Title: A Rude Awakening

Informant Info: Charles Jang is an Executive Editor Emeritus and former Office Manager of The Dartmouth Review. He is a ’16 from Fort Worth, TX. He was interviewed on May 24, 2016 at the Review office in Hanover, NH.

Type of Lore: Verbal, Legend

Language: English

Country of Origin: United States

Social / Cultural Context: This story is about one a prank pulled on one of the Review‘s former Presidents. It is indicative of the ways in which the members of this folk interact with each other.

Transcript:

So we are working at the office one night, he’s laying down on the couch, watching some TV show on his phone, as he is wont to, instead of like, I don’t know, using one of our computers, so he doesn’t have to squint at it. And inevitably of course he falls asleep. So we’re working and then about an hour later, we get the great idea of convincing him that he’s been asleep for longer than he actually has. So we shake him awake and we’re like, “hey, we’re going to get breakfast, do you want anything?” And he’s like, “no I’m gonna go back to sleep.” And so he goes back to sleep, and then 3 minutes later we shake him awake again, and we say “hey it’s lunchtime, dude you really need to get up, don’t you have class soon?” and he’s like “no, I want to go to sleep, no.” And then we shake him awake for dinner time like an hour later and he finally gets up and then we take him outside and of course it’s really dark outside because it’s like 2 AM or something, it was pretty good.

Collector’s Comments: This legend is indicative of the fact that members of the Review are a tight-knit community who know each other well enough to have fun and mess with each other. How much of this legend is true and how much is exaggerated cannot be verified, but it speaks to the broader culture of the organization in that this type of behavior would not be considered out of the ordinary in the organization.