Hillel, opening a new building on Mt. Auburn this fall, has famous deli banquets on Sunday nights. The Sunday brunch for freshmen may be considered a preview. Hillel holds dances and other events during the year and is far more fun than gentile religious groups.
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Your proctor won't have much beer this year, but he'll have plenty of platitudes. These meetings can be very weird. Everyone's usually trying to make a good impression, and if excess amiability makes you want to puke, I suggest you bring a vomit bag. You'll be asked to stand up and introduce yourself, just like when you first started school, 14 years ago. Only now you might say, "I'm Hank from Pittsburgh and I wanna get laid." That's always good for a laugh. If you want to make things interesting, tell them you are President of an organization "out to prove that the Holocaust was a hoax."
Your proctor will try to be "one of the guys/gals," but the other guys/gals don't fill out forms on you at the end of the year. Beware.
The Crimson Key shows Love Story every year, so that you can ogle the Harvard settings and release all that pent-up aggression by jeering at former Yale professor Erich Segal's heart-burning drivel. You can also think about the decay of Ali McGraw's and Ryan O'Neal's careers since then--proof, I guess, that there is a God. Last year, as Ryan whined, "Love--(beat)--means never having to say you're sorry," the film got caught in the projector and a big brown blotch quickly bubbled over his face, smote, perhaps, by that great Film Critic in the Sky.
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The Freshman Mixer is a dark, mobbed, messy, Felliniesque vision of Dante's Inferno, a more pretentious version of Daytona Beach in April, populated by frumpy clones and bespectacled, acne-scarred nerds, a freak show, a nightmare. Sensitive people last about five minutes, the hots or no. Wanna dance? What? Dance, wanna dance? You're barely five feet. But I can ball like the Jolly Green Giant.
See the busloads from Wellesley, Simmons, Tufts, Pine Manor--like it? So do a lot of people, panting up the steps of Mem Hall, tonight's the night guys, eh? Eh? Whatever you say, man.
Want some advice? Get as far away from Cambridge as possible. Go to Walden Pond, Dorchester, Cape Cod, go to Worcester for chrissakes, but steer clear of this.
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