Dorm Rush and Hall Rush by Jessie L. '07

The past several days have been exciting. There was Dorm Rush, and then there was Hall Rush (or In-House Rush…I guess if you’re in, say, MacGregor, it’s Entry Rush). 5th East now has nine new freshmen…hello to David ’09, Greg ’09, Alex ’09, Rachel ’09, Libby ’09, Jackie ’09, Nick ’09, Zak ’09, and Ross ’09.

I took some pictures at the East Campus/Senior Haus/Random Hall (I’m not sure Bexley showed up) Rush party, “Distant Early Warning”, which I think is a great name for a party.

At the East Campus/West Campus Water War (which annoyed me a little this year because it was an official event and we weren’t allowed to use the moat around the chapel and it lasted five minutes instead of 25), East Campus built a wooden Godzilla monster that carried jugs of water. By the time the party started, its arms and wheels were gone, but it sitll looked pretty cool out there in the courtyard:

This interesting spinning ride, a version of which happens every year, has a freshman in it:

“Do you think Harvey will care that I bled on the ‘S’?” I carved out the letters in “East Campus” in the picture below. I also managed to stab myself in the hand with a utility knife. If you were there, you might have noticed that the ‘S’ in “campus” was smeared with red? Yeah.

I’m not quite sure what this hammock thing was, but it was fun to try to crawl around in…

The Randomites made liquid nitrogen ice cream. Double double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble? I guess nothing was really bubbling (or burning, for that matter), there was just a lot of evaporating nitrogen.

There was a bungee-type swing between the two parallels of EC, like those rides you see at amusement parks that cost an extra $30 or so.

Believe it or not, that red blur is a swinging freshman in a red shirt.

And then, EC had freshmen, nearly a quarter of whom had been temped in other dorms (yay for people making the most of Rush!). And there was Hall Rush. All the halls hung signs around EC encouraging the frosh to visit them. Our posters had Krotus, the dark lord of 5th East, on them, with entertaining flavor text underneath, as pictured below:

Hey, it’s a good way to clean the table! We had other nice slogans as well, most of which were parodying our own image, which is something we do really well, because we think that the rumors about us are really funny. Some of the other slogans included “Hate will make you strong”, “More Supreme Court acquittals than your average living group” (this is true), and something about the coldness or darkness of our hearts. And also, “Hi.”

We had fun activities. We try to make our Rush activities things that happen even when Rush is not going on, so we had stir-fry cooking, smashing things with the Ultrabuster, movies, loud music coming from the music server and people’s rooms, talking to Alex ’04 in Pittsburgh over the phone, and chatting with upperclassmen and alums like Lex ’00, Peter ’01, Richard ’02 and Hani ’96 in the lounges.

We also had knife-throwing, which happens when we have a suitable (usually foam) target. We had to get rid of last year’s because Cambridge said it violated the fire code. The knives had homemade blades and etchings of Krotus in the handles, and were done by Dany ’07. The targets were pink foam with two “emo kids” drawn on them by our resident emo kid, Sarah ’08.

This unnamed freshman just finished his turn.

And we did a four-or-five-story tall projection of Krotus on the side of the Green Building from out our kitchen window.

So, at last, we have freshmen! *happy dance* They seem pretty cool so far…we’ll see how they turn out. *grin*