Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Ho Chi Minh's birthday

Yup. That's today, May 19. Back when I was an undergraduate, we had a massive celebration every year for his birthday.

Well, actually it wasn't quite like that. The real history is a bit different. A couple of years before I got to Washington University, Dr. Riesenberg was having lunch with some students in Wohl Cafeteria and said something like "you guys are such wimps that you can't even start a decent food fight," and heaved a plate of pie across the room. The resulting food battle caused mass devastation (the cafeteria was a modern design, surrounded on all sides by plate glass windows).

It was during the Vietnam war, but apparently the date was just a coincidence.

The food battle became the stuff of student legend, so the University had to do something to minimize the damage the next year. Their plan was ingenious. They set up a fake student organization, the "Student Liberation Front" (not the same as the later political organization) and used it to funnel money for a water fight. It didn't cost much, after all—mainly a lot of water balloons, a few posters, and some surgical tubing (makes a great water cannon). For 29 weeks of the school year, the SLF did nothing whatsoever, then it came to life for the water fight.

The FBI got wind of it and spent weeks watching an organization whose main activity was ordering beer and pizza.

Probably the height of the insanity was my senior year, 1968. Campus police cordoned off the South 40 (dorm area), a low-lying area was flooded about six feet deep, and a TV crew showed up.

Alas, the schedule has changed now. The students have been home working for two weeks and nobody even remembers who Ho Chi Minh was.

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