An open to letter to the freshman class:
By now you’ve all probably committed yourselves to at least one student organization in order to kill any part of the day when you’re not either studying or drinking. Whatever your whims, whatever your tastes, whatever your passions, Cornell offers something for all of you — whether it be intramural sports, community service groups, or even the pathetic Student Assembly.
But none of you has made any inroads into the preeminent student group on campus. It doesn’t claim to do any humanitarian service; it’s not going to boost your GPA; employers will laugh at you if you put it on a resume; it probably won’t even make you a better person.
And yet, entrance into this club is easily the most sought after on campus. No other group will ask you to wait in line three days before you can gain admission. And no other group has the audacity to be able to turn aside more than 10,000 possible applicants. No other club even has that many applicants to choose from.
But then again no other club is the Lynah Faithful.
Admission into the Faithful isn’t too much of a hassle. If you get through the first cut (standing in line), then you’re in for good. When you come to meetings, just make sure you bring your ticket stub, a loud voice, and an unwavering hatred for Harvard.
Meetings are every other Friday and Saturday, but only in the winter months. They usually start at 7 p.m., but you may want to show up for a little earlier for the roll call. We barely talk about anything important.
Usually the only topics on the table are how Cornell should screw BU and some other people too. And sometimes we’re forced to call people assholes, but only when they do something really, really bad.
We meet for about three hours, but sometimes we have to stay a little longer if the meeting has to go to extra time due to a deadlock between two groups.
And meetings — when they go right at least — always end with the sound of keys jangling.
But sometimes, things go very wrong, and people leave horribly disheartened at the lack of progress. However, everyone swears to come back next time.
Meetings tend to be very loud though, and very cold. And you have to stand for the entire time. But people don’t seem to mind though. They like it that way.
But whenever outsiders try to crash the meeting, they’re viciously mocked. We don’t like outsiders. Just ask people who were at one of last year’s meetings when J.R. Prestifillipo’ s mom tried to get in. Unfortunately, she had to find out that her son sucks.
The Lynah Faithful doesn’t really have a leader. But we do have a board of trustees. This year’s trustees are Mike Schafer ’86, Andrew McNiven, Larry Pierce, and Danny Powell. They pretty much dictate how meetings go. If they’re having a good day, meetings tend to exuberant, loud, and smooth. But if they’re having a bad day, meetings will be quiet and angry . . . some members may even leave early.
Maybe you went to the first meeting of the year last Saturday. We hadn’t had one since last March, so people were really excited. Frankly, it wasn’t one of out greatest meetings ever. A lot of people forgot some of the basic rules. Luckily there were a lot of veteran members, so things went pretty smoothly.
Don’t worry if you didn’t go though. There are going to be a lot more meetings. Actually, we have one Saturday. It should hopefully be better than the last one. Now that everyone knows how meetings run, it should run pretty smoothly.
But if you can only come to one meeting during the year, come to our potluck dinner, which will be coming up on the 17th of November. Well, actually it’s not really a dinner. Everyone is unofficially asked to bring some fish, and we all put it on ice for a while. But don’t ask me what they do with all of it afterwards. Luckily, Wegman’s always knows about that special meeting, so it has sales on fish that week.
So if you aren’t already a member of the Lynah Faithful, become one! Admission applications can be found at the Athletic Ticket Office in the Field House. Just a warning though, we only have spots for one-meeting members left this year. So get them while they are still available.
Archived article by Shiva Nagaraj