On behalf of the Oregon Daily Emerald – actually, on behalf of myself – welcome back to the University of Oregon. How was your summer? Did you work or take it easy? Were you one of those people who went off to be a camp counselor, or did you go door to door selling textbooks in South Dakota? Don’t bother answering me; I won’t be able to hear what you say unless I happen to be sitting next to you while you read this article. Feel free to check if the person you’re sitting next to is me, but there’s a pretty good chance it isn’t.
My summer ended about two weeks earlier than most of your summers did, as I am a member of the Oregon Marching Band and we start practicing about two weeks before the beginning of the school year. I’m from Portland, and usually when there are no classes to take here I’m at home eating my parents’ food and driving their car without paying for gas. The past two weeks have been rather unique for me. I’ve had a chance to be on campus as students gradually return, like the party-loving swallows returning to Capistrano.
Campus is a pretty strange place during the summer. Most students have departed and only a few classes are being taught. It’s eerie to walk down Alder Street and not hear hip-hop music blasting from stereos, or to pass through the amphitheater without being offered a free hug. Empty beer cans and half-crushed, red plastic cups are a lot harder to find, the clouds of marijuana smoke are considerably smaller, and there are no angry street preachers to tell us we’re all going to Hell for not believing in God, or not believing in the right God, or not believing in God the right way. Without students, the University is an architecturally mismatched ghost town.
My apartment complex is right across the street from campus. I signed the lease with the expectation I would fall asleep to the melodious echo of drunken partygoers belching in my alley and the baseline of “Get Low” rattling my windows every night. This sort of thing doesn’t bother me all that much, seeing as I lived in the dorms – forgive me, residence halls – last year. On the contrary, I’m almost addicted to the alcohol-infused catcalls and loudly amplified urban lyrics of the University’s party scene. After nine months living smack dab in the middle of campus, the sounds of my classmates having a good time have almost become my lullaby. If those sounds ever disappeared, I’d take it as a sign that some disaster had occurred, something terrible like a nuclear war or a zombie plague, forcing revelers to run for fallout shelters or escape from the undead in search of delicious brains.
When I moved into my apartment on East 15th Avenue, nobody was around to party me to sleep. In fact, most of my complex was completely empty at the time; even my roommates hadn’t yet arrived. For a few lonely nights, I lay awake for hours on the slab of stone – I mean, mattress – that the rental company furnished for me. I was unable to sleep without the sound of Eugene’s nightlife to remind me that the world was A-OK and zombie-free. Walking around the catwalks of my silent building at night, I couldn’t help feeling like I was reenacting various scenes from “The Shining,” and at any moment would bump into a posse of ghosts that would inevitably drive me insane.
But perhaps I had already gone insane. After all, I wasn’t able to sleep because disruptions were absent. Some might call that more eccentric than insane, but it was an unsettling couple of nights nonetheless.
But last Thursday something wonderful happened: my new neighbor got drunk, locked herself out, and punched through a window with her bare fist to get into her apartment. Two panes of glass. Bare fist. I live next door to the Terminator. Don’t worry – her friends rushed her to the hospital right away, and I understand that in addition to making a full recovery she’s learned the value of keeping a spare key under the welcome mat. However unpleasant the experience may have been for her, that was the first night I slept soundly. Now, more than a week after my neighbor’s trip to the emergency room, everyone is back and the parties are in full swing. The University is back to its ordinary, bustling, slightly drunken self, and I couldn’t be happier.
So, welcome back, everybody. I’m really glad you’re here.
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