YT: The drinking game

It is the day of the Young Trustee election, and as far as I’m concerned, that can only mean one thing: Time to play the History of the YT Drinking Game.

The rules are simple. I’ll call out a category, and for every time in the last decade that a Young Trustee has filled it, you take a drink. Ready? Let’s begin.

Drink for every time in the last 10 years that the Young Trustee has been a minority. Woah there, slow down. You should only be taking one sip. Even though about 45% of the undergraduate student body belongs to an ethnic or racial minority, nine out of the 10 Young Trustees in the last decade have been white. Spoiler alert: The exception is Sunny Kantha, Trinity ’09. (Also, Snape kills Dumbledore, Boo Radley isn’t actually evil, and the kid is the only one who can see Bruce Willis because he’s dead).

Okay, so that was a pretty light one. Let’s go a little harder this time. Drink for every time this decade the Young Trustee has been a woman. That’ll be two sips, one each for Katie Laidlaw, Trinity ’04, and Sara Elrod, Trinity ‘02. These skilled multi-taskers were able to pull off a rather remarkable feat—sitting in a boardroom and having a uterus at the same time. In fact, some 13 of the 36 current trustees have also managed that same stunt, which is about the proportion of women in the population as a whole, right?

Well, let’s not get too caught up in the math. This is just a drinking game, after all. So this turn, drink for every time in the last decade our YT has been a political science major. That will cost you four shots, representing the academic careers of John Harpham, Trinity ‘10, Ryan Todd, Trinity ‘08, Brandon Goodwin, Trinity ‘06 and the aforementioned Elrod. And for those of us (read: me) who can’t actually tell the difference, you should take four more drinks for the four YTs—Jordan Bazinsky, Trinity ‘01, Anthony Vitarelli, Trinity ‘05, Ben Abram ‘07, and Kantha—who studied public policy. But if you’re a lightweight, you could just drink for the number of engineers (1), art students (0) or science majors of any kind (also 0).

Alright, now we’re feeling it. And in the spirit of this whole game, I think we should drink for every year the Young Trustee has been in a fraternity. The number is four, so long as you’re OK with including Wayne Manor, arguably the frattiest non-greek collection of gentlemen you’ll find outside of the Kennedy family. In any case, I for one am glad to see that our institution is finally starting to see that white, wealthy men from the East Coast deserve a voice on our governing board, too.

As a proud graduate of AlcoholEDU, I recognize that now is the time to slow this game down. But I would be remiss as your guide through the history of YT if I didn’t include at least one category dealing with leadership. So as a send off, if you would, please drink for every year that the Young Trustee has held a leadership position in DSG, Campus Council or DUU. Who knew that deciding to raise the student activities fee or picking B-list ‘90s bands for LDOC made you uniquely qualified to sit on the board of a top-10 research university? Eight of the last 10 Young Trustees, apparently.

Okay, folks, that’s all from me. Thanks for playing. Now get out there and vote. And make sure you choose wisely—the entire future of this game depends on it. Oh, and so do a few other small matters, like the way this university projects itself to the world and the type of voices it chooses to include in its most important dialogues.