Mud sliding: First couple of weeks of school seem to always end in a downpour that floods the campus and turns Mertz field into a giant slip `n' slide. So naturally, we take advantage of that fact. Me, Alyssa, Laurel, Eve, Nori, Megan, Jenny, and Amelia are all part of a bigger group largely composed of frisbee players getting their layouts on. Huck the disc, big group of people takes off after it and lays out for it. So we do this a couple of times, then decided that sitting in the coursing water and painting each others' faces with mud. This goes on until we are well slathed, at which point we make our way to Willets to try and hug anyone we can get our muddy arms around. All three floors are infiltrated. Then to first south
Publications office sunrise: At the end of sophomore year, the Athletic Review Committee made the ingenious decision to end the existence of Swarthmore football, badminton, and wrestling, beginning a long standing rift between a number of the former players of the sports and the administration. I had just recently joined the Phoenix as a freelance photographer, taking the odd picture of computers, tree sculptures, and theatre performances. If I remember correctly, Thursday night was the Phoenix end of semester dinner and award ceremony, which I stayed at for a very long time. Something like 4am, drinking wine and talking with Justin, Nathan and Liz about everything and nothing. So I began the mass of coverage already low on sleep. Public knowledge of the rising controversy of the end of football began with Cookie (Chris Morello) standing on a table in Sharples, teary eyed, delivering the news and announcing a candle light vigil which was to be held in front of Parrish that night at 7 to protest the decision. I spent the evening chasing down football players, trying to find out anything possible and take pictures of everything as it happened. Michael Pasahow and I shot the vigil from setup to end, freezing in the December cold, and taking turns running memory cards and batteries up to the office and back down again. I shot somewhere in the area of 2,000 pictures, including the perfect shot of Coach Pete Alvanos crying as he addressed the crowd. After the vigil, Mike and I spend the next several hours loading, looking at, correcting and processing the obscene number of pictures taken in the couple of hours prior for the online coverage slide show. The next morning there was a meeting in the field house for all parties concerned to address the ARC and administration. Mike went to this one, which turned out to be a yellfest and general take over by the parents of football players. Saturday day was spent putting together the first of two emergency editions of the Phoenix (a six page photocopied document outlining what had happened at this point). I slept minimally that night, having joined in the photocopying, collating and distributing them under people's doors. Monday night held a Fireside Chat. Usually occurring in Kohlberg coffee bar next to the fireplace, the size of the turnout dictated a move into the Friends' Meeting House. This ended up being the largest Fireside Chat held in recent history and also featured a large number of the administration sitting in the front pews. Mike and I split front to shoot as much from as many angles as possible. Long night again, downloading and correcting the best of the bunch for the second special edition. This one I didn't tag along for as I was stuck in the publications office correcting for online coverage again. Meanwhile, the rest of the paper was coming together, so I spent my requisite many hours correcting things for regular print, choosing photos for the double truck and trying desperately to stay awake.  I went home at some point to take a shower and change clothes, but I spent the majority of the night up in the publications office, working on Latin due for tomorrow's class and keeping Nathan and Justin company while they worked on various aspects of putting out a 36 page Phoenix-the largest edition in the history of the paper and certainly since. Sunrise came with a fanfare the likes of which I have never since seen. The dark purple of night gave way to the richest orange, red and rose I have ever seen produced by sun and clouds. The Magill Walk trees, bare from midwinter cold, were silhouetted against the riot of colors on the horizon. The color remained for a long time, stretching across the expanse of city in the distance, turning deep pinks and purples, slowly fading to daylight. All activity in the office stopped for a time to watch the development of beauty. Pictures were taken of the morning arriving and then all went back to work. I spent the early hours of the morning sitting in the window overlooking Magill Walk, reading for seminar that afternoon and watching campus come to life under a clear December morning. At some point I descended from my perch to attend Latin 11 which was predominantly taken up by discussion of what was going on with the football team and the like (info session headed up by me since I was in the middle of the source of information collection) and a minimum of actual class. From there I tried to get into a faculty meeting, but settled for staging a shot of Jennie Keith coming out of the meeting (the only staged shot I've ever taken, but at that point, I didn't care). Went to Bio5 a few minutes late, unprepared, but feeling very campus important and driven, or some facsimile of it. After class, I crashed for hours, making up for 5 days worth of sleeplessness.
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Climbing Parrish: End of sophomore year, I was keeping people company up in the publication office as they finished Spike (well, that's only half true. I hadn't seen Gabe, my then boyfriend, for days for various reasons, and went up there to confirm that he and my absent roommate were alive). Kellam came bumbling into the office asking for help with a ladder. I asked what was going on. He answered that he was trying to get the flag off the roof of Parrish for the Willets scavenger hunt. Oh! I'm coming with you to help. We tried for a while with the ladder, got it out onto the roof of Parrish (the landing just off the fifth floor) and discovered that it only allowed the climber to just reach the gutter of the roof, and no more. We climbed around the edges of the landing and the roof for a while and found that the roof over Parrish north slanted down to meet a gutter that was reachable by the landing. So we climbed around that for a while, finding that one could climb around the gutter of the dome and get to the door-that-leads-to-nowhere that way. But it was locked. I climbed up behind the chimney and tried to wedge myself up the side of the dome to get to the top of the door-that-leads-to-nowhere roof, to no avail. And had a momentary freak out about not being able to get back down again, but I did and was fine. On our way back to the top of Parrish north, we found a guy wire that ran from the top of the dome and terminated where we were situated atop Parrish north. Perfect. One could climb up the side leaning backward, supported by the guy wire. Preparation for this was in order. We ran back to Willets, got gloves, my Texas flag to fly in place of the stolen US flag, some rope, duck tape, and Paul. Back to the top of Parrish. Kellam, Paul and I straddling the A-line of Parrish north discussed our plan of attack. Rope was tied to our waists and to the guy wire, gloves were put on, and Paul was situated below the guy wire with the instructions to catch us if we fell. I went first. The dome of Parrish is tiled in one foot by two foot slate shingles which are very slick and offer nothing in the way of traction or friction or grip or gription or any of those negative forces that figure into moving bodies in physics. Through a series of pushes and false attempts, I succeeded in getting myself into the proper climbing position and scurried up the roof, untied myself at the top and climbed over the metal railing that encircles the top of the dome. Kellam followed. The two of us walked around the top of the dome for a long time, assessing how we were to get the flag down without dying. The flag pole is very close to the edge of the dome and the railing. Were one to fall off the dome, one would fall off of Parrish and onto Magill Walk. Not fun. We opted to not die and to rig up my Texas flag on the pole proving we'd been there, though had not gotten the flag. We tied the flag to some rope and the rope to the pole, and taped the rope in place as far up the pole as we could reach. Walked around for a little while longer, admiring the view, looking down on the people camping on the beach that night, crouching out of the light of the flag spotlight as public safety drove by. Getting back down the dome proved more frightening than climbing up, mostly because it's backward and increasingly steep and you have to lean against your weight perpendicular to the dome as you descend. And then reach Paul who gives instructions as to where your feet are to go to make it alive. And we did. And the flag flew for a week after. And we won the scavenger hunt, though only slightly because of the Texas flag flying just beneath the US flag on top of Parrish.
Texas flag flying above Parrish: In the week that the flag flew above Parrish, I was sitting on the beach reading for a class near a group of seniors headed up by Mike Klunder. They were having some form of an argument that I wasn't paying attention to until he said in his very loud Mike Klunder voice, what flag is that? Puerto Rico? He got on a cell phone and was talking to some friend of his, asking what the Puerto Rican flag looked like when I chimed in, It's a Texas flag. They looked at me for a while and asked how I knew. I said, cause it's my flag. He asked how it had gotten there. I said cause I put it there. Pause. Why Texas? I'm from Texas and had the flag. No other reason. Oh. And I continue reading.
Worth Courtyard party (coffee icecream and whiskey): During one of the late spring days of Sophomore year, Eve sent out an email about icecream and whiskey in Worth courtyard. So under the sun of spring, between flowering trees in front of lodge two, a group of us ate coffee ice cream infused with whiskey and laughed.
April Fools antics: Night before April Fools' day, I got an email from Gabe which was sent to a number of his friends about the night's plans. Several things were in the offing. I, armed with a camera, joined the bunch which met in Eric Lievy's room in Parrish. We trundled off to Hicks mural room where Nathaniel Fairfield was working on engineering stuff and presented him with the instruction book to the bell tower which had been stolen from the machine room earlier in the week. What they wished to happen was a rewiring of the controls to have the bell tower play something other than its usual Big Ben chimes. This, it seemed, was a little overambitious for the amount of time we had to work with, and would have involved a separate control panel construction. Nonetheless, we entertained this idea for a while, I called Nori to find out what notes the chimes were to see what we had to work with in the way of other songs for it to play. This all died out and we decided to go attack the tower and see what could be done anyway. Nick Johnson, Gabe, Eric, Jane Ng, Nathaniel Fairfield, Jesse (name?) and I went to the intercultural center where the machine room for the bell tower is. In the SAO room there is a door to a closet (hinges out toward the room) which hold all of the controls to the bell tower. The guys took the door off of its hinges, put it to one side and regarded the control box before them. In one corner of the room was a ladder to the attic area of Clotheir. Everyone climbed up and walked around the attic for a while just to have said they'd done it. Back to the control box. This is where Jesse comes in. Jesse is the lock picker in residence. He picked his way into the box and into the smaller hardware box next to it. Then Nathaniel stepped up, electrical engineer eyes coming up with options to screw with. The bell tower bells have two settings: auto and manual. There is also the option to let the bells ring at random; press the button and the bells ring until someone turns them off. The hardware box next to it holds the wires for bell tones. The decision was made to switch the wires so that the wrong bells rang and then hit the button for random play and run. Simple as that. We cleared out to give Nathaniel some room. He gives the instructions that he needed someone to stand in the doorway with a large plank of wood so that if he got electrocuted, they could hit him free of the wires. Ok, Nick filled that position. Wires switched. Everyone but me, Gabe, and Nathaniel at the wires cleared out before the button was hit. Thus, a minimum of people would be seen exiting the scene of the crime. Poised to run, Nathaniel hit the button. And the bells rang at random at 2am on April Fool's day. And we ran. We ran as far as Wharton and then doubled back toward Tarble to see what would happen. Five minutes later, public safety showed up, parked on the stones in front of Tarble and ran to the IC rooms. Several minutes later, the bells finally stopped. The punchline was yet to come the next day. After that success, the three of us ambled over to the rose garden side of Parrish where Dan Sproul and about a dozen other people (most of our previous group) had gathered around the twig sculpture in front of Trotter. Dan had had the idea to cover the sculpture in giant ants made out of balloons spray painted black and duck taped with antennae and legs. Dan and Nick climbed up the inside and perched atop the first lobe, taping ants down and hoisting them up through the middle hole. At some point, a public safety truck drove up the path from Willets to Trotter, behind Trotter, around past LPAC and parked facing us. Turned on their spot lights, and shouted through their bull horn "we have you surrounded". We applauded and waved and they drove off. A little while later, after the ants had been completed, we convened in Parrish for Gabe's idea of putting a broken boot on a public safety truck, giving the illusion that they had been booted at the least (which never occurred). Down the hall, public safety let themselves into Tedd Goundie's office. We would find out why later. The final antic was stringing yarn between the trees all the way down Magill Walk. This entertained us until we ran out of yarn around 6am and left for bed. The next day (or so I hear, I was asleep), the bell tower rang at 1pm, but rang all the wrong tones and rang 4 o'clock. Maintenance apparently came and the tower didn't ring for another week until the bells were fixed. Also, and email from Tedd Goundie's office was received by [reserved students] reminding everyone to turn their clocks back for Daylight Savings (and as far as I can tell was sent out by public safety as Tedd sent out a followup email correcting the wrong instruction and congratulating the "kids" who successfully broke into his office without messing anything up).
Abducting Eve: Sometime during the week of April Fool's, the decision was made to stage an abduction of a spec on a campus tour. I don't remember who produced this gem of an idea, but the plan was set. Eve was to pose as the spec and join a tour group. A half dozen or so of the rest of us were to follow the tour at a distance, rush in, grab Eve, and run off with her. The plan went without a hitch. Eve joined the tour, saying she was a senior at some highschool in New York (probably the high school she actually attended), and followed the tour, being quiet in that intimidated-spec way. As the tour reached Magill Walk having just come down off the hill from McCabe, the abduction group made its strike. Yelling and cheering, they grabbed Eve, hoisted her above them, and ran up the walk toward Parrish, dropping her off in parlors. The tour continued on as though nothing had happened. Next time we need someone to pose as a distraught parent.
Paces Poetry Slam (Ben's sophomore paper): Early in the week that our sophomore papers were due, Paces held a poetry slam. I was there, trying to work on Latin and attempting to be in the general vicinity of Gabe who was getting drunk at a nearby table with Martin and Nori. Alyssa and Laurel were at my table, Alyssa trying to decide if she wanted to read one of her poems. Sam Dingman and Morgan Simon finished playing their sax spot and gave way to the poetry. Various people read their poetry. Eric Osheim got up and announced that he was going to try and freestyle poetry and bongos, bear with him, he's never done this before. He tried for a little while and then announced that, well, he tried. Alyssa read her poem, which was wonderful. Then Ben got up on stage. Ben said that he had been writing his sophomore paper, as a number of us had probably been doing. He said that he was going to read his sophomore paper as his poetry, but he was going to read only every other word. Much laughter. And then he proceeded to read every other word of his sophomore paper to the packed audience in Paces. And it was hilarious. In the space of the requisite one to two pages of "what I want to do with my major" essay, Ben covered it all, including cunnilingist. The whole thing took maybe 10 minutes and was possibly the funniest thing I have ever heard.
Spring Fling 2001 (Ferris on the Beach, Petting Zoo, 50's dance under the cherry tree): this will be expanded upon later...