What were Princeton students writing about thirty years ago? We’re jumping back in time to February, 1993 for some woeful poetry, questionable health advice, and dining hall commentary from our forefathers at the Nass.
Some wisdom for your post-Valentine’s Day weekend, and for all those seeking their Princeton soulmate:
“Valentine’s Day comes upon us once again this Sunday, thereby compelling me to remind y’all of this universal truth: Princeton men and Princeton women are not meant to be together.
The types of young guys and gals who impress the admissions people at West College range from the introverted intellectual to the scholar athlete to the alumni child to the idealist to the fluke, as you may have noticed.
What all of us have in common, though, is exactly what makes us wrong for each other. We have too much drive (and not enough park). But the idea of mixers with neighboring colleges still appalls us, perhaps because we know, deep down, that we need mates who can understand simple math and language skills. So we torment ourselves, weekend after weekend, with the search for the perfect Prospect Avenue hook-up (as if there were such a thing).”
And a touching poem for the lonely undergrad:
“If Shakespeare were a Princeton undergrad, he would write something like this:
O woe, o woe, o woe, o woeful day,
Methinks I cannot wait until tomorrow
All ‘cause my gentle heart was led astray
St. Valentine has only brought me sorrow.
Maybe someday she’’ love me like I thought,
And make it worth all the wars I’ve fought.”
Sean L. McCarthy
February 11, 1993 Issue
Caught the flu? Try this “home remedy,” a Southern tribute to the healing powers of Jack Daniel’s:
“In all the hullabaloo about false advertising, none of the newspapers running the story as a chuckle item bothered to print the damn recipe, even when it was called “William Faulkner’s Hot Toddy Recipe.” As a displaced Southerner, I found this to be a grievous error, and eagerly sought out the area code for Lynchburg, Tennessee. Ah, Lynchburg… I took a tour of the JD distillery in the balmy days of August, reveling in the bitter irony that, even if I had been twenty-one at the time, I still could not have bought any charcoal-mellowed finery in the town. Get this, it’s in a dry county. If you work there someone asked our guide, “How long you been workin’ here?” and he responded, “I never work. This is play. Call this work? Shoot, I been playin’ here for almost thirty years”—you actually get a pint or two with your paycheck. They can give it away, they just can’t sell it.
Oh. You want the recipe. Sorry. Guess I lost track of my priorities there.
Take one 6-8 oz. glass. Fill approximately half full with Jack Daniel’s. Add one tablespoon of sugar. Squeeze 1/2 lemon and drop into glass. Stir until sugar dissolves. Fill glass with boiling water. Serve with potholder to protect patient’s hands from hot glass.
See, that’s the beauty of it. You can’t make it yourself—a true friend with an extra nugget of kindness (and a healthy supply of whiskey) has to make it for you.
If you haven’t got any, and you’ve got the flu, give me a call. I’ll be right over.”
Matthew Robb
February 25, 1993 Issue
And a peek into the evolutionary saga of Dining Hall Services, detailing the origins of Princeton’s weekend brunch:
“During their first two years at Princeton, students are held at the mercy of DFS, required to pay between four and five dollars a meal for at least fourteen meals a week. In a survey taken last year, sophomores ranked the DFS “experience” as their least favorite aspect of Princeton, giving it a 2.1 out of a maximum rating of five. Now, it seems as if someone above has finally responded to the dissatisfaction-DFS is undergoing a transformation. […]
The current complaints about DFS stem from food which while nutritious and digestible, cannot be described as dele table. DFS offers functional food, the culinary equivalent c sensible shoes or a Volkswagen Bug. At its best, the food service offered occasional extravagant special dinners, such as a semi-formal Winter Holiday meal and a New Year supper complete with bottled sparkling grape juice. At worst, DFS has dished up atrocities including fish that look like chicken, chicken that looked like ham, and turkey nugg which, tragically, looked exactly like turkey nuggets. T waffles are as dense and flavorful as the ceilings in Butler. A few safe bets included cheese steaks, dinner rolls and Ti Pizza (8-1500). […]
More long-term projects include features like a short order grill, a daily stir-fry selection, and two specialty bars every night (as opposed to the one-bar-per-night system currently in effect). The new system will be tested seven days a week in Butler College’s Wu Cafeteria next fall; if it proves successful, it will soon be implemented in the other dining halls. This further expansion of variety will be accompanied by an upgrade in quality already exemplified by the recent addition of Dunkin’ Donuts to the breakfast menu.Dunkin’ Donuts may not necessarily prove more appealing to everyone, but by using an outside brand, DFS at least is able to offer four or five different choices of pastries. Orefice also hopes to start a new Sunday Brunch service modeled after Cornell’s. It would begin at ten ‘clock with a traditional breakfast line, complimented by a pastry table and cappuccino bar. At eleven o’clock, the Princetonians regularly sleep through. He plans to scale down major expenditures like extravagant holiday meals in order to raise the overall quality of regular meals. “A lot of it is in labor and food, shifting our labor dollars to different areas,” Orefice says. “A lot more students are eating Monday dinners than Friday dinners. We don’t need the same number of people working Friday as Monday.”
W.T. Patterson
February 11, 1993 Issue