress”), poetry (“well, you know, when I act, because I am an actor, the annunciation of the words are the true poetry of the performance”) or Anthropology (“Well it’s interesting, you know, to think of neo-capitalism as it applies to the performing arts…”) there is always one student who brings the spotlight back on them and the discussion to a place that makes most of the class (even, and especially, the professor) start daydreaming about showing up to their next performance just to heckle them as brutally as Gilbert Godfrey hopped up on whiskey, coke and quailudes during a Roast of Britney Spears. When you factor in our small amount of class time overall, it’s estimated that 4 million dollars in tuition fees a year are wasted by these tangents, and that’s simply not acceptable.

2. Ban on Bronxville

We should ban and boycott Bronxville until we get some real student discounts, they realize that nine dollars isn’t a reasonable price for a sandwich, 12 dollars isn’t a reasonable price for mediocre General Tsos Chicken, and their high school boys stop wearing reflecting, multicolored sunglasses on the train while yelling about beer bong and Nickelback. At the very least, they could stop sending that dude to flash his junk in the library windows after their various water squirting attacks didn’t work.

3. Ban on oversized headphones

I don’t care if the administration does this or it’s voluntary. But please, I’m begging you. I understand—you’re cooler than me; you’re probably listening to some post-rock or dance-noise band that I’ve never heard of and never will; if I try to extend some sort greeting, it’ll be awkward because you won’t understand what I’m saying at all, and then you’ll make a judgment call and, depending on if you deem me important enough, either keep walking and ignore me or stop and, deliberately throw your headphones around your neck and stare without smiling, and really, at this point, after all this effort, anything I say that’s short of “your grandmother is ill” or “there’s a tremendous coke orgy going on tonight” will be a huge, awkward let down.