REPORTS: CMU Nothing Like Jewish Sleepaway Camp
Freshman Ari Steinberg has spent every summer at Camp Ramah in New England since he was 9 years old, so he thought living in a traditional triple on the third floor of Mudge would be easy as alef, bet, gimel. And he was ready to survive a few weeks of 80-degree weather with no air conditioning. But as it turned out, being in the dorm was more like being in the bunk with the other friend group. âMy roommates donât want to play ultimate frisbee or Magic: The Gathering with me,â he complained. âBut on the bright side, at least they arenât flashing me every now and then when their âtowels slip.ââ Steinberg also found some trouble adjusting to the Mudge third-floor communal bathrooms, noting that while no one ever threatened to pee in a cup and splash it on him for taking more than 30 seconds in the shower (which he says is ânot an exaggerationâ), heâs disappointed by the total lack of conversations in the bathroom. âSometimes Iâll hear somebody talking in there and get excited, but then it always turns out theyâre just on the phone with someone,â he said. âAt camp I knew everybody in my year and almost everyone in the year above and below me, why donât I even know most of the people in my dorm here?â
Steinberg was also surprised with how he used his time after getting to CMU. âO-week felt like camp: a bunch of planned activities that I skipped because they were boring as fuck. Meals were kinda like camp too with them having us all eat shitty buffet food in a big room all together, but I kept expecting them to start handing out benschers before people could leave and doing Birkat. [Authorâs note: the fact that I have to write an authorâs note to explain what this is should make it pretty clear why this doesnât happen. Anyway, go look at the glossary on page (whatever).] But once classes started, everything I knew came crashing to the ground. At camp, they only let us have an hour of free time a day, plus a few more on Saturdays. Here, though, everything is free time, but not free time that I can just use to chill with my friends. I have to do homework! My chugim never gave me homeworkâŚ.Oh, chugim are like classes, but at camp, and they donât give you homework.â
Steinberg did point out one thing that he felt really did carry over from his time at Ramah. âAt camp, we have this concept called the sixth-week slump,â he explained, âwhere youâve been at camp for six weeks out of the eight and you want to be having fun and doing all the camp things but really youâre exhausted and miss your parents and are so ready to go home and itâs so close, but you have to tough it out because as soon as you get home youâre just gonna hate your family again. Yeah, each half-semester is kinda like that. Oh, also the building right at the front of campus is the main office. Camp is like that too. Though Warner hall isnât connected to a building with no AC where I can do arts and crafts. That oneâs across campus a bit.â
readme tried finding other Jewish summer camp alumni at CMU to comment, but they seemed to all be at Washington University in St. Louis, which sources say is just like camp.