Steffa

Only a few read­ers will under­stand the ref­er­ence, but for today Stef­fa is offi­cial­ly a turkey. One of her alum­ni works in the Stan­ford reg­is­trar’s office and she nev­er told me! Con­sid­er your­self turk­i­fied, my friend.

T‑Shirts On Campus Today

While tabling on cam­pus today I saw two t‑shirts that tick­led me. The first was a Che Rea­gan t‑shirt. The shirt is delight­ful­ly ambigu­ous. Side note: the Che Jesus t‑shirts just don’t have that same vibe–the beret is just too much. The oth­er was a Kerry/Gore t‑shirt. Kerry/Gore? What? They were nev­er even run­ning mates. It was Gore/Lieberman in 2000 and then Kerry/Edwards in 2004. I’m sure the shirt was sup­posed to be some sort of state­ment, but I can’t for the life of me fig­ure it out.

Bagels, Donuts, and Other Holy Things

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?

How Students Have Made Me Laugh Recently

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?

RunThere.com

While work­ing the con­tact table on cam­pus Alan told me about a web­site a friend of his has set up called RunThere.com. Which I think is fun­ny because it could also be RuntHere.com–a site to help you find short peo­ple like me. Any­way, it’s a great site for run­ners or for any­one else who needs to cal­cu­late dis­tance as the crow flies.

The Stats Thus Far

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

Seen On Campus

Today while work­ing our con­tact table I saw a great t‑shirt:

My friend went to Iraq look­ing for weapons of mass destruc­tion, but all he found was this crum­my t‑shirt.

I don’t care what your polit­i­cal bent is–that’s pret­ty fun­ny.

Not Exactly The Trinity, If You Know What I Mean

Towards the end of our time on cam­pus today, as the line to reg­is­ter bicy­cles extend­ed into the dozens, three extreme­ly cur­va­ceous, biki­ni-clad upper­class­men began sun­bathing in White Plaza in full view of the fresh­man bicy­cle reg­is­tra­tion line. I sup­pose they each want­ed a fresh man. I would not be sur­prised to learn that they accom­plished their goal–at the very least they gave the frosh gals eat­ing dis­or­ders and the frosh guys neck cricks.

seen today on campus

While at our con­tact table, I spot­ted a stu­dent wear­ing a shirt sport­ing the word Juven­tus. Alan Asbeck and I spec­u­lat­ed as to its mean­ing, final­ly decid­ing that it was a com­pos­ite of juve­nile and momen­tous and was used to describe events of cos­mic sig­nif­i­cance to young people–such as a prom theme. Alas, it turns out to be an Ital­ian soc­cer team.