Talk:Memories:LAN

In response to the 400 Babies thing the three second hug rule has been around since forever.

Towards the beginning of 2009.1, though, the RAs were ordered to enforce rules such as that hug rule much more strictly than in previous years (not including 2006). -Dan Salvato

Baby oil? I'm looking at you Alex Natale... - Zoe

Is it just me, or did someone delete a lot of 16.1 stuff?

Outright Person Deletion

Alright, I understand the motivation behind not acknowledging Dharun in a positive light (for those of you who don't know, he is attached to the highly publicized suicide on the Rutgers campus). What he did was horrible and as someone who both went to Lancaster and lives relatively close to Rutgers, I'm disgusted by the fact that he is/was a member of both communities. I understand why his userpage was deleted. I don't understand, however, why he must be removed from the list of former CTYers, or why his exploits at CTY need to be wiped from the collective knowledge. I'll admit, I'm am slightly uncomfortable with knowing that he was, very much so, a part of the CTY community, I am utterly shocked that after being a member of such an accepting and tolerant community he went off to do what he did. It is, in many ways, disgraceful. But, as someone who understands history, I don't think we should whitewash our history. Dharun is a prime example of how even CTYers are fallible. Mistakes and misdeeds of his in the present are not reflective of what he did in the past - in fact, what he did in the past appears to have positively affected several people's CTY experiences. Removing every mention of those things makes it almost as though they never happened, which neglects the memories of those who weren't Dharun. I therefore ask that at least some small mention of 'Dharun' remains, if just for the sake of those who aren't him. We can look at this as an example - CTY has seen its George Hotzs, but it has also seen its Dharun Ravis. --Thenonbritishbritshnationalist

Hey Thenonbritishbritshnationalist. I have several responses for your concerns and several reasons for why I removed Dharun from much of RealCTY.

The first response is simple and somewhat unsatisfying. One of the reasons I removed most mentions of Dharun (note that I said "most"; his name still appears in the Ultimate Frisbee page) is that I administrate this site, and I don't want his name associated with it. In this sense, it is perfectly within reason for me to strip away all mention of him, but this is a poor and unsatisfying answer, and I have better reasons.

For my second response, I'll deal with each of the removals individually. As you mentioned, the deletion of his userpage is reasonable (for the reason I mentioned above). His removal from the Lexicon was also natural. Dharun was a minor figure at CTY Lancaster, not a staple of the site (and there are plenty of those (pretty much none of which are individual students, I believe)), and hence had no place in the Lexicon -- in a way, you can think of this as Lexicon cleanup that happened to coincide / be catalyzed by this Dharun issue. Your belief that his name shouldn't've been removed from the students list is well-taken, and if there are complaints, that can be undone. However, the list of students has never been comprehensive in any way, nor is it really a record of who's passed through CTY. It's just a place where users like to write their names down to show their site allegiance, and so whether or not his name is there doesn't seem too significant -- and like I said, I'd, of course, rather not have it there, because I don't want him associated with this site (nor with CTY, but that's not under my control).

I guess the most significant deletion was in the Memories:LAN page (which is probably why you're writing this here). But the Memories page is not a place where important Lancastrian history is written. It's just a place where people like to tell stories about their own adventures, and frequently it is also a place for people to engage in shameless self-promotion and ego-boosting. I don't approve of this behavior, but it is deemed acceptable for the Memories pages because of site policy. But this sort of thing is exactly the reason why he did what he did at Rutgers -- he thinks highly of himself, has a huge ego, and has no regard for his fellow human beings. That this is the reason that someone is no longer living, and since this was never behavior on the site that was promoted, his entry has been removed from the Memories page.

You might still disagree with my decisions, but I hope you do understand the reason behind them and can see why they make sense or are, in some way, decent choices. If you have any other concerns, please feel free to reply. --Max W. 13:13, 3 October 2010 (PDT)

Add the "Anonymous Box"?

At the end of 2011.2, a number of campers made a prefabricated, person-sized tinfoil box with which to prank RA Jeff Sachs. On the last full day of the session, Jeff opened the door to his room to a small tinfoil room that was constructed out of tinfoil. He made his way through the small maze into a second tinfoil room, filled with paper hearts and plastic cups (a reference to the 599 cups prank). It took roughly eight hours to premake the tinfoil sheets, and about three hours to assemble. The prank name comes from the fact that, the day before, Jeff received a miniature version of the prank in the form of a small tinfoil box filled with paper hearts. Not knowing what to do with it, he taped it to the wall beside his door and called it the "Anonymous Box."

Should this be added to the 2011.2 Lancaster memories section? --GB4 10:20, 6 August 2011 (PDT)

I'll go ahead and add it. --GB4 19:14, 7 August 2011 (PDT)