Memories:JHU

2006.1

Pirate Day

During JHU-1-06 the Genomics class dressed up for the first ever Pirate Day. Attire consisted of eyeliner beards and mustaches (or just eye liner for a more rugged look), eye patches, cardboard and duct taped swords, head bands, and striped, red, black, white, and/or torn clothing. Members consisted of full fledged pirates, firates (female pirates), wenches, and ienches (it wenches - no gender). Honorary titles consisted of Ienchmaster, captain, Dread Pirate Amandark and murse. The genomics class pirated Tracey's hall, parts of the biology class, a TA (Nick) and an instructor (Tom). Sword fights were common during pirate day and usually resulted in missing arms, legs, and fingers. Such duels often resembled parts of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. During the meet and greet the pirates gave "pillage grams" which consisted of whacking CTYers with cardboard swords, declaring that their village had been pillaged, and giving them the opportuntity to direct the pirates to their next victims. Such victems were bubblicious, and Andy the RA who was pillaged by an umbrella-turned-sword. After receiving his pillagegram, Andy threated bodily harm on whoever was the leader of said pirate ship (known as the S.S. Eternally Damned). Said leader (Aman Daray) hid from Andy for the rest of the evening.

Siena Session 1 2006 also featured a pirate day, in the form of pirate versus ninja day, on the first friday of the session. This day featured many people dressed up in the all important character attire but not much actually competition between the two groups as the "vs" suggests.

Edit: At Saratoga, 2006 S.2, Pirates vs. Ninja vs. Cavemen was a daily during the second week where everyone beat each other with paper swords and clubs on South Park Lawn. Then we attacked the Chillaxin' daily.

Edit: Carlisle Session 2 had both Pirate and Ninja activities one day, at the end of which they fought each other

2008

Ninjas and Cavemen

There were a number of activities in both Sessions 1 and 2 which basically involved the same thing: running around and causing chaos. These would take the form of Ninja activities in which people would make newspaper swords, then go around to disrupt various activities, whack people with their swords, and sneak up on unsuspecting groups (e.g. CTYers returning from the Bookstore). The other variant was the Cavemen activity type: people would make newspaper clubs and do the same thing that the ninjas did. Both variants would frequently irk the victims, who would often fight back by taunting the cavemen/ninjas and destroying the paper swords/clubs. Both of these activities were started and led by RAs Albert Hsu and Shaun, who only stayed for Session 1. However, in Session 2, Albert Hsu made at least one surprise appearance to lead the Ninjas/Cavemen.

2008.2

Ultimate Tournament

The Genomics class was quite skilled, in general, at Ultimate Frisbee. The two instructors first held a mini-math with the Math Logic class and won, then decided to hold an all-site tournament organized by class. This tournament took place during two activity periods one day towards the latter half of the session. Matches were held throughout the Gentle Slope and surrounding areas. Ultimately, the Engineering class won, and the Genomics class was awarded second place. However, before the tournament could finish, a thunderstorm arrived and everyone except the Genomics class left before lightning appeared.

2010.1

Rain Week

The last week of CTY was very rainy. There were mini-rivers and floods everywhere. Puddles had to be run through to return to class. Classes were trapped in buildings for up to 30 minutes before thunder and lightning let up. The Math Logic class, one of the furthest-located from the AMR buildings, was hit the worst.

The Wolfpack

The Wolfpack was a group of students from Politics in the Middle East. While they were a relatively minor influence on campus, they did provide an endless thorn in the side for Kisa. They were given at least six stern talking-tos by her, and, even when banished to a dungeon-like classroom, they never lost their pack pride nor their zeal for life.

Worst Activity Ever

The Worst Activity Ever for this session was led by several RAs at once. The activity consisted of one hundred bright orange beads spread over the Beach, and the 50 unfortunate CTY students that signed up for the activity hopelessly crawling about, attempting to find the beads in the grass. At the end of the period, only fifty beads out of the original hundred were found. Being one of the students to find a bead in the sea of grass became a huge accomplishment and sparked both inspiration and jealousy in the finder's comrades.

The Tribals/The Tribe

The Tribals was a super-exclusive group of nevermores and one-mores at JHU 10.1. They were given their name by The Hall after the female members painted themselves at an activity, making themselves look like a Native American tribe. The Tribals were best known for holding bizarre circle dances/cult rituals at Meet Market, raving at dances and the talent show, and hooking up with each other at all of the dances/meet markets.

2010.2

Lady RaRa

The popular RA Bradley, well-liked by all, did a performance of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" at the Talent Show. He received a standing ovation and his was the most discussed performance. In his short shorts and t-shirt, he was better than his 8 co-dancers. At the last dance, he performed it one more time. RA Bradley also taught the Salsa class.

Drag Day

The LAWPsters of 10.2 all dressed up for Drag Day. Guys wore make-up, miniskirts, and girls looked so G they were almost H. GOOD times. Pics can be seen here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=484630&fbid=1249520496603&op=2&o=global&view=global&subj=100000142530312&id=1787195093 http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=484630&fbid=1249520496603&op=2&o=global&view=global&subj=100000142530312&id=1787195093#!/photo.php?pid=376497&fbid=145164388835860&op=3&o=global&view=global&subj=100000142530312&id=100000268998573

Lester's Worst Activity Ever

RA Lester was selected to run the Worst Activity Ever during the second week. Many CTYers skipped the popular "Money Cutting" activity for this, assuming it would be something good. It wasn't. Lester verbally abused everyone and forced innocent children into hard labor (cutting money without compensation). When Junno Tseng criticized Lester's Communist regime, he was sent to Sidewalk Chalk and forced to write out campaign ads for Lester's run for Prom King. Squirrels Matthew Ribel and Ryan Muggleton tried to unionize the laborers and were threatened to be taken out of American Pie at the next dance. Many campers horribly mutilated the Casino Night Money to fight back. Lester's iron will was never exhausted.

2011.1

Rapping

For the talent show, Michael Hwang had been rapping I'm No Good. He forgot the words and tried to remember them. Being unsuccessful, he realized how much he embarrassed himself and proceeded to embarrass himself even more by dropping the (unexpected) f-bomb on stage and getting in trouble for it.

Antonio Song's Megaphone Scream

During the talent show, Antonio Song and Hojun Kim performed "Don't trust Me" by 3OH!3. The song was poorly practiced, so the performance was horrible. In the middle of the performance, Antonio attempted to revive the performance by running to the front of the stage and snatching the all-powerful JHU megaphone in front of the DRL. He then proceeded to sing the rest of the song using the megaphone. At one point, he tried to put the megaphone up to the microphone for some distorted and absolutely ridiculous but amazing sounds. His antics had the whole crowd roaring with laughter, as well as the MCs backstage. Later on, this act was discovered to be an improvisation right before the song started.

2012.2

Nia's Hall

Two girls invented something called "YOLO running," this being sprinting down the hall in only a towel after showering while yelling "YOLOOOO" at the top of their lungs. After the second dance, the girls in Nia's hall ordered ninety BBQ wings. To their disappointment, they couldn't finish it all, so they stored it in the community refrigerator that night. Two nights later, they found most of their wings to be gone. This happened again after the last dance, except the girls only ordered 45 wings and could barely finish them due to excessive amounts of crying.

Nia told her girls about biking down the highway in the dark without reflective clothing on day 1 and ever since, her girls teased her nonstop about it.

Becca's Hall

Becca's Hall had stayed up past 10:30 pm on the last week on Tuesday and the site director punished them by sending them to sleep at 10:15 the next night. But when the next night came, by 10:15 pm, the girls had only started their hall meeting and their SPEs and got in trouble with the SRA. Having "disobeyed" rules again, Becca's girls were punished once again. This time, their punishment was to miss the first 30 mins of the last dance, where Becca's girls had to go into the Reading Room and have a talk with the site director. Inside, they received a 30-minute lecture on 'foresight'. Becca's girls had a 'great' time during those 30 minutes. To Becca's girls (Alehka Kolli, Jacque Li, Rachel Tseng, Helen Shen, Emily Roberts, Junie Wu, Michelle Wu, Woodi Woodland, Candace Cho, Maya Lamson, Jillian Chen & Dana He): Got Foresight? NOT YET.

Becca was nicknamed Bacon/Bagel/Bex by her girls, which then led to the girls being called "Bacon Bits." They also used sign language of "bacon bits" as their calling. To add, Becca's girls made a remix of "What Makes You Beautiful" and used it as their count-off with each girl having a syllable each. "BEH-CA YOU LIGHT UP OUR HALL LIKE NO-BAAAAHHHHHH-DEE ELSE" (with the "BAAAAHHH" exaggerated by CTYer Rachel Tseng).

Becca became best friends with RAs Jon Tam and Peter Yang, and the trio was nicknamed "PB&J" by her girls.

Rain Day

One day, the rain came and left all CTYers gloomy. The "flash flood" was so crazy that all the CTYers were so soaked to the point that they looked like they had just exited a pool. With such heavy rain, study hall that night was cancelled, much to each CTYer's delight. But their happy bubble was soon popped when they were told that the two hours they missed were to be made up by skipping daily activities on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Oh, it was a gloomy day.

Talent Show

For the first time, the CTY Talent Show was cancelled due to a lack of participants. It was instead replaced by Ultimate Kickback Day. All students were excited for this until it actually happened and students realized that if they wanted to hang out with the opposite gender, the only place was outside in the scorching sun, and so, no bonding happened.

2016.2

IT'S A DIAMOND!

There was this a game show activity, and the question involved degrees and a diamond. One hall decided that it would be a good idea to shout out the wrong answer (390). "No, it's 360. It's a diamond. There are four right angles," said the girl in front of them with intensity as if her religion had been offended. One thing lead to another, and the hall used Jacob's star tape to make a shrine to it. Soon afterwards, Helio wrote this prayer to the diamond (based off the Monolith prayer in Call of Prypiyat):

We thank you O Diamond for revealing the gospel of 360 degrees. May your 90 degree angles shine down upon the souls of the the brave warriors who gave their lives in service to your will. Onward, warriors of the diamond, avenge your fallen brothers, blessed as they are in their eternal union with the diamond. Bring death upon those who spurned the wrath of the diamond. Oh diamond, we do not hear you, why have you left us, oh diamond? We await your orders, OH DIAMOND.

Final Dance On The Gentle Slope

The final dance was announced to take place on the Gentle Slope as the Glass Pavilion was being used for something else. This would probably be one of the only few times where combat boots would be appropriate at a Dance.

Edit: Turns out that the dance took place in the bricked area (with the grassy area being fenced off). It ended up being like a social with music instead.

2017.1

RA Drama

Three RAs who will remain unnamed were fired for having come onto campus drunk and having intercourse in a student's bedroom. While the members of the halls of the RAs were told to stay silent about the situation, some sources have leaked this info.

Lack of Tradition at Dances

This session was full of newbies and first time RAs who had no clue what CTY traditions were, even with the recurrence of the JHU Traditions Committee (though its time was mainly spent arguing about dances). Dances were trash due to some Spanish student DJ not understanding what canon was and horrible EDM. There were NO RAVES this year, and during Sandstorm, students jumped around, confused. Stairway to Heaven was full of confusion because no one slow-danced and instead thought it was time to get into the huge circle for American Pie. Forever Young was played but no one knew it was a slow dance song.

Talent Show

The hilarious (but RA-offensive) Kevin Mau performed a standup comedy act which had all CTYers roaring in laughter as RAs clicked their tongues, leading to Kevin Mau getting in a ton of trouble. The ever popular PHIL (praise him) and the rest of his TA boy band performed "Never Going to Give You Up," which involved a lot of dabbing and Backstreet-Boy-inspired dance moves.

Activities

Some notable activities included Cloud Watching, History with Mike (led by SRA Mike, who used to be at Easton), Capture the Flag, and Pilates. There were a noticeable amount of actual athletic and work-out activities, such as Military Boot Camp and Metabolic Breakdown. Many activities, though, were trash, and normal CTY traditional activities were excluded. Weekend activities included Casino Night, Movie Night, the Amazing Race, CTY Carnival (which had karaoke that led to many interesting acts) and the Hunger Games.

Crowded Cafeteria

Session One had to deal with many other camps taking place on campus, such as STX Girls in the first week, who starved themselves with fruit and pasta and would always enter the cafeteria in preppy shirts and short shorts. There were huge lines the entire session. Along with CTY, the Envision Camp, Engineering, and some random leadership camp would lead to the cafeteria always having huge lines and impolite people. Ms. Jackson made a return this year but as a busgirl. Many returning CTYers enjoyed her presence. The final week was the LAX boys, who only took to-go boxes, making it easier to find tables. No takeout was allowed this year.

Cringey Dancing

There was the impossible dance where you had to move your arms in synchronization with your hips, which had many RAs and campers struggling and looking as if they were humping someone midair. Lots of dabs and whips due to the huge surge of rising eighth graders.

RA Opening Skits

Many funny opening ceremony skits, such as What Would Beyonce Do (she wouldn't swing her lanyard), Don't Step On the Chains, and Don't Take an Uber Off Campus. There wasn't many couples this year though, so PDA was not a huge problem.

Drag Day

Huge success leading to most of the camp participating. Many boys wearing skirts and girls wearing backwards caps (was popping babygirl). Some girls got in trouble for catcalling boys, but it was overall a fun day.

2018.1

Giant Neuron

During the first week of the session, the Neuroscience class went to the bookstore with their TA. There, they all pitched in a couple dollars to buy a giant neuron. It was carried around by the class for the remainder of the session.

When it was nearing the end of the session, the classmates tried to figure out who would take the giant neuron home. After much debate, the youngest person took the neuron home, saying they would bring it back next year.

2018.2

Mafia

During the first week of the session, there was an activity called Mafia. One of the games was narrated by Katherine Feng. Notable deaths include:

• A player being excited about it being a Saturday and running through the door, except she forgot the door was there, so she slammed head-first into it and died.
• A player falling through a hole in the couch, landing hard on her butt, and dying a few hours later.

On the second Tuesday of the session, Mafia came back. While the RAs sat on the billiard table playing cards, CTYers took part in any one of three games of Mafia.

One of them had a terrible narrator who didn't know how to play the game and insulted players. He wasn't aware that the Mafia had to agree on one person, so the chosen players had to play rock-paper-scissors to see who would die. Many people quit and the game eventually fell apart, with people migrating toward the Foosball and air hockey tables.

The Princess of the Blood, Amelia Orwant, narrated another game of Mafia right next to them. There were many memorable deaths, most involving skittles and/or celery. These include:

• Two players go into a restaurant. The waiters fashion a knife out of celery (the other players were assured that it was very sharp) and stab a player with it. The other contents themselves with a healthy, balanced meal of skittles and celery.
• A player visits a skittles factory and is speared on a unicorn's horn
• A player flies off a corkscrew-y roller coaster that had been sabotaged... with two-day-old celery. ("Someone has SABOTAGED you! ... You fly off the roller coaster on a celery-fueled flight! ... You die")
• And one fairly uneventful but still entertaining death: "I COME DOWN FROM THE SKY AND KILL YOU" - The Narrator

Some of the townspeople were quite... active in their sleep. ("Stop sleep-poking or sleep-tickling, or whatever the hell you're doing to each other!" - The Narrator)

On one occasion, the two Mafia couldn't agree on who to kill, so the Narrator yelled at them to make up their minds or she would kill one of them.

The next game was also narrated by Amelia. While it was never finished, it was also quite weird. Notable deaths included two players making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich the size of Arkansas. They walked on it and fell through the cracks in the bread, and they kept falling through the peanut butter and drowned in the jelly.

Social Dancing

RA Alexis and RA Kimery lead an activity, Social Dancing, on the last Wednesday of the session. The group walked to the gym and sat in a corner there. RA Alexis asked if the CTYers wanted to have Spontaneous Naptime or learn how to swing dance. Unsurprisingly, Spontaneous Napping won, and the activity was unofficially renamed to "Spontaneous Napping / Pink Floyd Appreciation." Alexis started loudly playing Pink Floyd music, making the gym floor vibrate. The 13 CTYers and two RAs talked about their classes for the upcoming school year, which RAs to handcuff together at the dance, which songs would be played at the dance, past CTY sessions, and other random stuff. The activity was not at all what anyone expected it to be.

Raving

Amelia Orwant, Princess of the Blood and famous for her raving skills, unofficially led a Glowsticking 101 activity with her sister Penny. It was officially led by RA Alexis because apparently we need supervision. The first day especially, there was a lot of pain-related screaming and yelled profanity from glow sticks hitting people.

By the end of the activity, a few people from other camps had been accidentally hit by flying glow sticks. RA Alexis sort of learned how to rave. Various RAs also tried to learn to rave and were successful. Most of the participants knew how to do a decent two-beat and some knew how to do a three-beat. Amelia encouraged a few CTYers to participate in the rave circle at the last dance because of their skills.

At the last dance, Amelia gave everyone in the activity glow sticks and for once there were more than two ravers in the circle. A few people practiced their raving off to the side, so there was almost always at least one person making a light show regardless of what song was playing.

2019.1

GREEK GOD VIBES

2019.2

Site Meeting

At the second all-site meeting of the session, site director Don and SRA Emily had the entire site do the wave while sitting in the auditorium in Remsen. The site meeting ended with the RAs playing Country Roads with the lyrics up on the screen and everyone singing along.

2022.1

Stories of 22.1

In an attempt to preserve her memories and camera roll from 22.1, whilst also making them available to her friends, Empress Switch created an Instagram account with various posts detailing her Stories of 22.1. These detail her personal experiences at JHU. You can find them on instagram "@switch_1166057". Although this account is private, Switch will accept follows from any CTYer who requests it and is still posting stories.

2024.1

Styling Session

During the first week of CTY, two halls collaborated to fix what was universally seen as an abysmal haircut on a rising freshman. This ended up being a heavily attended haircut session by an amateur stylist in the bathroom of Griffin 3, with the end result being a near-buzzcut. Once the haircut was done, nearly the entire camp agreed it was an improvement. For the stylist's and haircut-receiver's privacy, no names will be shared.

Cleaning Campaigns

Due to the questionable hygiene of some male CTYers, several hallmates across several halls engaged in a friendly campaign of "improvement". This included Febreze bombing, releasing Axe into an air conditioner (because middle schoolers still think Axe smells good), vacuuming a hallmate's sheets while the hallmate was still asleep under them, and more silly hijinks.