👀 Your Professors Hate Lehigh, Yik Yak
Plus, a guide to surviving the winter
Welcome back to the Lookaway. It’s the end of the semester and time to use what you learned in classes. Studying microeconomics, I’m realizing the only thing I really need to know is whether finals season affects the supply and demand of Adderall. Hey mom (she reads these,) you’ll never guess what I spent my Hanukkah money on.
Bethlehem: the Christmas City
Winter in Bethlehem is a beautiful time of year. There’s gentle snowfall, twinkling Christmas lights — just kidding! If you forgot what a miserable hellscape winter off campus is, well here I am to remind you. Happy Holidays.
Your off campus house probably isn’t up to code.
Remember last winter when some unlucky Montclair residents had the front of their house cave in from snow? You could be next. Even worse, your heating could go out, or your pipes could freeze. But don’t worry, I’m sure your notoriously attentive and sympathetic landlord will come all the way out in the snow to fix it immediately.
The Parking Authority drives white Jeeps for a reason.
They are winter stealth machines that can traverse the woefully under-plowed streets of Bethlehem with ease. Just because you physically can’t move your car, doesn’t mean they can’t mercilessly slap you with a $20 parking ticket and disappear into the snowy white abyss without a trace. In fact, the only hope you have of getting your shitty beater car out of that solid block of ice is by leaving it there long enough that they have to dig it out to put a boot on it.
Lehigh doesn’t care about you.
Is your walk to campus unsafe because Bethlehem is built on a 45 degree incline and neither the city nor the university has managed to scatter some salt on the sidewalks? Too bad, that’s what health insurance is for. Do you have class at Mountaintop but there’s a literal snowstorm occurring? That lab ain’t cancelled, but the buses sure are.
You’re going to have to see your housemates.
With the great outdoors reaching temperatures colder than The Board of Trustees’ souls, nobody is going to want to be outside. This means your least favorite housemate and their obnoxious friends are going to be in your living room, sitting on the couches all the damn time. So you’re going to have to stay in your barely heated attic room to avoid them because they do nothing except binge watch The Office, and the theme song drives you crazy, and you’re also allergic to dogs, and one of your housemates got a dog that sheds a ton, and no, this isn't specifically targeted at anyone in particular.
Yik Yak Tips and Tricks
Is all you want for Christmas a higher Yakarma? Tired of having your Yak’s scrolled past over and over again? Lucky for you, we’ve tasked the Lookaway Data Analyst with wasting countless hours analyzing Yak after Yak to improve your YikYak game exponentially.
Don’t: Hate on Pink Girl
While she may seem like an easy target, I can confirm from experience that there is a silent army ready to jump on you the second Pink Girl is mentioned in a bad light. In the beginning of the semester, I innocently Yakked “What if Pink Girl is actually just colorblind?” Worst decision ever. Within the minute, my phone started blowing up with seemingly endless Pink Girl defenders. They’re ruthless.
Do: Name drops Greek houses
It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been to a TX party or if AXO hasn’t been on the hill since 2017, just make something up. It’s like playing Mad Libs. “[Fraternity] likes [fetish],” or “[Sorority] [verb] [body part].”
Don’t: Use Sober
YikYak is a dish best served hammered. Wait until you’re 6 drinks deep, and then unload all your opinions about your former lovers and future enemies. Unlike a drunk text, it’ll take your ex-girlfriend at least a few hours to figure out what you really think of her and her new boyfriend John.
Do: Steal from Twitter
You care about your Yakarma? Kind of lame, but if you really do, just take the most viral comedy tweet you can find and repost it. Or, steal from us. Yeah, we’ve seen you take our jokes before. That’s plagiarism, and you will be hearing from our lawyers. (They’re Jewish and also my dad.)
Your Professor Doesn’t Love Lehigh and Neither Should You
If you were one of the “lucky” ones on the week before LeLaf, you were blessed with the experience of a renowned marching band entering your classroom in full song. If you were even luckier, you were in my Tuesday 10:45 lecture in Packard 207 when our professor tripped the sousaphone player and threw the rest of the noisy nerds out of the classroom for interrupting his lecture.
Initially upsetting, I questioned why a tenured instructor couldn't get behind two minutes of interruption in the name of school spirit.
I took this question home with me over Thanksgiving break, where I talked to cousins dressed head to toe in Penn State gear and watched Michigan beat Ohio State in a stadium full to the brim with blue and yellow students who cut their break early just to be there.
Lehigh would struggle to get students in Goodman Stadium even if they could bring kegs to the game which, spoiler alert, used to be a thing before the Path to Prominence took us on a Path to Inconsequence.
What defines your loyalty to this once prestigious institution? Certainly not the colors. Probably not the fight song either. Did you even know we had a fight song? We had to memorize it for pledging, and I’ll save you some time because it’s really not worth the struggle. Notable lyrics include “Lehigh's team will never yield, never yield”, which is true, except for when it’s not and the football team sets a record for longest losing streak in program history while university acceptance rates soar to match the opponent’s score tallies.
Interestingly enough, I think the common bond between Lehigh students is still there, except our school spirit isn’t formed over tailgates and game days. It’s formed between a common frustration about increasing tuition. It’s formed over the laughable attempt to build another new business school before modernizing Christmas Saucon, the reincarnation of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
And maybe just maybe Lehigh should consider that for future endowment spending. And maybe you should consider that too when you get up on stage for graduation, shake Helble’s hand, and take their first request for money with the other.
But what do I know? I’m going to the Michigan game on Saturday, and I’m bringing the sousaphone player.
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