Every year, the lucky Yalies who succeed in spending the night with a special someone — or who drunkenly stumble from the room of some random someone who seemed way better looking the night before — engage in that most sacred of Yale traditions: the Post-Halloween Walk of Shame. The Yale Daily News Magazine dispatched two reporters to observe. Here is their report:
4:30 a.m. One of this article’s reporters speeds home from a Halloween hook-up. The campus is still, save for the click-clack of her heels. She scans the courtyard in search of other students, hoping she will be able to write about a late-night lover other than herself. No dice.
4:32 a.m.: She reaches her dorm, exchanges her costume for pajamas and sets the alarm for 8:30 a.m. In the morning, she and her roommate will commence the real reporting.
8:30 a.m.: The article’s reporters try to wake up. They fail. They go back to sleep.
9:00 a.m.: The reporters wake up (for real this time). They blearily dress and head out to begin their research.
9:15 a.m.: Outside, the weather is as pristine as they are groggy. The trees on Old Campus drip red and gold. Sunshine filters down in hazy patches and children run without coats. It is pretty out, but there are more important things to find, like hungover girls with smeared makeup dressed as fairies. The reporters split up: One takes Old Campus; one takes everything else.
9:52 a.m.: “The karate kid” creeps onto Old Campus. Short of height and faint of heart, he breaks into a run when he senses the presence of a reporter. He then vanishes into the safety of Lanman-Wright, trailed only by the shadow of his massive karate stick.
10:23 a.m.: “The devilish musician” saunters by Berkeley. Dismissing all discretion, she sports red horns and a forked tail, signaling news of her naughty night to even the most casual observer. She carries a suspiciously large musical instrument case, the purpose of which could not be ascertained. An early-morning concert? Doubtful.
10:30 a.m.: A shoeless “’80s girl” pads by, trailed by an incognito “Gem.” The latter tries, but fails, to hide her costume under a baggy sweatshirt. “Gem” cannot conceal her sparkling slippers, dangling earrings and glittered guilty face.
11:00 a.m.: Two hours of scrutinizing the campus for walk-of-shame suspects begins to wreak havoc upon the reporters’ imaginations. Everyone becomes a contender. That hand-holding older couple strolling along the lawn? Clearly engaging in a walk of shame. That black cocker-spaniel without a leash? Walk of shame. The tour group of Japanese businessmen? It’s too much. The reporters decide to call it a morning and head to brunch. There a fellow Branfordian (one who eerily resembles “the karate kid”) flirts with one of the reporters. The reporter finds, to her surprise, that she reciprocates.
How quickly we forget our walks of shame.
— Abby Deutsch and Carolyn Kriss