A message from the chairman:
It is 5 am on the Sunday morning after Reunions, you are under a tent at the 5th smoking a Camel, and you have seen some things.
You saw a high-school girl with a fifth of Wolfschmidt tucked into her waistband vomit on UHS. You witnessed a grown man take a shit in a Foulke Hall shower. You made out with three of the four people who broke your heart sophomore year. The first was crying, the next was that old proctor Sam—still with those winsome, stern eyes after all those years retired; why she was back at Princeton, nobody knows—and the third told you to hurry up with the smooching because a line had formed behind you for the kissing bench by Wyman House. You looked into the green eyes of the fourth but nothing says “I’m not going home with you” like a Forbes crop top, even at Reunions.
Take a drag of your cigarette and watch the smoke twirl around your fingertips. You managed to take up smoking a few years ago, because like your loneliness, it didn’t really count if you were drunk—you’re just socially lonely, a social smoker. Take another sip of another Bud Light, and suddenly you’re back in your freshman bathroom in the New New Quad, which was carefully lit to appear as if you were wearing sunglasses indoors at all times. You’re drunk off of a cup of milk punch and staring at your acne-mountain forehead in the mirror. Decide to play a game because you are drunk and dumb and 18 and want something to happen. Turn the lights out and touch the mirror with one hand. Turn on the faucet and look into the mirror. Chant.
“‘Rah! ‘Rah! ‘Rah!
“Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!
“Sis! Sis! Sis!
“Boom! Boom! Boom!”
The mirror begins to flicker.
“Ahhhhhhhhh….
“PRINCETON! PRINCETON! PRINCETON!”
The world goes inhumanly dark. A figure encased in an unearthly, shimmering fog in the mirror—no longer reflective but sinisterly opaque—whispers slowly at you, “Bloody Mary! Bloody Mary! Bloody Mary!”
A pause.
President Chris Eisgruber emerges from the mist, clutching an Everclear martini and chuckling. A kindly twinkle gleams in his eyes, and it looks like he has crammed an entire 30-rack of Pabst Blue Ribbon into his beer jacket.
“Ah, I’m just joshin’ you!”
He hands you a copy of The Princeton Tiger, a 132-year-old sloshing pail of giggles just begging to be tipped. Answer its wanting call, flip through its premium glossy pages in earnest, read the finely aged content its editors plucked from the cellars, try to figure out where the jokes in this article are, maybe even donate to Tiger while you’re at it (ah, there’s a joke). Set the magazine down, drown your cigarette in light beer, stumble through Blair Arch with an orange Keystone Light tucked into each pocket of your beer jacket, pretend you still do this every weekend.
The world is standing still.
– AJS ’15