Author: Glen

Yes­ter­day was our last day of tabling on cam­pus for the fall kick­off, and it was worth every minute for one real­ly unique expe­ri­ence: I actu­al­ly saw a Jew­ish open-air preach­er on White Plaza. Unex­pect­ed, giv­en that Jew­ish adher­ents are rarely not­ed for their evan­ge­lis­tic fer­vor. He had a bull­horn and every­thing.

It was a bit hard to make out what he was say­ing, giv­en that con­cur­rent­ly:

• about 160 stu­dents and work­ers were hold­ing a rather loud protest ral­ly. “What do we want? Jus­tice! When do we want it? Now!”
• a hip-hop group was blar­ing tunes from their turntable set up about 15 feet behind the afore­men­tioned preach­er.
• two acapel­la groups were also pro­ject­ing music (although less thumpi­ly than the hip-hop­pers).

Still, it was inter­est­ing to spec­u­late about the con­tent of his mes­sage. I do know that at one point a dozen Jew­ish stu­dents were blow­ing kazoos while Rab­bi Mychal Copeland blew a full-on sho­far. I also was able to hear the occas­sion­al Hebrew phrase and a few Eng­lish words like “inner bro­ken­ness.”

All in all, a most sur­pris­ing devel­op­ment.

We had a wel­come brunch today for new stu­dents that we called, Bagels, Donuts, and Oth­er Holy Things, which I thought was a rather clever play on words.

Bot­tom line: it went great. Our return­ing stu­dents did an awe­some job of wel­com­ing and host­ing new stu­dents. This year is real­ly look­ing sol­id, and I can tell that our return­ing stu­dents are get­ting excit­ed about it as well.

Plus I just got off the phone with two fresh­men who want to go to church with us tomor­row who weren’t even at the brunch. How cool is that?

Pre­sent­ed with­out any con­text what­so­ev­er:

I’m from Malaysia–the big­ger the rat the bet­ter the food.

Stu­dent: What’s a sphinc­ter?
Me: I will spare you the gory details–suffice to say that the ques­tion was answered
Stu­dent: You say that so mat­ter of fact­ly. Is that com­mon knowl­edge?

Stu­dent A: You know, it took me days to real­ize that call­ing our brunch Bagels, Donuts, and Oth­er Holy Things was a pun.
Stu­dent B: Oh my God–I just got it.

Me at the afore­men­tioned brunch: Some of you may not have real­ized that Bagels, Donuts, and Oth­er Holy Things is a play on words.
1/5 of stu­dents: Oohh­hh.…

Also, I should men­tion that the sun­bathing sirens were at their sta­tions again yes­ter­day. Reflect­ing on the avail­able data, I’m offer­ing three con­clu­sions:

1. They real­ly want to be noticed.
2. They may actu­al­ly be frosh (note that this is a rever­sal on my part).
3. At least one is Cana­di­an, judg­ing from the white maple leaf on a red back­ground that cov­ered the left­most por­tion of her rump.

Which leaves me with one burn­ing question–why do they make biki­nis in Cana­da? Don’t they own ther­mome­ters?

Stats at the end of the third day of New Stu­dent Ori­en­ta­tion:

• Hours on cam­pus: 12
• Num­ber of new stu­dents who have expressed inter­est in Chi Alpha to the extent of giv­ing us their email address: 39
• Num­ber of mod­els who have signed up: 1 (real­ly)
• Num­ber of athe­ists I’ve had pro­longed dis­cus­sions with: 3
• Athe­ists who have helped me work the table and told those who walked up that Chi Alpha was real­ly cool, if reli­gion is your thing: 1
• Num­ber of Ph.D. can­di­dates who have helped me work the con­tact table: 2
• Num­ber of stu­dents I have told we are a trans­gen­der group: 1
• Num­ber of stu­dents I have told that sac­ri­fic­ing chick­ens is what makes us dif­fer­ent from the oth­er min­istries on cam­pus: around 10
• Num­ber who laughed: 9
• Sun­bathers I have mocked from a dis­tance: 3