Sep

272012

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Comic by Erika Zinser

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Despite notching anoth-er successful year of buy-ing friends through the fra-

ternity recruitment process, the In-terfraternity Council (IFC) has moved to change the structure of recruitment for years to come.

“The current system offers the first-years too much choice,” said IFC Vice President Marshall Da-vis. “We want to take the variabil-ity of choice out of the equation.”

The new equation is designed to place first-years where they be-long, rather than where they want to be. To do so, the fraternities pooled together all of their money and the crayon-drawn “Beta Bucks” that President Zach Johnston uses. Af-ter spending the majority of their money on candy, the fraterni-ties bought a hat at Goodwill that is alleged to have sorting powers.

“It doesn’t look like much,” said Phi Delta Theta president Andy Falcon, confessing about the tattered headwear over a pip-ing-hot plate of brotherhood. “It was incredibly successful in the trials we did last week, though.”

Testing of the sorting hat be-gan on goldfish from the Hall of Science, most of which were de-termined to be Sigma Chi mem-

bers. After the animal testing creat-ed an uproar in the Whitman com-munity, the fraternities shifted to testing on independent students.

Gathered in the great Jew-ett Dining Hall, students watched the first human trial with great an-ticipation. First-year Harry Frotter walked boldly up to the hat with only one thought in his mind: “Anywhere but TKE ... Anywhere but TKE.”

Although the hat thought Har-ry could have been great in Tau Kappa Epsilon, it conceded that he was a better fit in Phi Delta Theta.

Despite only see-ing a small sample size, the hat’s decision pleased the Greek community greatly.

“If he’s not a Phi, then I don’t know what a Phi is,” said President Chrandrews of Tau Kappa Epsi-lon, adding that although he looks forward to peeing on his lawn, the first-year was “not [his] Frotter.”

The optimism for a more effi-cient system than the sheep-herd-ing ways of the past has the Greek system abuzz. The women’s frater-nity system has even been perusing magic mirrors on Craigslist, and the Pan-Hellenic group has started an agency to protect the sheltered igno-rance of the “Muggle community.”

Senior math ma-jor Dhavan Cue’s the-sis has had a serious im-

pact on the greater math com-munity and “also the world.”

“We see the world through such a narrow lens, man,” he said over a cou-ple too many “Hurri-cane Bernies” at the Green.

Cue’s journey to his the-sis started around a year ago when he took a girl on a date to the Humane Society. He was letting a dog lick his face, be-cause “she certainly wasn’t go-ing to,” when he remembered that old saying about dog years. That’s when he knew what he was going to write his thesis on.

He ditched his date, got on his kayak, began paddling for home and began his work.

“Yeah, that date didn’t go so hot ... but I got my thesis idea so it all worked out,” he said.

“[One] dog year is equal to 1/7th of a human year,” says www.dogyears.com.

The formula was so sim-ple. X=7Y. He went to his thesis advisor, Dr. Clause, for approval of his idea.

“Dhavan ... you’re bark-ing up the wrong tree,” said Dr. Clause at first.

But as Cue began to ex-plain his idea of investigat-ing time through a dog’s lens, Clause was intrigued.

“Like, we’re all on hu-man time, right?” said Cue to

Clause. “Einstein was talk-ing about how time was the fourth dimension for humans, right? But there’s a differ-ent variable for dogs. We’re not in the same dimension as them, man! They’re on a com-pletely different formula!”

Clause apparently tried to reason with Cue by explain-ing that using “dog years” was just a way of explain-ing to kids that dogs don’t live as long as humans, and it wasn’t an exact science.

But that night, after eat-ing too many cookies, Clause was kept up by indiges-tion. He looked at his dachs-hund and wished the indi-gestion would pass quicker.

“Around seven times quicker!” he said, and that’s when he realized Cue was on to something.

Cue and Clause set out to work and developed a formu-la for life itself. The actual for-mula has yet to be revealed.

“It’s pretty chill,” said Cue, however.

Cue’s concept of time re-mains popular around cam-pus. A common response to “wanna hit this, dude?” is “nah, dude, that’ll put me on dog time,” meaning the world would speed up around sev-en times faster than normal.

The “dog time” concept is also popular among soccer players, who manipulate the 48-hour rule, using dog years, albeit poorly. When asked why he was drunk at his soc-cer game, junior Mitch Sword-selson confronted his coach.

“I thought you meant dog hours. You [have] to specify this kind of thing!” said Swordselson.

The “time” principle also can be manipulated with oth-er animals. When Cue’s re-laxing, he likes to joke that he’s on “sea turtle time, dude.” Sea turtles live up to 200 years, Cue explained, mak-ing their formula X=.5Y.

Cue’s thesis will be un-veiled at the national math conference this October.

A couple weeks ago, in-vestigative reporter Tristan Gavin brought

forth several accusations re-garding the forced “pinging” in which Whitman first-years are forced to engage. The haz-ing accusations have led to im-mediate action on the part of the administration calling for an end to the ancient tradition.

Strange reports have be-gun surfacing all across cam-pus, leading some to believe that pinging was in fact an ancient rit-ual to keep the restless ghost of Chief Hololsotetote from ris-ing from his grave. Students and faculty alike might have seen the monument erected to him to the right of Lyman House. What people may not know is that he is in fact buried next to his en-tire army under the Amphithea-tre. Further surprising many is the fact that Whitman was con-structed on a millennium-old Na-tive American burial ground.

“I was lying in my bed, and I heard this banging and yell-ing seemingly coming from the ceiling. It was terrify-ing,” said one 2-West resident.

Another sophomore said she saw zombies stumbling across An-

keny Field after Sigma Chi’s rave.“They had strange glow-

ing halos around their heads colored neon pink! I had to hide on the ground to avoid them seeing me!” she said.

Perhaps most frighten-ing were reports of a strange gathering during one night last week in the Amphitheatre.

“I was walking home and I saw a circle of what looked like robed figures standing in a cir-cle chanting about something to do with The Pioneer! Something about initiation?” said a senior.

It is clear there is some-thing strange at work on cam-pus. These reports of walking dead, strange gatherings and ghostly moans from within Jew-ett are certainly discomforting.

Has investigative journal-ism gone too far? If the result is a rise in a long-dead Native American chief and his army, then I would have to say it has.

Luckily, undercover inform-ants have told this reporter that a certain detachment of students has been considering holding pinging rituals at least bi-weekly.

If you happen to see this an-ti-zombie ritual, give these brave students a salute and carry on.

Pinging hazing accusations bring dead issue back to life

Senior math major declares he’ll graduate in 7 dog years

Fraternity recruitment to switch to sorting hat

The U.S. Army has been successfully using Cue’s thesis to test nuclear weapons.

According to ancient legend, Chief Hololsotetote was buried on the land which is now referred to by the Walla Walla community as Ankeny Field.

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