On March 25, The Princeton Review released survey results ranking the “Top 10 Dream Colleges” according to college applicants and their parents. Among high schoolers, Yale was ranked No. 6, behind Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and — sad but true — New York University. Just as the Yale Facilities freed a Lanman-Wright freshman from bedbugs, Zachary Fuhrer shall free Yale from mediocrity. Here’s how.
How To Pretend You’re a New Yorker
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NYU and Columbia students love talking about hookah bars, mom and pop record shops and obscure thrift stores in Billy-Burg as a way to indicate that they know a shit-load about “The City.” I can’t help but smile when one of those “Times Square is for Tourists” freshmen ends up hopping the Green line uptown and getting caught east of the Park clutching their iPhone and praying that a taxi picks them up before some real New Yorkers do. Yale can’t claim New York City as its campus, but key adjustments can fix that.
1. Smoke more.
2. Eat more bagels.
3. Complain more.
Given that Yale is pretty comfortable complaining and moderately comfortable smoking, it seems that the missing component here is bagels. Once we get some of those boiled, non-bready bagels, then we too can start pretending that we’re New Yorkers.
How to Get Into Harold Bloom’s Will
Say what you will about his literary theory. The endearing man in the fluffy sweater and a love of Wallace Stevens is one of the few literary scholars capable of earning a comfortable living. Which is why Yale needs to get into Harold Bloom’s will.
1. Always remind Bloom to stomp his feet every 30 minutes to improve his circulation.
2. Show great disdain for the Pathetic Fallacy.
3. Respond to his recognition of your beauty with gratitude, not attitude.
Yale might try to throw on some makeup and give Professor Bloom a little winking action to make him feel young again, but excessive flirtation seems futile as Bloom only has time to lock lips with one companion — his water bottle.
How to Effectively Protest for Administrative Transparency
If unemployed Tisch graduates haven’t done enough to harm NYU’s reputation, “Take Back NYU” destroyed any of the Violets’ remaining Division 3 Charm. Part protest for increased information on salaries and financial aid, part Pro-Palestinian venture, part ploy for investigation into war profiteering and part mediocre dance party, NYU’s student protest struggled to determine whose ass its head was lodged in.
Yale’s response?
1. Put down that hippy book on organic farming and sustainable design.
2. Graduate, work for 20 years and gain some wisdom and an extensive tie catalogue.
3. Shut up and let the Yale Corporation do its job.
There is no way to effectively protest for Administrative Transparency. Sure, the endowment just took a huge hit, but introductory economics courses don’t give us the license to question the men in the ivory tower with big suits and big bills. After all, the only thing more sexy than Anti-Zionism right now is David Swensen and his Bill Nye the Science Guy good looks.
How to Get New Haven Street Cred
Harvard, in its infinite wit, struggles to poke fun at Yale for anything other than New Haven’s crime-filled streets. Yale does in a way submit to this notion of danger through the creation of a Bubble, impermeable to the wife-beatered crowd at Hula Hanks. Yet the answer to our city problems hardly involves imitation “arts” districts downtown, or swanky all-you-can-eat sushi in a tiny lot near a locksmith.
1. Forego Metro Taxi or the Yale Shuttle.
2. Don’t even think of hitting up the minibus.
3. Walk to the fucking train station.
Gaining street credibility doesn’t require involvement in the city’s late March gang initiation, but instead calls for some navigational skills. Yale needs to start walking to the train station. It’s really not that far away, and the scariest thing on the trip might be the realization that the Cold Stone near the Omni is closed.
How to Make A Cappella Take Itself Less Seriously
Personal e-mails and facebook event invitations flood Yale’s inbox with the same tired guilt trip: “I know y’all may not like a cappella too much, but please come to my Jam. I’ve been working really hard, and it’s only $5 and 2 hours of your Friday night.” Yale sees the same shitty arrangements of lame, ’90s pop over and over, and realizes time and time again that a cappella groups are not funny, no matter how many holocaust jokes and pop culture references they throw into their “Skits.” It’s almost guaranteed that destroying the a cappella scene would elevate Yale to a spot in the top 5.
1. Make “The Duke’s Men” gender-neutral.
2. Replace beat-boxers with drum sets, and “guitar simulation” with … wait … guitars.
3. Stop going to your friends’ concerts. And give Ben Folds his music back.
Yale has a lot of “friends” in a cappella. Yale also has a lot of “friends” who like it when you lick their ear lobe. But ear-licking is still a little awkward for Yale. Hence, no more a cappella.
How to Write your First Indie Single
Columbia’s Vampire Weekend has “A-Punk,” Harvard’s Chester French has “She Loves Everybody,” but Yale’s merely got an a cappella group’s semi-racist cover of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” Yale almost gained indie cred with a dropout and a potential up-and-comer, yet Dave Longstreth’s Dirty Projectors are hardly a “Yale band,” and The Harlem Shakes wade too much in “Garden State” territory, which is no longer Indie Savvy. In order to gain favor with Pitchfork, Yale needs to avoid the indie clichés of the old, and embrace the indie clichés of the new.
1. Tap into popular percussion of yesteryear. A Brazilian Bossa/Jewish Freilach combo.
2. Record samples of dogs barking, cats purring and horses neighing. Autotune all of them to create the first layers of melody.
3. Construct a verse of two power chords, and a chorus of one repeated arpeggio … preferably on a beefed-up accordion or pump organ.
4. With enough autotune and reverb to make words barely comprehensible, yelp, “Dogs barking/Cats purring/Horses neighing” during the verse, with the anthem, “We are all animals; We are machines” during the chorus.
The irony of lo-fi cacophony with a hint of “World Music” would make little Brooklyn bitches forcibly cream their skinnies. If it doesn’t make your ears bleed, it will make your head nod, which spells S-U-C-C-E-S-S for Yale!
How to Manscape
Yale has flaunted a full-grown bush for way too long. Perhaps it hasn’t realized that such pubic adornment went out of style in the ’70s. Or perhaps it’s trying to be modest about its endowment. Finances may have appeared bleak back in the flaccid ’80s, but in recent years, Yale has shown that it’s certainly a grower … until now. Now everybody knows that we are no longer endowed like Paul Bunyan, and perhaps as sloppy as Ron Jeremy. But Yale is still HUGE. And in these economic times Yale should be ready to trim back its pubes and show the world what it’s packing. We may have lost 8, but we still got 19. Grarrrr.
1. Buy a Con-Air Beard Trimmer and carefully go to town with a crew-cut on the gooch and scissors on the pubic area.
2. Shape up with a Mach 3 Turbo, or a Fusion if you’re technologically advanced, and steady your hand when taking care of that sensitive scrotum.
3. Take a shower, prep a little and stare at yourself in the mirror for a bit, admiring how big you look.
How to Do Legal Drugs
Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron has gotten a lot of attention recently for his push to legalize and tax hardcore drugs. As much as Yale needs its biweekly fix of Black Tar heroin, there is little chance that Capitol Hill is ready to line up and start passing out syringes. But Yale must not be one-upped by Harvard’s drug coolness. Alas, it’s time to start a new and already legal drug trend.
1. Go to RiteAid and buy a bottle of Robitussin.
2. Drink the entire bottle.
3. Go to Thali Too for “Bollywood Nights” and Bhangra the fuck out.
With Yale’s body overflowing with dextromethorphan, it’s easy to overlook that this sexy Bombay club was a New Haven, vegetarian, Indian restaurant a mere 30 minutes earlier.
How to Increase Exclusivity
Sure Yale’s got a 7.5 percent acceptance rate and a wide array of secret societies, but its frats feature no guest lists and its dining halls no interview process for service. This is a problem. With little-to-no exclusivity on campus there is no proper system of entitlement. Yale is fairly comfortable being itself, which is simply intolerable.
1. Locate Yale’s back-haired men and side-burned women. In our infinite arbitrariness, Yale will proclaim these men and women its new leaders.
2. Purchase Mory’s and proclaim a return to elitism and filthy membership charges.
3. Renovate the building into a massive pool of Jell-O and only grant access to those with formerly unsightly fur.
Not only will Yale create a new follicle craze, but this heightened exclusivity will surely keep cut-throat competition at an unparalleled high, recalling the glory days of middle school Honors Algebra II.