My friend Danny (who I've known since I was 4) was visiting me from Friday until this morning, so between hanging out (in both London and Oxford) and trying desperately to get some work done, I haven't had a chance to do as much blogging during the past week. (I'll eventually be posting pictures from the past week, including one of me in my new role as Achilles.)
So, in order to cover the gap (so to speak), I am going to dig into the archives and tell the Oxford folks a bit about my sordid past. In the process, I hope to encourage some local shenanigans. (I apologize in advance to the others in my audience who have heard all this before.)
Let me start with something that will be new for everybody -- namely, what made me think of this? Well, I heard about a local drunken prank that I think is hilarious but for which the students seem to be have a fine heading in their direction. Namely, a rosemary bush was "borrowed" from a local restaurant (which I won't name) and, after much deliberation, planted in a toilet in a women's restroom so that it could grow big and strong. That's funny enough, but apparently our CCTV cameras (the ones that seem to be used predominantly for spying on students... actually, I ought to blog about that at some point; I'm finding a couple of things to be a bit Big Brotherish for my tastes, but I'll save that one for later) caught most of this on tape, so one can apparently see a fairly long discussion with deliberations. My reservations about the methodology of obtaining the videos aside, I hereby request that the Somerville porters post that video on YouTube or -- at the very least -- give me a chance to see it because I really want to take a look at it!
(Oh the other thing I found out is that I already have a rep among the Somerville students for dressing very differently from the others on High Table. Of course, only a small subset of them know that I have a charming personality as well.) But anyway, everybody seems to already know who I am even though I've only been here 7 weeks and change. I'm already making my mark! (Perhaps Oxford has met its match? As one of my friends said, it has been around 800 years but it hasn't got a chance to survive me.)
OK, so back to the archives...
Most of my Oxford peeps may not know this, but I coauthored a book about Caltech pranks and other shenanigans. For several months after its May 2007 debut, it was the number 1 selling item in Caltech's bookstore. It currently appears to be #3 among books.
I have been involved in a few pranks of my own. For example, I was the author and architect of this fake Caltech press release (it can be really useful to know people in your university's PR department!). I have a copy of the book with me if anybody is interested in seeing it, though as some might say, "Buy my book!" :)
So, I hope that you Oxford folks reading this blog entry will take this as a challenge and find something creative to do.
3 days ago
2 comments:
Only a couple of things about the modern UK are Big Brotherish? That's better than I thought! :P
That map BoingBoing posted a while back with the locations of all surveillance cameras within a half-mile (or whatever) of George Orwell's house made a big impression on me...
Anyway, on topic, why the fine? As long as the students reverted everything when the prank was done (no permanent damage to the plant or the toilet), where's the harm in it? I'm not saying I'm surprised the University or other authorities would do that, but I'm disappointed in them even so.
Well, it's more than a couple (and I'm sure I'll find out more), but I was only thinking of a couple in writing my post.
Apparently, this country has the highest density of CCTV cameras of any place by quite a large margin. Creepy...
The fine is because that's just how they do things at Oxford. They seem to be pursuing punishment rather than asking that the effects be reversed. I agree with you --- this prank was fine because (a) it was really funny and (b) no permanent damage was done. They should just be asked to put the plant back, but that's not how things work here and Oxford is even more extreme than a typical US university in this respect.
In fact, a particularly annoying thing is that the people at Somerville are apparently thinking of not putting the plant back just so that they don't need to deal with restaurant, authorities, etc. I can't overstate how incredibly lame I think that is. (It's also hypocritical.) If they want to really set an example to the students (especially if they are punishing them!), they ought to accept some responsibility as the students' charges. Maybe they'll at least come to their senses on that side of the equation, although I'll grant that one could argue that they are doing that in the students' interests as well (they would probably get in more trouble otherwise). Still, it reeks of covering one's own behind instead of setting an example.
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