Rawr

James O’Brien complained last week that everyone in the previous week’s issue of The Campus was “so very angry, especially in the opinions section.” Mackenzie Beer was roiling in hysterics over being labeled. The Republican columnist was seething at the spring. I wrote about manly stuff. All these negative vibes seemed to gravitate around one black hole of controversy: Tess Russell & Co.’s maligned “Where do I belong?” infographic. Online, a parent commented: “offensive, stereotyped content at its worst.” A student seconded: “crappy.” Mackenzie Beer reenacted the passions of St. Catherine: “A close friend of mine says ‘struggle is struggle. It’s incomparable.’ Well, emotion is emotion, and right now I’m running on enraged endorphins. We box people into these blanket statements and associations out of a perpetual fear – ” Shhh… There’ll be no more AAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! but you may feel a little sick.

“Where do I belong?” is half forgettable copy-paste about bros and hos and hikers, and half valuable taxonomy. For example, the distinction between Bros and Jocks is often overlooked (“Yo, there’s so much you don’t understand about me”), as is The Invisible Student. The Ross Diner is a new classic. The rest is dubious. In pursuing universal appeal, Tess & Co. assumed nothing would make more sense than to go for the really big stereotypes, when in fact, we’re all sick of them ­— not because they aren’t true, but because you have to change the joke if you want its subject to remain funny. Otherwise, it sounds like this knee-slapper from 1900 BC: “How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish.” That’ll keep you going through the show.

On one point, I agree with — there is no pain you are receding, a distant ship, smok — “I believe in a place where I have a slight chance to surmount the confines of my upbringing.” Yes, Mackenzie, that means inventing new stereotypes. James, earmuffs! Here’s my list:

The One. There are many: the kilt, the bathrobe, the head gear that has no human name, the head gear that has a name: tacky, the Michael Jackson pants. There are also many failed aspirants: the pea coat (everybody got one), the beret (your friends abandoned you), the naked (plastic leather seats, wiggle-wiggle).

The Classmate Who Works at Ross. You do a quadruple-take and reach your hand across the pizza counter for tactile proof —“You’re one of them now?” “Dude, I work here every Wednesday,” a voice comes haunting back. You walk away, hand on your forehead — when I was a child, I had a fever.

People who answer the phone, “What’s up, face?”

The Singer. Imagine silence. Dim lighting. The rustle of “The Communist Manifesto” — don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedo — WOAH-WOOAH-AAAAAAAH-OOOOOOOOOOH YOUR BODEEEEEAH — you grab the nearest brick and run to your window only to realize he’s on the other end of the quad.

The Different-Colored Dwarves. Is anyone else noticing them?

The Balls, for that’s what it takes to whip out a case of Mike’s Hard Lemonade in Proctor, and The Corollary to The Balls: four glasses of milk, a tub of just salad leaves, a baroquely fashioned panini.

The Foreigners. A graduating Mongol says to a graduating Afghan: “I promise we’ll keep in touch.” The graduating Afghan replies: “Yeah right, once you go home, you’ll have a son and a horse and no time to write.” — you are only coming through in waves — “I look to a newspaper, and particularly the one which represents my college, my colleagues and my home, to aim for some higher understanding” — just nod if you can hear me, and look no further.