Hamilton Uncategorized

“Mad Dog, Vodka, and the Jitney”

Students at Hamilton college received this email (note: title) around noon today, a quick recap of the weekend’s hard work:

First, I will address the ubsurd number of EMT calls that were made Saturday night due to Mad Dog and other various alcohols. Second, I will address the jitney driver incident that led to the service ending prematurely that same night.

My roommate, a member of Hamilton College EMS, answered his first call around 10:00pm that night and was continuously called until around 4:30am. Talk about popular! He ended up crashing on the futon in our common room so as not to wake us and ultimately slept for a total of three hours. According to sources, there were at least twelve EMT calls (some say thirteen), four or five of which happened at the SAME TIME and left one or more calls unanswered. This may be a new record for a Saturday night, but that figure is unverified. Regardless, Saturday night was clearly pretty rowdy.

And all due largely to some Mad Dog party thrown by one of the frats on campus.

What is “Mad Dog?” you may ask. Mad Dog, also defined by Wikipedia as “bum wine,” is described as “inexpensive low-end fortified wine” with an alcohol content of between 13-20% ABV. It comes in lots of pretty colors (red, green, electric blue!). Basically, this sh*t gets you f*cked up and FAST because people tend to chug it (see Mad Dog Challenge, Colby College). Anyway, one of the Hamilton frats decided to have a MD party and only drink Mad Dog! Long story short, at least half of the EMT calls were due to this hobo wine concoction that people should not be drinking in the first place.

Then the jitney incident happened. From primary sources, I have heard that the jitney was filled with loud, obnoxious, drunk lax players/hockey players/freshman girls/you name it and of course, the young, naive, SOBER driver was like, “F**K THIS!” And basically turned the van off, opened the door, and ditched as fast as she (or he, although I heard it was a chick) could. I did, however, hear that this was not an isolated breakdown and that the previous night the driver had to deal with the same kinds of shenanigans. Basically, she (or he) had reached her (or his) tipping point and enough was enough, stranding drunk students both on the hill and off it.

My question is, if you’re going take the job as the late night jitney driver, wouldn’t you expect to interact with at least one intoxicated Hamilton student? Not that one ever deserves the intellectual punishment that is a conversation with a drunk freshman girl…but there is something to be said for inevitability.

And this is all in the weekend leading up to our Fallcoming and alumni weekend festivities. As one recent grad posted: 

So here’s to hoping that next week there won’t be any Mad Dog themed parties. Why not try a pirate-themed party with Captain Morgan or a CEO’s & other employees party with Grey Goose or for that matter, create a “2033 Party” featuring Svedka because it was, in fact, “voted #1 vodka of 2033.”

Cheers.

 

Update 11:32 pm – To set the record straight, the jitney drivers actually did stick around until the ends of their shifts to go downtown and pick up students who were at the bars.

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