HOW TO BE A
PUNK (AT PRINCETON)
When
I first showed up on campus three years ago, I wasn't really shocked. I had seen the brochures, after all, not to
mention the Abercrombie photo shoots on Poe Field. But if any school was crying
out for an underground community of droogs, devotchkas and other malcontents,
it was Princeton, and it was only a matter of time until I found them. Well,
I'm still looking. Princeton has as much of a seedy underbelly as your average
gated community, but with less competent security guards. I gave in fairly
quickly to its demands by joining an eating club, resolving to get decent
grades and drinking heavily on Thursday nights, but the Angry Young Man in me
still pokes his head out from underneath my veneer of sophistication and tells
me to fuck off every once in a while. So, in the interest of making some sort
of meaningful contribution to these Ivy-spotted walls, I have compiled a list
of ways in which the incoming freshmen and freshwomen of Princeton can break
out of the shackles of conformity. With your help, we can bring to this
legendary institution the kind of wit, charm and erudition that flows freely
from the gangs of smokers congregating on the sidewalks of every high school in
the nation. Go forth and multiply, I say.
STEP ONE:
STYLE
1) HAIR
Dye it green, which is to say, think
about dying it green. We're all being shipped off en masse to Goldman Sachs
after graduation, and 'Minds. Wide Open.' is not a euphemism for 'Send Us
Freaks. Please.' So realistically, the most I can expect is that you'll get a
bottle of gel and make spikes or something. And it doesn’t count if you get
blond highlights and only spike the front – there are no punks in Gap
commericials (unless you count Willie Nelson).
2) CLOTHES
This you can get away with a bit more
easily. Try wearing your polo shirts inside out, or making the collar stick up
on purpose. This is extremely badass, as it looks like you don't know how to
dress yourself. Stupidity (real or otherwise) is very punk. Use your dry-erase
board marker to write slogans like 'XXXHARDCOREXXX' or 'NADER FOR PRES' on your
shoes. Don't worry, they’ll wash off. Tell everyone you bought all your Old
Navy stuff used at the Nearly New Shop, even if you didn't. And when all else
fails, buy a scarf and a beret. You won't really look like a punk, but you have
a better chance of being mistaken for one if people think you're a grad
student, or European.
3) PIERCINGS
Ha. Yeah right. You think daddy's going
to give you the keys to the house in the Hamptons when you come home with a
five-gauge hole in your ear? Just get a tongue stud like everybody else. It
takes about a week for you to go back on solid food, and three weeks to learn
to talk without revealing to grandma that you've got a hunk of metal in your
mouth at all times.
STEP TWO:
SCHOOL
1) MAJORS
Finding an acceptably punk major at
Princeton is actually a cinch. Here's a quick rundown:
RELIGION: Lots of pretend thinking.
Good excuses to be seen reading Nietsche. Almost understand what 'nihilism'
means.
COMP LIT: Smoking is very punk. Not
cloves, though, so watch out. Again, lots of pretend thinking and general
pretension, which helps if you ever want to graduate from being punk to full-on
Indie Rock Snobbery.
PHILOSOPHY: See religion.
ENGLISH: You're walking a fine line
here. Enjoying Austen does not = punk. Taking classes with Craig Dworkin =
punk, provided you pretend to have already read and become bored with
everything he's teaching. Make sure to drop phrases like 'Yeah, like I need to read
Adorno one more time' or 'He's teaching Kathy Acker? Why don't we just read
fucking Germaine Greer and get it over with!'
LANGUAGES: All language majors are de
facto punks. There's usually only five or six of them in each department, hence
they are Rugged Individuals. The only languages that don't count are French and
Spanish, because everybody speaks at least one of those and didn't feel the
need to make it their life's mission. You idiot.
There are several majors that actually
make it harder for you to be taken seriously as a punk:
POLITICS: Ahh, one of the few majors
you can switch into after the start of junior year. Come on, kids. If you want
to read Nozick and wear suit jackets, join Woody Woo. If you want to tuck your
t-shirt into your pants and never get laid, be a chem major. You can't have it
both ways.
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY: You are a mol bio
major. You will be a doctor some day. You are not reading this, unless someone
left a copy in the C-Floor bathroom in Firestone and you forgot to bring your
textbook with you to the shitter. Now put down the magazine and go back to your
carrel. I'm not going to be held responsible when you find out there's life
outside these walls and you throw yourself off Fine Tower.
WOODY WOO: The Bicker club of majors. I've
heard that there's a secret sub-basement that's a sort of magical playground
for tools, where they have illegal immigrant servants who starch your shirts
and hand out free daquiris, as well as a big screen TV permanently tuned to
CNN. Wait, sorry, that's Tower.
2) THE HONOR CODE
Imagine somebody comes up to you and
says ‘how would you like to turn in your friends and acquaintances for crimes
that they didn’t even commit? There are no real rewards, but you do get to
watch some unfair trials for free. It's like Court TV in Mexico!’ If you find
this an attractive proposition, boy have I got a job for you. Yes, it’s all fun and games being an Honor
Code Committee member. I encourage everyone to cheat on everything, in the
hopes that someday the only people left being 'honest' will be the members
themselves, and we can stone them to death like Piggy in Lord of the Flies.
Vigilante justice is very punk.
3) CLASSES
Three quick tips:
1) Don't take any.
2) If you have to, don't show up.
3) Fail one*. Why? Because you just
don't fucking care, maaaan.
*failing organic chemistry does not
count. I'm sorry, but if it's one of those classes where you can work your ass
off and still fail, you can't claim that you don't care. We're going to laugh
at you whether you make it or not, don’t waste your time trying to be
nonchalant about it.
STEP THREE:
SOCIAL LIFE
RESIDENTIAL COLLEGES
I suppose we all had to start out
somewhere. If you were lucky enough to get into Rocky or Mathey, you are not
punk. I don’t care if you spent all your time smoking PCP in the radio station
lobby and crashing frat parties so you can break their furniture, you still
don’t qualify. And damn you people for being able to send postcards of Holder
to your friends saying ‘isn’t my dorm wonderfully pseudo-gothic?’ If you
weren’t in Butler or some of the really oppressive dorms in Wilson, or maybe
even the Forbes Annex, you cannot be punk. You just don’t have the inner rage
like I do.
2) EATING CLUBS
Joining an eating club is massively
unpunk. Willingly submitting to any sort of higher authority is massively
unpunk. 'But what about Terrace?' you
say, waiting for my sarcastic rejoinder. Oh, you sad little man. Terrace is
about as punk as sipping on a Shirley Temple at a Weezer concert. At this point, there is not a single eating
club that has not invited DJ Bob into its hallowed halls and onto its dance
floors so that we can all do the electric slide together, and as we all know,
THE ELECTRIC SLIDE IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL. And not the good work of the devil
either, y’know, in that Black Sabbath kind of way. So if you join an eating club, say goodbye to those anarchist
fantasies. Although, you can go through
the bicker process and still be punk, but only if you use it as an excuse to
seduce and ruthlessly humiliate as many Cap members as possible. Did I say Cap?
And to think I was trying not to name names.
GOING INDEPENDENT
I know a lot of independents. Let me
preface this by saying that I am not an independent, and most of them can’t
understand that. Frankly I think the only reason some of them did it was so
that they could have the word ‘independent’ next to their name on official
documents, as if the Converse All-Stars and the thick-framed glasses weren’t
enough for them. Independents are perhaps the least punk of all, because they
overcompensate for not having an affiliation to the point where they’re almost
more cliquey than Thetas. Try holding down a conversation with an independent.
It’s impossible. Why? Because they’re never there when you want to talk to
them, they go bowling on Tuesday nights and stay in on Saturdays when you’re
out getting smashed. Either that or they’re too busy ‘making dinner’, which I’m
pretty sure is code for ‘watching hermaphroditic porn in my gloriously large common
room’. If any independent ever tries to tell you they’re punk, give them two
words: Spelman Formals. They’re so far above the eating clubs that they have to
PRETEND THAT THEY’RE IN AN IMAGINARY ONE? Please. The only thing you free
yourself from by going independent is your grip on reality, and for most of
those people, I don't think it was much of a sacrifice.
STEP FOUR: IN
YOUR SPARE TIME
There are far more unacceptable ways of
spending your time than acceptible ones, so let me attack those first:
CAMPUS JOBS
No, no, no. If you work a campus job,
you’re helping further the endeavors of Princeton, which we all know is a tool
of the Vast and Overreaching Capitalist Conspiracy. Also, you may have to do
something for one of those bastards who treats everybody like a servant, like
going to get balsamic vinegar from the back of the storeroom and not getting so
much as a ‘thank you’. Never fuck with
people who are serving you food, buddy – hope you liked that scabby band-aid
baked into your pepperoni slice.
SPORTS
See FRATS.
FRATS
See SPORTS. That ought to keep you
idiots busy until I graduate.
DRINKING
Well, this one’s a bit of a conundrum.
On the one hand, drinking has traditionally been seen as very unpunk. But then
again, on this campus someone who doesn’t drink isn’t called straight-edge,
he’s called an engineer. I say drink all you want, but instead of going home
horny and frustrated like a Charter member, just take out your frustrations on
the street itself. Learn from the Yale kids who threw a brick through one of
TI’s windows that night they lost the basketball game: Break shit. And
remember, only if they catch you and beat you senseless can you be legitimately
described as a ‘sore loser’.
SMOKING
Smoke only cigarettes, and only during
the day. Smoking to enhance your beer buzz is strictly the province of sorority
girls and teenagers.
FUCKING
Real punks shoot too much smack to
actually have sex with anyone. Outside of a few obnoxious and omnipresent
couples in long-term relationships, hardly anyone here actually has sex. So, if
you want to be punk at Princeton (and remember, this is our stated goal),
having a lot of sex can only help. Also, it feels good and will improve your
complexion. The best way to start having a lot more sex is by hanging out in
three places:
1) Frist. Frist should be obvious,
because most everyone who passes through there after midnight from Thursday to
Saturday are most likely drunk, horny, frustrated and on their way home. People
say the TI taproom is where the truly desperate end their night, but you stand
a much better chance of hooking up if their options have been reduced to a)
cold pizza and vomiting roommates; or b) sex with you.
2) The Colonial dance floor. Now don't
be confused, I'm certainly not endorsing Colonial as the most swingingest
eating club, but when you cram that many drunk people on a dance floor, sex
just happens. It’s like dumping chlorine in a swimming pool: if you don’t see
some action pretty quickly, something has gone drastically wrong.
3) The laundry room. This is the
pick-up joint of the new millennium. Everyone in there are wearing their
ugliest clothes and handling large quantities of underwear. Sex, as Pauline
Kael once wrote, is the ultimate leveler.
CAMPUS PUBLICATIONS
1) The Prince. Actually, writing for
The Prince is much better than writing for the Nass because everyone hates the
Prince. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that The Prince staff must have
huge balls, because to consistently make that many people angry and frustrated
can’t be as easy as it looks. Also, extra points for editorials called “Free
Glow In The Dark Footballs: But At What Cost?” Woman, my hat is off to you.
2) The Nass. Oh please. What could be
less provocative than trying really hard to be provocative? And if I read one
more fucking article about how fucking subversive it is to fucking like fucking
Maxim using as much fucking foul language as fucking possible, I will be forced
to write a vicious expose of Princeton life that pretends to be edgy and offensive
but is really just kind of toothless, cheap and predictable. And we don’t want
that.
3) The Tory. I’ll bet even Robby George
refers to those guys as ‘nutjobs’. Rumor has it that their first shot at doing
a staff photo for the Bric-A-Brac had to be scrapped because the Bric couldn’t
fit the picture in the layout without cropping all the white hoods out of the
frame.
4) All the others. I suppose you could
construct a case for other campus publications being subversive because nobody
reads them, but that’s just a little too pomo ironic for me. Burn ‘em.
Well, that’s where this little thing
peters out. I’m too lazy to make fun of anything else, and you’ve probably
stopped reading this because you have a problem set due in your Introduction to
Finance class , so enough said. But on the off chance that you are a first year
Princeton student who’s made it this far, I have only this one last piece of
advice on how to lash out at the establishment before you become absorbed into
it: Forget the whole thing. There are no punks at Princeton and there never
will be. I’m not one and neither are you. It was all just a dream. Now click your shiny red Doc Martens
together three times and repeat after me: “There’s no place like J. Crew. There’s
no place like J. Crew…”