Gmail
It’s a widely known fact that everyone likes Gmail. Here at Brown University, though, we love Gmail more than anyone else.
Consider this: can the normal Brown University student survive more than three hours without logging on to Gmail? The answer is no. All Brown students need to know immediately about course news, club events, Organizing for America updates, Ivy Room study sessions, and Morning Mail.
The main attraction of Gmail for Brown students, of course, is the multitude of interactive features provided free with an account. As they GChat with two friends and a professor, they can also apply a colored Label to an email or two, open a shared Google Doc detailing a group presentation, sync Google Calendar with iCal and their iPhone or BlackBerry, browse articles on feminist activism on Google Scholar, and scan Google News—all while listening to a YouTube clip through the Gmail account. Any scientist eager to disprove the existence of multitasking has clearly never witnessed a Brown student on Gmail.
Brown students are also notorious for displaying a “Busy” status on Gchat. Friends should not be fooled by this. “Busy,” rather than indicating a true status, only reveals that the respective student would like everyone to believe that he or she is too consumed by school commitments. Most likely, this Brown student is simply wasting time in the SciLi lobby worrying about all of their commitments and drinking Fair Trade coffee.
Not having a Gmail account while at Brown is akin to social suicide. Should an unsuspecting student open up his or her Mac laptop (see: Macs) in front of friends or classmates with an Outlook Express or Hotmail account on display, he or she should be prepared for a mixture of laughter and snorts of embarrassment. This, of course, will be followed by jeering, mocking, and perhaps derogatory name-calling as students try to prove that they love Gmail the most. “Why pass up the 7379 MB of free storage, man?” someone will eventually call out, followed by a muffled laugh.
Celebrity Children
Honey, they shrunk the celebrities and sent them all to Brown!
Well, not really—as it turns out, Brown University is more a recipient of celebrity spawn than celebrities, as witnessed by the routine inclusion of a few good men and little women in each freshman class. But even if their pockets are deep, don’t assume that Brown University is simply a jurassic park for a few easy riders. These Brown students, with their killer looks and quick wit, are truly as good as it gets.
In fact, these shining stars are just like any other Brown student. They stuff their jaws with Focaccia sandwiches, they socialize loudly in the Rock, and sometimes they even let us have close encounters of the third kind with them. Brown, otherwise just a little shop of horrors tucked away in New England, is a clear hook for that Hollywood babe who would otherwise just fly over the cuckoo’s nest (as she would never be the next G.I. Jane).
One word of warning: don’t try to engage a normal Brown student about their celebrity connections. Any inquiries will be immediately rebuked—of course, only after they tell you about that one time they raided the lost ark of you-know-who.
“Hegemony”
“The history of all hitherto existing Brown University society is the history of post-class struggles over the meaning of hegemony.”
-A typical faux-post-Marxist Brown student
