By Elizabeth Held
News Editor

In a surprising turn of events, SC Co-President Will Harrison ’10 and SGA President Sophie Papavizas ’11 have announced they plan to marry this weekend.

The wedding ceremony on the steps of Founders, with the reception at Wyndham in order demonstrate the bi-college nature of their relationship.

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By Prarthana Jayaram
Features Editor

At midnight on a Friday, fourteen freshmen arrange themselves around a dimly lit section of Gummere basement. Moving into a circle, the students lay out blankets and pillows, huddling together on the floor. Silence ensues. No, these kids aren’t conducting a séance —they are holding a pluralism session. Their tenth this year.

Pluralism, a bonding experience that encourages hall groups to share personal stories with one another, is usually conducted only once, during Customs Week in the fall. For one group of freshmen, however, one just wasn’t enough.

“The first pluralism was just so inspiring, but we didn’t really get everything out,” said one member of the group. “We just have a lot of issues.”

Since the end of Customs Week, the group has continued to meet on an almost weekly basis, setting aside two hours each Friday night for the activity.

“We missed a few weeks because some people were out partying,” explained another group member.

“But then we kicked them out, so it’s OK now,” a third member hastened to add.

So who didn’t make the cut?

“Well, it was mostly the upper classmen. They were just too sociable—they had friends from off the hall and that just wasn’t OK. We’re trying to be a close-knit team here, and if they are only detracting from that, then they shouldn’t be a part of it,” said one of the freshmen.

On this note, the students consider themselves an exclusive club (“It’s kind of a secret society,” explained a member of the group), where membership is definitely not open to the community. The club has even developed a special code through which members can communicate with each other without their messages being deciphered by outsiders. Further, the group maintains certain rituals and codes that must be strictly adhered to, including a time limit on how long individuals can spend away from the hall, and a schedule for when classes and mealtimes should occur.

“No one else really gets me,” said a previously-sourced anonymous group member. “Letting someone new in just wouldn’t be cool. We consider ourselves a community, but no one else on campus is really welcome. I mean, I came to Haverford to find a community and I found one. Can I help it if it happens to consist of only 13 other people?”

What started with a simple weekly meeting has thus progressed into codependency. However, the most important part of being in this secret society is coming to the pluralism sessions. Late every Friday night, they retreat to a quiet corner of campus (location changes weekly, to prevent unwelcome freeloaders from discovering the meeting) and share the deep, dark secrets of their innermost hearts.

“It just feels more authentic when it’s late and dark and we can all cuddle,” one of them said, enthused as he made the late-night trek.

“It just helps to get it all out, you know?” explained one freshman, through a shallow sob.

We do know.

Let it all out, guys. Let it all out.

By Lizzie Douglas
Staff Writer

After Plenary’s failure to maintain quorum Feb. 21, Andrew Thompson ’12 and Cody Oakley ’10 started what Thompson described as a campaign not to ratify the Honor Code.

The two posted a Go! thread explaining their reasoning and created a Facebook event called, “HoNOr Code. If it’s broke, FIX IT.” The event description said, “Haverfordians no longer care enough about each other to spend 4 hours together. If Haverfordians don’t care, The Honor Code…is broken. We need to fix it.”

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by Qeter, images by Qevin

In order to dispell any fears over the recent security technology upgrades Quaker Bouncers are receiving, Q (from MI6) is here to quell and quiet any quandaries you will query (questions?), as well as introduce some the newest gadgets he has in the works.

LW(Q):  What motivated this upgrade of Quaker Bouncer technology, which some fear is too drastic, perhaps unnecccessay[sp], and a waste of money?

Q(A):  A number of security breaches over the last few years has some community members concerned that the campus is too open and carelessly unsafe.  We have sought to update the technologies employed by Quaker Bouncers to keep pace with the rapid growth of the civilized world and enable them to keep Haverford as safe as possible.

LW(Q): Well those are certainly valid arguments, but do you not think these measures are excessive for a liberal arts school of only 1200 students?

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One of the most interesting and original additions to Haverford’s curriculum this semester is the first course taught by Dr. Bill G. Sampson, the college’s newest professor. Sampson was initially hired over the summer of 2009 as a part of the Physics Department. A family crisis forced Sampson to seek a postponement of his first course until the spring semester.  Not much was heard from Dr. Sampson during his absence except a mass e-mail sent to all faculty members at the beginning of January. The original e-mail reads:

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 By Lowell West 

The Go! Boards, the online discussion forum that is a cornerstone of student life at Haverford, have been absent since Plenary. Spruce, the server running Go!, froze on October 4 around 7:35 p.m. — coincidentally during Plenary — due to worn out circuitry. FIG, the volunteer student organization that manages Go!, has been having trouble repairing it.

“We’re poli-sci majors,” said Daniel Kent ’11, President and Treasurer of FIG. “We’re not trained for this.”

FIG has no administrative support and only three active members, said Andrew Thompson ’12, one of the three. Aside from Kent, the third member is Takumi McAllister ’12, Systems Administrator.

Kent said that in the worst-case scenario, if Go! is not repaired by finals week, they will install a temporary discussion board where students can manually register.

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By Andrew Ian Lipstein

  As the leaves turn to red and green and other colors and then brown and the engines roar, you know it’s track season! This season, the Goats and the Bees, the Men’s and Women’s Track teams, respectively, are looking to go fast, watch out! This season’s outlook is fast with a small to MAJOR chance of speed!

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By Andrew Ian Lipstein 

      Recent budget shortages due to economic recession has forced Rob Fairman, the KINSC Director, to collapse the Chemistry major in favor of the more economically viable option, Alchemy. This will make Haverford the first coeducational liberal arts school to not offer Chemistry, and leaves many of the students and personnel associated with Chemistry in a state of panic and disillusion. But boy, those new HCA awnings do look good.

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By Andrew Ian Lipstein

Reintroducing themselves to the Haverford community after a three month leave, the Haverford Dining Center, with a simplified, minimalist design, presented Bean and Cheese Quesadilla, a lunch item with apparent yet restrained “shoutout” to the breakfast and dinner crowds. A quick bite without attention to detail might give the eater a sense of bean and cheese mush, but a closer chew will reveal the tactile reinterpretation of the chef’s struggle with accepting identity as a passive cataloguing rather than an active staple.

Even a second and third listen will alert the eater of Francone’s background with Barthes’ early work, Camus’s later work (most obviously Le Premier Homme) and at least a cursory glance at Laromiguière and Gurwitsch. So much so, it seems Francone is actually mocking the very idea of Franco-Lithuanian philosophy. Or, at least, this might have been the case if not for the juxtaposition of Bean and Cheese Quesadilla and Grilled Chicken Sandwich. In itself, the combination takes a tongue-and-cheek jab at the idea of putting protein inside of a readily-digestible starch, a recurring theme in the H.D.C’s resigning attempts to question the act of questioning.

Most grabbing, despite its starkness and crass blatancy, is the fact that while called Bean and Cheese Quesadilla, the item has a remarkably closed structure (not common, or even heard of, among actual quesadillas.) Because of the time and preparation taken before releasing Quesadilla (if any fault is most notable, it is that the H.D.C. tries to do too much in one item), we know the misnomer is absolutely no erratum. In fact, the discrepancy between an expected open-ended quesadilla and Bean and Cheese Quesadilla reveals an onioned point. That is, the eater at first has no choice but to petition the very process of assigning categorizable names to foods. The same demur was raised in Moroccan Couscous, Mahi Mahi w/ Mango Salsa and Rancho Deluxe Rice (EP). The next level in the symbolic onion of self-discovery asks the eater to reconsider the tangible objection to the item’s name, in that by objecting why it is actually important to consider the name of an item, the eater is creating a paradox by further taking attention away from the intrinsic qualities of Bean and Cheese Quesadilla. The third level of the onion continues the theme of philosophical inaccuracy by proving the second level –while questioning the first– only takes us farther from enjoying the natural. In the final realization of the onion, which happens to be infinitely-layered, we are led to the tantamount conclusion that nothing that can be thought will bring us closer to a comprehensive view of the world. Finally, as the last bite of Bean and Cheese Quesadilla is taken, the eater is struck by the cardinal cry of the truth: thinking does not make us more advanced, it actually makes us less so.

While it’s tough to mentally digest all of Bean and Cheese Quesadilla at once, it is even more difficult to do so physically, and the lunch will most definitely result in swamp ass.

 By Krishnan Raghavan, Kevin O’Halloran, Ellen Freeman, and Eve Gleichman

As a perfect example of the influence of 2007-2008’s Haverford Year in the Farts program, there are more flourishing a crappella groups on campus than ever! One of the Fords most prestigious male a crapella groups, the BumTones, premiered their new members in a performance in Shartless Auditorium last week. The crowd loved their 90’s pop medley, featuring “Poops… I Shit it Again,” “My Fart Will Go On,” and Nelly Fartado’s “I’m Like a Turd.” When asked how they prepare for a show, Jonah Load ’11 admitted, “We all came straight from Chipotle to the concert.”

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By Peter Sturtevant

Earlier this week, it was officially announced that the Last Word editors would be taking over the Head Editorship of the Bi-College News, silencing the flurry of rumors that had plagued the newsroom. It is an honor, and a pleasure, for us to accept. This may be the best move the newspaper has made all year.

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By Brad Gibson

The world of sports has seen many great advances over the years. In 1891, James Naismith hung up two peach baskets at a YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts and invented basketball. In 1958, Dr. John Ziegler gave hope to morally ambiguous athletes everywhere with the development Dianabol, America’s first anabolic steroid. In 1965, Robert Cade invented Gatorade, paving the way for Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Derek Jeter to make obscene amounts of money. Now, in 2009, the two greatest thinkers of our time, Haverford Professor of Philosophy Ashok Gangadean and famed college basketball commentator Dick Vitale, have come together to produce the most stunning sports-related theoretical concept since the dawn of human existence, or at the very least since the beginning of ESPN in 1979.

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By Melissa Carn

In a private email, President Jane Dammen McAuliffe confirmed that an important and already approved portion of the college’s Phase II budgeting process is to entirely remove all traces of the arts from Bryn Mawr’s campus.

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By James Burton

Last time, we discussed how to go about calculating one’s net worth. Today, we are going to discuss the best way to increase that figure. After confirming what I already knew in my gut with a financial expert at American International Group (AIG), I can say with 95% certainty that the fastest way to grow your net worth is to invest in Frankie T. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC. Frankie’s brother may be incarcerated for stealing $65 billion from his fellow Americans, but Frankie’s firm is still alive and kicking. 

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By Hannah Jaenicke

At a Council of Twelve meeting yesterday, President Dr. Stephen G. Emerson ’74 outlined his decision to allow the introduction of fraternities and sororities to the previously Greek-free Haverford campus beginning in August 2009.

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By Darren White

Do you remember a time when your pants were just a little too big? Those times often reminded me of the late 90s, when it was good to have your belt at your knees, or when your diaper crotch was a little bit oversized to compensate for its expansion when you urinated or defecated. Well, if you remember those times fondly, your moment has arrived. The drop crotched pant, referred to commonly as a dhoti or harem pant, has made its way back from the ancient closets of M.C. Hammer and Naughty by Nature, and is making its way into department stores with a vengeance.

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By Mara Miller

Thanks to Haverford’s newest club, dozens of students have been able to publicly admit a passion they have harbored for years. “It’s time to come out in the open with it,” says Archie Carter ’10. “I’m a philatelist.”

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By Alex Mirarchi

Speculation and rumor have ensnared the Haverford campus. Everywhere, every second, everyone is talking about it: “Did you hear?” “Is it true?” “Can he do that?” “Oh my God!”

To answer your questions: Yes. Dr. President Stephen G. Emerson ’74 will be the new Head Coach of the Haverford men’s soccer team.

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By Ben Porten

This guy looks like such a douche. What kind of self-indulgent asshole splays his face all over the cover, sticks multiple feathers in his hair, looks off into the distance, and doesn’t even bother to shave? And then you name your album fucking Masterpieces? You look like you think you’re goddamn Jesus Christ or something. Well, you’re a liar. I don’t believe you. P.S. You look like an old hipster working way too goddamned hard at looking like an old hipster.


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By Robin Riskin

Sam Kaplan ’10 has long been a fan of Taylor Swift, but little did he or the bi-co community know that he would become her next romantic interest. Him? Bi-College News Editor-in-Chief, a FUCS member, a skinny jean wearer, and a frequent commenter on the Go! Boards. Her? A blonde bombshell country singer and America’s newest pop idol.

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