Well, it’s really a shame that I died under “mysterious circumstances” the week before Carnival, because dying kind of sucks and there are several Carnival traditions that center it, such as “the crucifixion of every member of the losing booth orgs on their leftover pieces of wood.” That’s okay though, because whether you’re a freshman eager to escape your academic hazing for a weekend or a senior who wants to make the most of the rest of your time here, I have tips on several of Carnival’s tamer traditions!
Douse A Pre-Frosh
This carnival tradition involves finding tours of prospective students around campus and soaking them. Whether you use hit-and-run tactics or strategically position yourself atop Wean 9 siege-style, it’s sure to make the school stand out in any prospective student’s memories! It’ll also fundraise our printing efforts for future issues. We’re selling buckets of water for $5, water guns for $10, and cauldrons of water for $20. Soaking a prospective student is worth 1 point, soaking a parent is worth 2, and if you can manage to get a younger sibling (they have smaller surface area), that’s a whole 10 points. These points can be redeemed in the official ReadMe factory town booth (see page 3) for food and clothes, so grab a bucket and start dousing like your family’s livelihood depends on it!
Weepstakes
Some schools have designated finals-week-gather-on-the-lawn-and-group-scream traditions. Those schools are amateurs! However, despite the fact that this happens enough to be a daily tradition at CMU, it’s hard to coordinate and make time for. This is where Weepstakes comes in—to be cathartic now that everyone has the time to be catharsed. This primal scream and group crying session will be hosted at 12 AM Carnival Friday in the Gates-Hillman commons, so as to smoke out any CS students that would decide that Midway is, in fact, pretty mid and be tempted to hide away during Carnival to try to finish work. We will all cry about our impending finals weeks, and everything that is academically at stake.
Statistics & Data Sciences Booth
Alternatively, don’t want to cry about your finals? Leave your grade up to random chance and check out Grade Plinko at SDS’s booth! Tell the booth operator what class you’re taking, drop a disc into a normally-distributed pegboard, and take the grade letter that your disc lands in. The expected value of this approach is left as an exercise to the reader.
Physics Department Brunch And Talk: “Honoring Electrons”
We would tell you where it is, but have only been able to narrow it down to the general probability cloud of “somewhere in the city of Pittsburgh.” The physics department has been historically really annoying at past Carnivals like this–it’s always hard to cheer for their “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle” buggy, because the second you observe where it is, you suddenly can’t tell how fast it’s going, and if you try to announce how fast it’s going, it’s suddenly really hard to tell where it is.
Scotch N’ Soda’s performance of Our American Cousin
Rumor has it that President Farnam Jahanian will be in attendance wearing an egregiously tall top hat, and we’ll be handing out a whopping 100 points (enough for a small slice of bread at the ReadMe factory town, or for a congratulatory confederacy of like-minded pranksters at the John Wilkes booth) for anyone who can nail him in the head with a water gun—10 bonus points if they sneak up from behind.
Tartan Anti-Talent Show
Aggressively bad at something? Showcase what you’re worst at in a performance at the ReadMe office! This has been shown to be the year’s best reducer of imposter syndrome.
The Annual Carniv(ore)al Ritual To Appease The Wean Turtle, May His Terribleness Not Wake And May He Avoid Eating Any Of Us Non-Engineering Students For Another Year Still, Amen, otherwise known as:
Free Cookies in the Wean La Prima! :DDDD
Free cookies in the Wean La Prima! All day every day of Carnival! Please just walk straight into the turtle mouth–I mean, the main entrance! Please please please do!
I hope these traditions help you have a little more fun this Carnival. Have fun and stay safe out there this weekend! I mean this in both a completely silly non-turtle-related and a completely serious way <3.
