When Booth Haley ’05 and Andrew Holbein ’06 were arrested on April 4 for stealing a peregrine falcon egg from a nest, it’s clear to everyone they weren’t “trafficking” an endangered species, as the charges against them claim. Haley himself is the first to admit, however, that what he did was stupid. Not federal-charges stupid, but stupid all the same.
When the weather gets warm and people skip pretty much everything to sit on the hill a few minutes longer, we all start doing stupid things. The rule against couches at Spring Fling was started for a reason—people actually set a couch on fire. The slip-n-slide on Foss Hill on Wednesday looked like fun, but luckily was disbanded before anyone actually managed to actually injure themselves.
Suffice it to say, if there were peregrine falcon nests on campus and someone stole one of the eggs, Public Safety would probably get involved. But smoking pot on Foss Hill, streaking past prefrosh and drinking in MoCon—things we take for granted as parts of Wesleyan springtime—might get us all in as much trouble as Booth and Andrew in the real world we all fear.
Seniors know that the real world is approaching fast, and all of us know that moving Foss Hill to a public park would result in arrest and maybe worse. But it’s worth remembering, when we all get wrapped up in spring fever, that we really do live in a parallel universe, and enjoy it while its here. That said, pick up your trash on the hill, be respectful of everyone else, and remember that Wesleyan actually is located within the real world, geographically at least. Most of us aren’t stealing rare eggs, but we’re probably doing something stupid, probably right now, and we probably know it too. We don’t want to tell you to act your age or even to put your clothes back on; just acknowledge that you can’t bring that behavior into the real world, or even down William Street. Or if that’s too much, just try and remember that there’s a real world at all.
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