DART BOARD

TIME FOR A WHUPPIN'

It seems that somebody at the Undergraduate Council has been watching a little too much "NYPD Blue."

In a May 19 letter to Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57, council secretary Brandon C. Gregoire '95 made an official request for the College to pursue Administrative board action against two Crimson executives, a reporter and council gadfly Anjalee C. Davis '96.

The crime? Davis and reporter Todd F. Braunstein '97 entered the council's Canaday Hall offices earlier this month when no one else was there, moved an envelope about six inches and had a photographer take a picture of it.

(According to Gregoire, the duo was deviously determined to "incriminate the [council] for negligence and ...create an ideal photograph for...surreptitious and malicious ends.")

The charge? Against Davis and reporter Todd F. Braunstein '97: "unauthorized trespassing and tampering with [council] property." And against Crimson President Marion B. Gammill '95 and Managing Editor Joe Mathews '95 [for their "complicity in this plot"): "conspiracy to trespassing."

This request for Ad Board action is ridiculous. Members of the Ad Board are sissies. Wimps! The last time they really punished anybody was--well, we can't even remember the last time they handed down a decent punishment.

Heck, when Ted Kennedy had a friend of his take his final exam, the College only made him take off two years. Big whoop!

Aside from some concern for Gregoire's penchant for paranoid hyperbole, we at Dartboard support efforts to prosecute our fellow Crimson editors to the fullest extent of the law. As part of our continuing effort to serve the community, we checked with the state Attorney General's office to see what kind of jail terms these criminals might be facing.

Sadly, neither tampering with Undergraduate Council property nor conspiracy to trespassing are addressed by the Massachusetts criminal code.

Looks like Gammill and Mathews got away this time.

As for Braunstein and Davis, we think they could be nailed under Massachusetts General Law 266, section 120: "Entry Upon Private Property after being Forbidden as Trespass." The penalty, if convicted: a maximum $100 fine, or imprisonment for 30 days, or both.

Well, it's better than noting. Still we were hoping for a good, old-fashioned, Singapore-style caning.

SO REFRESHING!

If you thought the concept of Generation X was a bonanza for pop social scientists and lazy "introspective" editorial writers, you thought too soon. Douglas Coupland's much ballyhood and much misinterpreted miscategorization now has its very own beverage. It is called, in a bit of understatement worthy of the most ardent slacker, "OK" Cola.

The can is as radical a departure from traditional cola packaging as Generation X is from the Baby Boom. It features a deliberately rather plain font of "OK" against a white background with a narrow red border; a sloppily drawn oval-headed fellow looks out quizzically from in front of a wall and a little box of a house capped with an aerial. The rather casual shabbiness of "OK" is a shameless bit of pandering to the idea of Generation X; evidently we are so fed up with the kaleidescopic self-promotion and colorful hype of Pepsi and Coke that we are helplessly susceptible to the soft-pedal.

In an attempt at striking the distanced ironic pose that cultural commentators seem convinced is a hall mark of this mysterious generation, OK touts itself in small letters as "a carbonated 'beverage,'" with the last word in quotes--the hipsters who make "OK," one assumes, are too cool to use that technical word with a straight face. The slogan completes the pitch--no hi-strung shrill jingos here--"Everything is going to be OK."

And what does the stuff taste like? Some say "somewhere between Pepsi and Sprite." Others: "a cross of Sunkist and Tab." The etymylogically inclined: "about halfway between 'good' and 'bad'"

The general consensus? "OK" was, well, OK.

But then, just as suddenly as this bubbly abberation landed in Cambridge, the spell was broken. "OK" was promoted by a prime-time television commercial blitz. Is this low key? Would Douglas Coupland approve? Doesn't this undercut the whole idea of Generation X Cola? Yes.

But we shouldn't have been too surprised. After all, do you know who makes the stuff? Coca-Cola, of course.

This changed things somewhat. The little oval-headed man was no longer a quirky symbol of non-conformity, but a poorly drawn stand in for Coca-Cola's stable of cardboard cut-out super-star shills. And the once appealing casualness of "OK" marketing? Just another calculated effort at cultural hegemony that we overeducated, undermotivated Generation X-ers are supposed to so delight in detecting.

Everything OK? We don't think so!