Head: Don’t attempt this at home

I recall—when I was a traditional student at a large land-grant university during the Seventies—that there were always pranks going around the campus. Many had to do with sports because, well, it was the University of Nebraska. Special days and events like Halloween and April Fool’s Day spawned their fair share of extra-extra-curricular activities, but I haven’t seen much of that sort of thing at Lakeland.

Maybe it’s because I’m now a non-trad—a non-traditional student—and I commute to and from the campus, never learning about the stuff that those traditional students do outside of class.

Maybe….

I tend to think, though, that it has more to do with the fact that nothing happens here anymore. I voiced my concern at the last production meeting of The Mirror.

“Why,” I asked, “do all the neat stories about the campus turn out to be things that happened years ago?”

The response was swift and severe, and it betrayed a certain amount of mind-reading ability on the part of rest of the staff.

“Don’t even think about using your column to instigate those kinds of things! Be responsible! Remember that, at 64-years-old, you’re the adult in the room!”

I’m humbled, and I don’t know what I could have been thinking. I realize now that it’s up to me to set a standard for my younger, traditional classmates. After all, who knows what those immature minds might come up with when left to their own devices?

So I’ve resolved not to write anything that might in any way encourage anything other than thoughts of eating, sleeping, and studying. Mostly studying.

I’ve made a pact with myself and with my more-professional peers NOT to degrade my column by mentioning unsubstantiated things like:

1. The cow that once appeared on the third floor of Old Main.
2. The 1950s panty raid at Jubilee Hall.
3. The professor’s Volkswagen Beetle that was taken apart in the Sixties and reassembled on the first floor of Old Main.
4. The sorority initiation where pledges were abandoned along a rural road with only drink tickets from a bar in Franklin to survive on during their hike back to campus.
5. The goings-on at the “Friendship Bridge” in Grether Woods. (Ask some of the more senior faculty members who are also alumni.)

Thank goodness I’ve come to my senses.

‘Nuff said….