I was getting a haircut after work today and NBC news was on. They were discussing some murders (including an apparently record-setting spree by a postal worker or former postal worker who, as the saying goes, went postal) when they gave a teaser for after their commercial break for a rescue of Caltech students dressed in tutus after an incident that the police were investigating in the context of hazing. Right before the next commercial break, they gave another teaser (essentially repeating the statements from before) but also showed a very brief video clip of campus. Basically, all they showed was the a pan of the words "Page House" (what a shock).
The initiation ritual in question was the annual Mount Wilson trip for Page frosh, where they are paraded around parts of Pasadena in funny outfits (in this case, capes and tutus were mentioned in the article), driven up to Mt. Wilson at night, from which they had to walk 10 miles back to Page. Now, I can't say anything about this year's event, but I know from my era that Page frosh were not forced to participate (at least not in Winter 97, to be technically accurate about my statement). I wouldn't put it past some of the people from Page (Sux) to do this, but I'm guessing there was no hazing involved here.
What happened was some unforseen road blockage, so the Techers had to call for a rescue, and they got picked up at around 3am. According to the AP Wire report (shown here in the San Jose Mercury News), they didn't have appropriate equipment (like flashlights and clothing for cold weather) with them. As one of the rescuers said, "You've got to remember that common sense is not factored into the intelligence quotient." I know we've all seen that at Tech...
I just checked Travis's blog to see if he already wrote something about this. He did, so here is his entry.
Update (2/2/06): I was misremembering something yesterday. As Lemming mentioned in the comments on Travis's entry, the upperclassmen are waiting in cars two or three miles away (although I wonder if the frosh have had to walk all the way back some years?). However, I do have vague memories of Greg Fricke '00 missing the pick-up and actually walking all the way back to Page.
Just read the AP wire report, it's JUST too funny.
ReplyDeleteI biked pass the shooting about three hours afterwards coming back from lab. This is one time that labbing saves me from trouble! -jing
The shooting from the person who went postal? She was very specific about her targets. (I was actually very close to a murder once---the one time in history one occurred on campus at Tech. It happened during Prefrosh Weekend when I was a frosh. I was in a Tech meeting at the time and we heard a loud noise from somewhere nearby in the SAC and then a horrified screaming---one of the worst sounds I've heard in my life. We terminated the meeting, and I very nervously left the SAC and went to my PS 12 class. Not that this was the best thought to have, but I felt relieved when I heard later that the target was a specific one---it made me feel safer than when I still thought it might be random, especially since I was very close by when it happened.)
ReplyDeleteJing: How does Ricketts get its pentagram to burn or whatever is actually done with that? (I've never seen it but I was talking to Lemming about this a couple weeks ago.)
Burning pentagram... you must be talking about the one in the courtyard. We lay down sawdust in the pattern of pentagram spanning the entire courty ard with the pot (what used to be the pot) in the center of the pattern. The line-width of the pattern is about... six inches. Drizzle lighter fluid or gasoline on the sawdust. Light from any of the pentagram corner, watch the fire spread in a controled and time-elapsed way. Or you can stand in the non-burning region of the pattern and watch the flames (about knee high) around you for a while.
ReplyDeleteThe pentagram in dining room was never on fire, I think. In my freshman/sorphmore year we almost duct-taped some girl (me) up to the pentagram wall, but all chickened out. This was sucessfully carried out with a super tiny girl Stephanie in... around 2000. There was another rotation prank involving the dining room pentagram, but I'll speak of it in person out of worries of offending people. That prank resulted a historically few frosh willing to live in Ricketts after rotation, the upside is that all the people who were willing to live in Ricketts were very hard-core scurvy. -j.
Oh, I always thought you were a hard-core Scurve...
ReplyDeleteMaybe not as hard-core as Jarah (Mr. 666 units himself), but then again who is...
Definitely tell me in person about the other story, but people who might be offended probably shouldn't be reading my blog in the first place. :)
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~bg/Jarah/
ReplyDeleteClick on the two avi files in this directory, you may enjoy it.
Fire ball had me the moment I walked by it prefrosh weekend (in Ricketts) and asked the president (Kevin) first day of rotation to be let in the house. Ricketts is a very fine house :) -j.
There's no other way to respond but... "They're all fine Houses."
ReplyDeleteThese are recent videos, I guess? Jarah has always been a strange one.