Amid the scandal and the hullabaloo caused by relatively recent booze incidents, there has been a concentrated push by the collective campus programming organizations to provide more appealing late night activities for non-drinking and underage students. Nothing wrong with that, right? And while the ill-fated RPCC Blackout Party certainly deserves its fair share of constructive criticism, I think that placing all of the blame on the University for not meeting our expectations for a fun night out is a bit unfair.

At a certain point, students need to take responsibility for safely entertaining themselves. Yeah, I think it’s great that Cornell makes a moderate effort to put on programs that students will actually attend, but Cornell is not a giant adult daycare center. Is Cornell really the one responsible when students go out and drink themselves silly on a Saturday night? No. The vast majority of us are over 18, and in the eyes of the law we can make our own decisions and accept the resulting consequences. If anything, consider yourselves lucky to have any kind of support infrastructure available at all. In the real world there aren’t free events all over town catering to 20-somethings or Nasties equivalents willing to accept your Monopoly money. You’re on your own.  

It is in this vein that I have some suggestions for your weekend plans. All of which (I’m sure Gannett would be proud of me) are alcohol free.

With the sky-high IQs and the wealth of creativity on this campus, there are plenty of ventures that you can undertake without gettin’ jiggy with Bobby Beergut or Edward Fortyhands. 

First and foremost, there’s the old standby of a Friday night flick. Some movies never get old. There’s How to Train Your Dragon, Easy A, X-Men and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to name a few of my perpetual favorites. Or you can go with classic horror flicks or rom-coms or whatever floats your boat. I bet all your friends have a DVD stash somewhere, so go ask to borrow a movie, stake your claim on a couch and have at it. If you’re not broke, you could even hit up Cornell Cinema.

When looking to entertain a group of people, I’d go with games. Choose either the electronic or classic board game variety. If you’re in the market for a good laugh I highly recommend Telephone Pictionary, which is really only limited in hilarity by the imagination and stick-figure drawing ability of the players (the worse they draw, the better). Or if you feel like kicking ass and taking names, go rustle up an N64 and show your friends how it’s done, Mario Kart style. I understand that playing the same games all the time can get boring, which is why you have to get creative and make up new rules. For example, play an entire boardgame with T-Rex arms, or with a finger mustache or with an absurd catchphrase added to the end of every sentence (“in my box”). Or make a seemingly innocent activity a little dirtier. Don’t make it too easy either, go on and attempt dirty Settlers of Catan or something of that ilk.

Maybe you have lots of BRBs to spend. Nasties sells yellow tubes of chocolate-chip deliciousness. Go bake (or not, if you aren’t scared of e. coli) some cookies. A fan of Cake Wrecks? Try recreating some of those culinary gems or maybe sculpting and submitting your own. Have a Cake Wreck-off and see who can make the ugliest dessert. Go for any sort of culinary masterpiece. I’m sure somebody would be amused if you recreated the Mona Lisa out of nothing but meat products.

And last of all, in case all other ideas fail you, there is the entire internet at your fingertips. Go stalk the Cornell Memes Facebook group and count how many times you read a meme and say, ‘Yes! So true!’ Another thing that happens to me quite a lot is getting into YouTube fights with friends. YouTube videos are like Pringles: You can’t do just one. And then before you know it, you’ve been trying to top each other’s YouTube videos for several hours and dying from side-splitting laughter in the process (Hint: “Angry Bottle Rocket” wins every time).

In a worst-case scenario, you could always go with porn. Unlike alcohol, porn will never put you into BASICS or in an ambulance to the hospital. Freshmen, take note.

Hopefully you’ve gathered that your options for fun are bounded only by your imagination. And if you don’t have one of those, well, then your Battleship is already sunk.

Sam Dean is a senior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She may be reached at sdean@cornellsun.com. Casual WTFery appears alternate Thursdays this semester.