Ah, the epitome of awkwardness. Social life at Carleton generally hinges on everyone’s quirky tendencies. One of the first things you learn during New Student Week group is how to say “awkward tortoise” in sign language (don’t ask). But nothing takes the cake, nay, the crown of awkwardness like Screw Your Roommate.
Dubbed “Set Up Your Roommate” by the more politically correct minded Carls, the event-filled evening is a fall-term tradition. Like many before them, this year’s participants (more than half the campus) duly showed up at the Great Space.
The abridged version of the event is: Two people work out an agreement to set their respective roommates up on a date. They register the roommates’ names online. The hapless roommates get cards in their mailboxes telling them their date’s code name. This is the only identifying information they get to find their date Friday night.
Before long the Great Space was a mosh pit of people looking for their dates. Or not looking for their dates. The Social Programming Board officials who were facilitating the event frequently had to get on loudspeaker and egg people on. “It seems that we are still talking to our friends,” they said. “Don’t talk to your friends! Don’t have fun! Find your Screw Date!”
Some of the identifying name pairs were obvious: “Jingle” looking for “Bells” and “Popeye” looking for “Olive Oil.” Some of them were quintessentially Carleton: “The Chapel” looking for “Somebody to Make Out in Me” and “English Major” looking for “A Job.” And finally, some of them were inside jokes: “Dan Breitbach” looking for “Money.”
Indeed.
Most of the participants awkwardly milled around looking for their dates, generally over-zealous or creepily shy once connecting with their partners. For the most part, the process was agonizingly slow, but by 6:45 most of the people were paired up, just in time for the A Capella concert.
Nearly every A Cappella group was suited up inside the Chapel. There was strangely little awkwardness in the air as Exit 69 sang a familiar a cappella song, “The Lady is a Friend.” The audience was rapt. The SPB had planned a full schedule for the daters that night, so the next stop was Cujokra in Little Nourse Theater.
Nourse Theater was packed as it usually is before a Cujokra performance. Those who got there early had to endure rap music cranked up to eardrum-shattering volumes, but they were rewarded with actually getting to sit in the seats. Just as in the Chapel, the plurality of the pairs looked oddly comfortable with one other. When I found out why at the beginning of the show, I was scandalized. The Cujokrans asked for a show of hands of who was on a screw date. Most of the people there weren’t actually on screw dates! What is wrong with you people? Lame, squared.
The Cujokrans did eventually find a pair of students who were out on a date, Helen and Paul, and brought them up on the stage to play a version of The Newlyweds Game with them. They sent Helen out of the room, asked Paul questions about himself, then saw if Helen could guess what Paul answered. Some of the questions led to some truly awkward silences. For example, “If Helen was a bee, and she had to pollinate your flower, where is your flower and what kind of flower is it?” The only question they could agree upon was “What does Helen smell like?” The answer: flowers.
As I cut through the Rec Center towards the bonfire at the Hill of Tree Oaks, I saw a pair of students rock-climbing together on the climbing wall. Were they on a particularly athletic screw date, or was it a real date? We may never know. The bonfire on the hill was most welcome on the cold, starry Friday night. There is something about sitting around a blazing fire that eases the tensions and the awkwardness of going out on a date with somebody you don’t really know. Plus, the wind was all blowing in one direction, so nobody got smoke in their eyes. Score. All in all, it was a night of newfound loves, but mostly awkward mumbles. Oh, Carleton.
