Animus

There was also a new organization being started by a group of male RAs that year.  They called it Animus, and it was basically a creative redirection of the school's focus on discouraging alcohol use.  It was also a deliberate attempt to get the male students in the school more involved in campus events and culture.  There was a 3:1 girl to guy ratio, but any organization or event was closer to 10:1, with the guys just not involving themselves in anything.  So these RAs basically got a budget approved to just go do fun events, focused primarily on getting male freshman out of their dorm rooms.  I was more than happy to be onboard, since there was no downside, but it still took a while to catch on.

The first event was a BBQ at a beach house in Malibu, and there were only about ten of us there.  I went swimming in the ocean, and actually enjoyed it for the first time, because it wasn't too cold.  There were dolphins swimming around a little farther out, and we played ultimate Frisbee right at the shoreline.  Eventually a kayak was brought out, and we started taking turns on that.  When I got on, I headed out and broke free of the surf.  Pretty quickly I found myself a quarter mile off shore, surrounded by dolphins.  This was both surreal and quite scary.  They are cute and all, but it is kind of like coming across a bear in the woods.  They are large animals, and they were jumping out of the water no more than a couple feet from me, and swimming under my boat.  They are extremely fast underwater, and I had no illusions about escaping if they suddenly decided they didn't like me.  I started hearing everyone on shore yelling as loud as they could and waving frantically, and wondered if they were trying to warn me about something.  I made pretty good time back to the beach, riding a wave in.  They were all pretty excited, but just because I was the only one that the dolphins hadn't avoided when they paddled out there, so they had just been cheering.  Anyhow, college was turning out to be quite the adventure, and I was only a couple weeks in.

The next Animus event was about a month later, when word was passed around the cafeteria to show up at the Senior Apartments at 11:30 that night, and wear dark clothing.  In a school where everything was over advertised to get minimal participation, 50 guys showed up that night, with no advertising, and no idea what was planned.  It turned out that one of the girl's had pranked Mark, the leader of Animus, by stealing his hat and leaving a ransom note.  His response of massive retaliation, was to round a huge group of guys, make a complicated plan with maps, diagrams, teams, hand signals, and such, to raid the girls' house and get it back.  I was amused at the process, but figured it was unlikely to actually work.  So after we went over the plan, and charcoaled our faces, we set out, marching in formation down the middle of the street around midnight, armed with squirt guns and such.  We were pretty amused when Security drove by us and didn't even stop, although I hear that led to some urgent phone calls a few minutes later.  Surprisingly enough, the plan basically worked, and the "2nd floor team" actually found it within a minute, after we had herded the residents into the living room.  A little victory speech was given, and when the girls complained about the mess we made (the "back door team" had some mud to contend with) it was promised that it would get cleaned up the next day.  And it was.  That was probably the most successful Animus event, and I made a pretty good video of the mission.  The rest of the year they focused on throwing BBQs before sporting events and other ordinary events like that.