Bell Lap 2: Take Your Red Folder and Run

Please show this to your prefrosh!

We address this column to the prefrosh because they have the most potential and most promise to achieve the amazing things Harvard students are capable of. The worst mistake a Harvard student can make is matriculating here. When your host takes you out this weekend remember to take a handful of salt with those first few desperate tequila shots.

Obviously, the school is going to try and put its best foot forward, but they won’t tell you that that foot is as fake as the foot on the life-size otaku fetish doll that D.A. keeps in his closet; five articulating digits and lifelike feel, but no real love inside. Harvard is going to literally turn the weekend into a theater of satisfied student-life when they shuffle you in between Sanders Theatre and Annenberg Hall.

They know you’ll go home effervescing to your parents and your stupider-than-you-are friends, “Annenberg is so awesome, it looks just like Hogwarts!” A year from now you’ll be remarking “Annenberg is so huge, it’s amazing that not a single girl inside there will hook up with me,” and you’ll be on the Internet trying to see what Daniel Radcliffe looked like in “Equus.” You think the ice cream social was fun? Wait until you’re standing in line behind 15 girls on Sunday nights in Annenberg screaming to yourself, “Don’t you realize that this is why you’ve all put on 20 pounds!”

The reality is our social scene is a practice in lameness and restriction: “No I don’t want another drink,” “No don’t touch me like that,” “No I can’t kiss you, I have mono.” From Expos on, Harvard students are drilled in the art of sucking at having fun. “What’s the big deal anyway? It’s a just a little case of mono! Besides, you won’t be going home empty-handed either.” Do you think when Harvard Lacrosse was recruiting those kids from Duke’s team they put them through the charade of prefrosh weekend? No, they just paid for a night at Scores and promised to cover their AD dues as well.

These are just minor problems of Harvard that are indicative of grander social scene issues. The repressiveness of this school is as persistent as our viral counts in the face of sophisticated drug cocktails. No amount of persuasion can make a Harvard student have fun, just like no amount of scratching will make the itching go away, it will only spread it to your mouth and no one likes a cold sore. We should have listened to Peter’s dad’s advice when choosing our college, “Remember son, some of those diseases are for forever.”

Just like Harvard ruthlessly propagates itself with prefrosh weekend, so do we aspire to have our seed multiply. Just as we inherited this column from our forebears we will also solicit applications to write this column next year. Please give the correct answers to the following questions as well as a sample of a possible column you would write. E-mail submissions to thebelllap2@gmail.com.

1. Harvard Pub, will it reach its great potential, why or why not?

2. Derek C. Bok or Drew Faust, who wins in one-on-one basketball?

3. Friending hot class of 2011 girls on the facebook, is it too soon?