Read everything if you want to become a poet.

—Nikky Finney

The poets…[are] the only people that know the truth about us.

—James Baldwin 

When society is made of men who have no internal solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently, it is held together by a violent and abusive authority.

—Thomas Merton 

At award-winning poet Nikky Finney’s February lecture in Haggin Auditorium, she read from her 2020 piece on the late Congressman and Civil Rights leader John Lewis. Her essay, published on Literary Hub in 2020, feels even more relevant today. 

It begins, “Dear John Robert Lewis, there was a colossal sweetness about you that some mistook for weakness. A sweetness, that seemed to power your actions and your life. …The love that, seems to me, fragments of which might have been found inside some of those books you always kept close in your back pack.”

Lewis was a part of the Nashville sit-ins and the Freedom Rides, and was present for Bloody Sunday in 1965. He served thirteen terms as a representative of Georgia starting in 1987. His “colossal sweetness” contrasted with the violence of those who opposed him. Finney follows his example. She needs his sweetness like a backpack which she can wear constantly.  

Nikky Finney, originally from South Carolina, lived in Lexington for nearly three decades, working as a professor at the University of Kentucky. A founding member of the Affrilachian poets and 2011 winner of the National Book Award, Finney’s work explores Southern heritage and Black expression. 

While John Lewis informs Finney’s activism, her writing influences include Thomas Merton and James Baldwin. Merton was a Trappist Monk living and writing in Bardstown, Kentucky, for most of his career and a proponent of pacifism; Baldwin was a Civil Rights activist and a prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction, including Go Tell It On the Mountain.

Finney’s talk, part of the William R. Kenan Jr. lecture series, was titled “Poetry: The Influencer.” 

Finney described influence as “indirect, without apparent exertion of force.” Her influences “arrived” and made “soft but intense impressions” on her. To influence, she said, is “to provide some kind of magical space to mingle, to mix, to test, to throw some idea or belief up into the air and then walk into it like a burst of brilliant powder.” We are influenced when we step into something that speaks to the part of us that was always there, but needed someone else’s words to recognize it.

Finney’s influences also make social commentary. The writers and thinkers she cites “have left us an atlas of words.” Though they wrote twenty, fifty, even close to a hundred years ago, they have given us direction that applies today. The “violent and abusive authority” that Merton contemplated—as well as the need for internal solitude—remains.  

Perhaps the poets are the only ones who have this internal solitude. They are often able to discern what we might otherwise miss. In that sense, we can say that Finney arrived at Transy to share that truth with us. 

Finney ended by reading the 1995 poem “Famous” by Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye. I recommend listening to Finney read it via the livestream, beginning at 51:37. Notice where she pauses and how she enunciates each word. Or listen to your voice read the poem. In your head or aloud. Where does it pause and linger? What images does it create? 

“Famous”

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,

which knew it would inherit the earth

before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds

watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom

is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,

more famous than the dress shoe,

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men

who smile while crossing streets, 

sticky children in grocery lines,

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,

but because it never forgot what it could do.

Finney’s lecture asked the audience who they want to be in the world. What is famous to you? What do you carry in your backpack? If there was a fire, what would you grab as you run out the door? What do you hold in your heart that gives you strength as you run? Either the strength to run faster–or the strength to turn around and save someone else still inside the burning building.

—

The following night was the 35th Anniversary of the Affrilachian Poets. The group was named after Frank X Walker’s poem “Affrilachia,” a term he coined because literary critics and scholars had forgotten African American Appalachians. 

After the group’s preamble was read by Transy professor and poet Jeremy Paden, sixteen Affrilachian poets read their work. Poets, apparently, love to quote other poets. They also love to take off their poet hats and tell funny, personal stories about each other in their introductions. Many of the older poets, like Frank X Walker, Finney, and Crystal Wilkinson were mentors or teachers to the younger generation. They are interconnected, a close community who all influence each other. As Paden said, we “learn to read and write from and with others.” 

When the poets spoke in verse, their voices became more resonant, more thoughtful. Nearly all of them said: “It’s good to be home.” Finney said it during her talk the night before. 

But their poems sometimes seem to say the opposite. When a wasp attacks one honeybee, NitaJade read, all the others come buzzing in. 

“Humanity,” Parneshia Jones read, “is traveling…with all our receipts.” 

In his poem, Gerald L. Coleman said that right now, some people think “it’s safe to hate in the sunshine.” 

Dr. Ricardo Nazario y Colón read that our American soil indicts us, it “drinks truth.” 

Frank X Walker read perhaps the most famous piece of the night, his “Why I Don’t Stand.” In this poem, Walker explains that “My Old Kentucky Home” is not as peaceful as the anthem suggests. White Kentuckians were slave owners, and after abolition, the commonwealth was segregated. Even before then, Kentucky land was wrested from the indigenous people who lived here. Our soil drank the truth from which our bluegrass grows. History cannot be undone.

So how is it possible for these poets to say that it’s good to be home? How is it good? Why is it home?  

There may be no clear answers to these questions. Perhaps the power of poetry is not that it provides answers, but that it asks questions and records truth. Perhaps the Affrilachian Poets ask us, the world is this way, how can we change it? 

Who are we here at Transylvania? In the “26.6” years that she lived in Lexington, Nikky Finney observed a city that lives “the life of the mind.” A life we are especially equipped to live at Transy. The complexity of a liberal arts education allows us to read and respond to the reports these poets have brought us. 

By living and writing here, Nikky Finney and the Affrilachian poets have had a profound influence on Lexington. They have created a home for other Affrilachian and minority poets, and pushed a place with a painful history to grapple with that pain and that history. Perhaps in doing so, it has become a place of beauty. So Lexington becomes home. Home is not always synonymous with comfort and familiarity. Home means complexity and struggle, too. Struggling to improve the places we love, and seeing our communities doing the same, is unifying and good. 

So it is good to be home. 

If you ever find yourself cruising down Cumberland Falls Scenic Highway between Williamsburg and Corbin and accidentally pass the turn to see the scenic waterfall, you will drive past a sign that says “THE GOLF COURSE” in big bold text.

Below the large lettering, the sign advertises a driving range and golf simulator. Both are nonexistent. Above the sign is a big red arrow pointing toward Old Airport Road, a paved, wooded path that splits off from the state highway, beckoning any unfamiliar golfer or willing drunk to spend the afternoon on the semi-green links of The Golf Course.

For those who turn at the big red arrow, the drive up Old Airport Road is similar to most Whitley County roads. In the summertime, prime golf weather, both sides of the road are consumed by invasive green kudzu smothering the fences and power lines that trace the road. First-time visitors have no real indication of a golf club, nothing until they pass an open-air pavilion that was converted into a golf-cart cemetery. Instead of a members-only gate, visitors drive through tires and plastic bodies of carts, haphazardly thrown about the place, giving the entrance a first impression more fitting of a backwoods demolition derby.

Pulling into the cracked parking lot, you finally reach the clubhouse. The base of operations for the county’s only golf course is an old brown building with rusty metal fixtures. The outside of the building has an overhanging carport protruding off to the side, resembling an aircraft hangar protecting its fleet of golf carts. Two things become immediately clear after seeing their club cars: 1. They’re all chained together 2. Most are topless. The backstory behind the padlocked carts was an incident that implicated two boys from Bee Creek who tried to steal a few carts for some dope money in the dead of night. The missing roofs? Purely an aesthetic choice. Aside from their convertible capabilities, the golf carts have dual-purpose seats: one part cushion, the other ashtray.

As backwards as this clubhouse sounds, it is still a country club. Next to the hangar is a bleached concrete pool deck. The pool is fitted with a diving board and high dive, one of the only in the county. By all accounts, the pool was cutting-edge summer leisure during the Reagan Administration. However, modern-day guests will find the same pool with a vacant shallow end that slants into a deep end. Accumulating at the bottom is biodiverse, stagnant, lime-green sludge. If you jump off the high dive today and the fall doesn’t kill you, the brain-eating amoebas will.

Beneath the carport is a hand-carved wooden sign above the entrance: “Pro Shop.” Upon opening the door, you time-travel into a dimly lit room with plaid home furniture and vintage golf posters ornamenting the walls. To your immediate right is a box TV that has played the movie “Caddy Shack” on a loop for the last 40 years. Across the room is a plaque cementing all Hole-in-Oner’s in The Golf Course’s history. The most notable entry was my high school baseball assistant coach, who said the only thing better than his famous round of golf was his nude beach destination wedding. The list hasn’t been updated in a few years. To keep it relevant, new hot shots write their names on sticky notes and ceremoniously slap them on the board.

The whole operation is run by a 200-year-old woman named Butch-Anne. A tough old bird, she chain-smokes Pall Mall Lights, wears glasses three inches thick, and hates my buddy Ethan (don’t ask). Butch-Anne has owned and operated The Golf Course since 1982. She got the land from a 99-year lease with the county, and I’m willing to bet she’ll be ready to resign in 2081.

I found out Butch-Anne lived in the clubhouse during a conversation with a family friend, who happened to be a member of The Golf Course. It’s not uncommon to find Butch-Anne’s toothpaste and brush in the ladies’ locker room. Over the past five years, I have built a pretty good rapport with her through chit-chat and buying peanut butter crackers from her. Word to the wise, Butch-Anne only takes cash and doesn’t know “what the hell a Venmo is.”

It’s hard not to think back to the good ol’ days at The Golf Course. Back when the pool was full (and blue). I’ve been told by my grandpa that Butch-Anne had one of the best dinner specials in the county: Friday night prime rib and salad. In its heyday, the course was the county’s hot spot. My parents had their third date there. The date lives in Croley family infamy. After the meal, instead of a goodbye kiss, Mom ran over Dad’s foot in the parking lot. By accident, depending on who you ask.

The Golf Course only has nine holes, instead of the usual eighteen. Limited by geography, most courses in Southeastern Kentucky use land that has been leveled by high-wall coal mining. Unlike its contemporaries, The Golf Course was built on top of the foothills of Appalachia, providing a scenic but difficult round of golf. Very seldom is a player on level ground with their lie. Looking onto the fairway, you can see the rolling open links, framed by green giants casting shadows over the earth below them. This attachment to the natural topography of the course offers the golfer a deep appreciation for the land. It also means a lot of balls rolling off in unintended directions.

Any time it rains, before you take a cart out, Butch Anne will say, “Now you boys be careful on the sixth hole.” The hole is a standard par four, with quick greens. The fairway has a 90-degree drop: The elevation between the tee box is greater than the distance from the hole, as the golfer launches a ball into what I can only describe as a holler. In other words, you cannot see much of the fairway in front of you, and do not know who or what might be between you and the flag. This might be a safety issue, so a rusty bell has been placed near the tee box. Any would-be drivers are asked to first ring the bell to alert any unsuspecting golfers down the slope.

The shot itself is made for gamblers. The right drive can easily net the golfer a birdie; a sliced swing and you’re left searching for your ball in a dry creekbed full of copperheads.

The cart paths at The Golf Course are notoriously bad. Butch-Anne once described them to the Corbin News Journal as “rough as a cob.” The worst conditions, of course, are on the sixth hole. After teeing off, the descent down the green feels more like an old wooden roller coaster than a leisurely cruise. As you creep down the hill in your cart, both sides of the path are marked with signs in bright red ink of increasing urgency: First “EASE DOWN THE HILL,” then “SLOW CART,” and finally “BRAKE.” Typically, that last sign is too late.

The first time I played at The Golf Course, in 2021, I was 16. My introduction was the same as many in my hometown—sneaking in with a few buddies and a couple beers. Sneaking in was not difficult; the Golf Course is not invested in keeping anyone out, whether they’ve paid or not.

The night before we played, I dragged my dad’s dusty golf bag from our basement. He bought them sometime in the ’90s and hadn’t played a round with them since ’05. It was a sticky summer morning when our crew rolled into The Golf Course, and for the next four hours, we wacked, chunked, sliced, and laughed. When we weren’t golfing, my buddies and I took turns racing the vintage club cars around the pond on dusty, rocky, dirt roads—a rutted-out race track surrounded by three-foot weeds. Looking back, I’m thankful Butch-Anne never had to fish one of us out.

On the ninth hole, we gambled. The ninth hole is supposed to be the end of the course. We were done, but we didn’t want to be done. “Let’s run it back,” someone said. So we played the ninth hole again, and then another time. Butch-Anne, if she noticed, didn’t seem to mind. We played that hole until we all broke even on our bets. The course was far from perfect, but it was ours.

With my newfound interest in golf, it was time to play with a golfing legend: my grandpa. When I asked him to come to The Golf Course, he gave me a funny look. “I haven’t been there in forty years,” he said. He’s a serious golfer. But he agreed to come join me in the weeds.

On a damp Saturday morning at The Golf Course, my grandpa and I were about to tee off on the seventh hole, standing in perfect view of the hill on the previous fairway, when we saw a golf cart cresting the top of the path. It had been raining all morning, and as it began its descent down the hill, it was obvious that the driver had not heeded Butch-Anne’s warnings.

The cart began to slide, skidding its bald tires on the wet asphalt. The tires locked up, and the lack of traction caused the driver to lose complete control as the cart lifted from the ground and violently settled with a loud crash. Due to our proximity and moral obligation, it was a 17-year-old and a 75-year-old to the rescue.

By the time we made it to the cart, a river of beer, balls, and glass had begun to cascade down the mountain as the drunk driver and his elementary-aged son climbed out of the overturned golf cart. The driver introduced himself as Doug. He was wearing cargo shorts and a camo hat and did not feel a thing. The kid was on the verge of tears and probably shat himself. I don’t blame him, he had three more holes with Doug! After we helped them flip their cart back over, Doug offered his only unshattered Bud Light up, but we declined, and finished the round without hearing any other collisions.

You won’t see The Golf Course on any serious golfer’s bucket list. It’s not a stop on big golf trips to places with sunshine and cart girls. It doesn’t have perfectly manicured greens or a strict dress code. There are no sand traps, only craters where the sand traps used to be.

When I told my dad I was writing a story about the course, he reminded me about how strict their policy was: “The only rule is you have to keep your shirt on for the first and last holes.”

Herein lies the beauty of the only golf course in Whitley County. To play, you don’t need a membership, you don’t need high-dollar clubs, you barely need a golf shirt. Hell, the only thing you need is tick spray. But there is something special about it. Over the last 44 years at the Golf Course, Butch-Anne and her loyal patrons have grown the game in the place I call home, Southeastern Kentucky. (It hasn’t always been easy; Butch-Anne told the Corbin News Journal, “I used to think farming was hard work, but that was before I had a golf course.”)

In a sport that has been dominated by the opulent, they created a space that is open to anyone. The Golf Course accepts all. They accept Doug and they accept me.

“Golf is something that you can do with anyone,” Butch-Anne said.

Only in Whitley County. If I could only play one course for the rest of my life, I know what I’m choosing.

It was a dark and snowy night. One of those nights where the air around you feels like freedom and suffocation at the same time. When the point of an icicle catches the light just right, when the fading streetlamps turn the concrete golden. When you’re just drunk enough on joy that even standing in the cold crisp air is exhilarating.

You shuffle through the snow and remember why you fell for this university. This utopia within a cruel city. You love the life of it, its sights and sounds and smells, the unadulterated whimsy, the scholarly necks bowed to the grindstone.

It was one of those nights when you chase small comforts.

Like building a snowman.

—

Clive. The case froze me to my core. He was built with love, and then maliciously undone.

A knock on the door. It came late in the evening. A distraught dame, a Miss Buck, with a harrowing  tale.

I lit a cigarette. “What’s the trouble, doll?”

“My son,” she whispered. “They killed my son and you gotta help me.”

Her words bled together. I offered her a cigarette. She took it.

From what I gathered, he was constructed meticulously, pieced together to be a pint-sized prodigy with a dapper top hat and gloves.

“I was his mother,” she told me. “Call it what you will, but that’s the truth. Even wrote a kind of birth certificate and hung it on his neck. That night, all of us took pride in our  frosted fingertips, our red noses, our dry eyes. They were testaments to our hard work.” 

The words stopped suddenly. She sighed and put out her cigarette.  

“Hard work,” she said, now crying as she spoke. “So easily undone.”

“What happened?”

“We went inside for warm beverages and blankets,” she told me.

Thirty minutes passed. The phone rang. He was dead.

The crime was uncovered by an unsuspecting stoolie at Dalton-Voigt Residence Hall. It was confirmed with one fateful phone call.

A snowman left headless, limbless, and helpless.

After the initial dastardly crime, the family came together and tried to revive their loved one. To scaffold his body back to its former glory before he was taken to cold storage. It worked. They built him just as before. Clive lived again. They returned once more to the warmth of Dalton-Voigt. 

Thirty more minutes passed. A glance out the window.

A streak of white powder on the ground.

—

This case wore me to a frazzle. It was agonizing to unravel and damn sickening to look back on. It was the worst kind of wicked. A kind of cruelty that forces you to spin on your barstool, pie-eyed from whiskey, and think: What could make a person so malicious?

Miss Buck connected me with Julian Pies, father of the victim. I met him in the shadows of the dormitories when daylight had almost died.

“Clive was a son to all of us,” he told me. “We built him with our bare hands with love and joy in our hearts. To see his body desecrated twice…” He seethed quietly. His words saturated with sadness and anger for the bitter injustice. The man was a shell. The worst case of mean reds I’d seen this winter. 

But grief ain’t a clue. There were still no stray hairs for even a wet-eared gumshoe to follow. 

“Bringing Clive into the world was a nice break from hours in the library… I got to go out with my friends and bring our beautiful boy into the world.”

The man broke down. I offered him a cigarette. He took it.

“Clive was a kind soul,” Mr. Pies said, now agitated. “He would not want a witch hunt… I’m not sure I could live up to Clive’s ideal of the world, but I can’t say I have no words for monsters like that.”

This didn’t help my case.

I spoke again to Miss Buck. Her face was grave.

She offered me a cigarette. I took it.

“I put his face together,” she said. “I gave him a face and a mouth. We were on good terms. We didn’t have problems.” 

I asked Miss Buck if Clive had any enemies.

“Frat boys took photos with him,” she told me. “They were so joyous and jolly, so I didn’t think they could have done it. Now, we think it was one of the rotten ones. There’s talk that someone saw a perp like that kill him and run into Bassett.” 

Was this the lead I needed? Her speculation proved intriguing, but my investigation could leave no loose ends. “It appeared like they killed him by kicking,” continued Miss Buck. “We were able to reanimate his corpse… Those people are a bunch of Grinches, they kill our children, there is no soul in their eyes, and they need to drink hot chocolate to cure their ailments.” 

Any human being would want justice. Justice must be served. 

But it is best served ice-cold. 

You try to shed a little light on things, but all light casts a shadow. To believe in a truly just world is to be at least a little unjust yourself. Real justice isn’t dirty; the people are. Dirty like footprints in snow.

There were no footprints.

—

Clive was built of snow. But not just snow. The naive joy of holiday spirit, fleeting and fragile, demanded that he be so. Held together by a family that surpassed blood relations and the temporary elation of a new life.

It’s moments like this that are all you can stand. The moment you realize that this world isn’t for you. That you’re just as tainted as everyone else, that you belong on the streets you’ve loved so long and still hate so passionately. Clive did not deserve his dual fates, yet such was the hand he was dealt.

The family wanted some kind of self-defense for their son. “We would like to rebuild Clive bigger and better, rounder, taller,” Miss Buck said “We plan to put a solid object inside of him so that they pay if they try to kill him again.” If there is a next time.

In the campus tabloids, the reaction was mixed, and some got nasty. Some students were sympathetic, telling off the old bags for bumping their gums. 

It may be too cold a thought, but all that chatter may have been nothing more than a way to break the crushing monotony of impending exams.

It didn’t help my case. Nothing did. Hatchets get buried on this campus, like remains in a tomb.

Then some damn ink-slinger took the leash on the presses and ran rampant. Photos of the killing wound up in the slicks. Graphic ones.

Taunting messages that threw accusations everywhere, but led me nowhere.

—

In the weeks that followed, I caught wind of a trail I could actually follow. A new canary came forward. 

Grasping for any scrap of information, I questioned them further on their recollection, but I had hit the bricks. I was walking a blind alley with this case already. The shadows of the evening and the swiftness of the heinous act made this an impossible case. I’ve hit a brick wall. My only clue was maybe the perp had a familial tie to my informant. Turns out that damn canary was crooked. 

But how to prove it? That road came to a dead end, and there was no more said. 

The search continues. No suspects. No leads. The case, like the night Clive was born, has gone cold.  We have only the untrustworthy yaps of an anonymous stranger and a photo of the dead. 

Following the original dual homicide, supporters strove to keep Clive’s memory alive. Small snowpeople began to appear on steps and benches throughout the sympathetic dormitories. 

But none of it could bring him back. 

You gotta admit your own defeat, and you gotta tell the dame, too. You may even stop taking the words of a damn fink on cases like this.

And so I stopped. One evening, I knew the case was cold for good. It was one of those nights when you slump on the floor of your flat, still broken and alone, knowing that all you’ve gained from this case is cold-cracked knuckles and a few more regrets. 

There had been a second of possible clarity. There had been a fleeting moment in which one could be convinced of consolation. One could catch a glimpse of humanity. One could be convinced that their childhood naivety was right. Maybe some people can be good.

But those moments never last, and they never will.

You remember the world was too cruel for Clive, who was taken too soon. When you remember he’s doomed to sleep forever on the battered ground, sticks shattered, and name tag snapped, with nowhere better to call home. 

But Clive’s loving parents, so world-weary and desperate for justice, are forced to wait for the next snowfall. They are resolved to pull up their bootstraps and don their gloves. To rebuild the snowman. But when they do, what then? Nowhere to go and nothing to do but wait for the next trouble to take their son once again.

But we rebuild and wait, rebuild and wait, in a never-ending cycle. Because it’s not much of a life…but at least it’s living.

I love race cars. It’s not a secret: I have racing-themed water bottles, bags, baseball caps, shirts, and jewelry. When I sleep, 21 drivers and cars watch over me.

My name is Hope Riester. I’m a junior, a physics major, and I grew up in Northern Virginia. I love racing. F1, F2, F1 Academy, WEC, IMSA, NASCAR, ARCA, Australian Supercars. Four wheels? I’m in. 

But the series I love most of all, the one I call “my wife,” is IndyCar. I grew up rolling my eyes at the races on the TV every Sunday. My dad loved them, and I thought it was boring. But sometime during my first Indy 500 in 2018, at age 12, I woke up from a 40-lap-long nap and—something happened. I was hooked.

I didn’t even acknowledge it until my senior year of high school. Now, I have a shared calendar with my dad and older sister. It has every IndyCar practice, qualifying, and warmup session, as well as every race. It has the whole F1, F2, and IndyNXT schedule, the schedule for the 24 hours of Le Mans, the 12 hours of Sebring, and the next five NASCAR races. If you quiz me, I can name the entire IndyCar grid for the year. I can give you statistics about the Indy500 in my sleep. I have a 76-slide presentation about IndyCar. Last time I gave it, it was two hours long. My best friends refuse to hear it. 

But racing doesn’t always make me happy. Like many other sports, the fanbase, athletes, and teams are mostly men. Motorsports are notoriously conservative. When you think of a NASCAR fan, who do you think of? I can already picture the picture in your mind: Dixie tattoos, bandana, MAGA hat, Supercuts mullet. Never heard of sunscreen, “Let’s go Brandon” bumper stickers, sipping on a light beer from whatever company isn’t being endorsed by a transgender person. 

In 2020, NASCAR banned the Confederate flag, to loud backlash from many fans. Historically, NASCAR has explicitly aligned itself with conservative politicians and causes. When the infamous segregationist George Wallace was running for president, the founder of NASCAR, Bill France Sr., served as his campaign manager. His son, and current CEO of NASCAR, Jim, has donated more than $30,000 to conservative causes in the past 12 months, according to the Federal Elections Commission.

It’s not just NASCAR, though. IndyCar, my favorite racing series, is just as conservative, if not moreso. Billionaire and owner of the series Roger Penske has donated more than $800,000 to Republican groups this past year. During the 2024 election cycle, he donated $1.1 million to Donald Trump’s SuperPAC. In 2019, Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The people who profit off my viewership are using those profits for causes that harm me, my family, my friends, and countless others. Not ideal. But I can deal. I can donate to causes I do support, including organizations interested in inviting more women, queer people, and people of color into motorsports. 

I don’t know. I’m still thinking it through? But there is nothing inherently political about IndyCar. Cars don’t vote. 

Even if I wince at terrible statements by the owners (and, yes, sometimes the fans), there is still so much I can’t resist: The rumble of twin-turbocharged V-6 engines; the grunt from the sweaty man standing way too close to me when a driver makes a particularly daring save; the connection between current and former drivers, fans, and sponsors. I love the deep respect IndyCar has for its history, and its passion for the future. I love going to races, the smell of burnt tire rubber, the sun beating down on me, knowing I’m going to be sunburnt to hell. I love the stories of failure and resilience, I love the incredible skill that drivers have, I love the way that the community can band together in times of sorrow and grief. I love my group of friends who react to IndyCar news with unintelligible inside jokes. I love the race. Something in me just resonates at 235 miles per hour. It’s why I major in physics. I like when things go fast, and some day I’d like to help them go faster. 

—

But two months ago, IndyCar did something that I still don’t know how to react to. You probably didn’t hear about it—it happened on the same day a new batch of Epstein files were released. Also, no one cares about IndyCar. 

This year, as part of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, an extra race has been added to the IndyCar calendar. On August 23, IndyCars will race on the National Mall, as part of the Freedom 250. The President signed an executive order to make it happen. The Department of the Interior is going to pay for it.

This should be perfect for me. I’ve been saying for years that IndyCar needs to expand its market to the East Coast, especially the Mid-Atlantic or New England. The race is going to be 12 miles from my house! Free general admission, too. And it will be promoted by Monumental Sports, who own the Washington Capitals, my favorite hockey team (yes, I’m into hockey, too). I should be elated.

But this event infuriates me. Before even getting to the political implications, it’s a logistical nightmare. IndyCar initially released its 2026 schedule in September, without a D.C. race. August was already grueling: an Aug. 9 race in Portland, Oregon, followed by a race near Toronto the next weekend, a two-race weekend in Milwaukee on Aug. 29 and 30, and then the season finale in central California on Sept. 6. Now there’s no more weekend off after Toronto; adding the new Freedom 250 race in D.C. makes six races in five weeks. 

Team members will have to go back and forth across the continent and between time zones. Truck drivers will have to drag team haulers thousands of miles. Engineers will have very little time to make adjustments and improvements to the car before getting right back on track, with, at most, two days at the shop before getting right back on the road. And on a race weekend, team members are working at least nine hours outside for three days straight, usually in grueling heat. As a fan, this means teams will be sloppier and make more silly mistakes. More silly mistakes means less good racing.

Washington, D.C. could be an amazing location for an IndyCar race. But doing this on such short notice (with a federal administration that has been marked by chaos and incompetence from the moment Trump was sworn in for his second term) could be a recipe for disaster. To host an event in our nation’s capitol, a multitude of governmental and non-governmental entities have to work together to put on an event of this scale. Any miscommunication could lead to monumental issues. Everyone involved must be meticulous; it’s hard to feel confident given the current massive budget shortfalls and chronic understaffing. 

There’s another danger that makes me worried given the lack of preparation time. Sounds at certain intensities and frequencies can pose a threat to the structural integrity of older buildings (at the temporary track in St. Petersburg, Florida, for example, the Dali Museum near turn 10 is rattled by the cars passing by). The section of the National Mall where the circuit will be is mostly surrounded by old buildings and sculpture gardens; the National Archives building is surrounded on three sides by the temporary track and is more than 90 years old. 

Then there’s D.C.’s climate, considered “humid subtropical,” which could be trouble in a race scheduled for August. Over the past few years, D.C. summers have been getting hotter and more humid, with the number of extreme humidity days rising significantly. This kind of weather can be dangerous for anyone, but especially drivers, who get very little airflow in the cockpit of an IndyCar, and are using significant amounts of energy in their cars. But there’s more. The weather in the area can be temperamental at best, but August is the height of hurricane season. During this time of year, severe thunderstorm warnings happen multiple times a week. It’s not unlikely for practice sessions or qualifying to be rained out, or for the race to be significantly delayed.

Even if there isn’t severe enough rain to red flag and stop the race, it could be run under the cautionary yellow flag. In this case, cars aren’t allowed to pass each other on track and have to run at a specific speed, behind a pace car. If it rains hard enough, are they going to run the whole race under yellow? That’s not what fans come for.

—

I’ve known for a long time that this is a conservative sport. I have gone to races and cheered for drivers anyway, because I believe that all sports can cultivate community. My experiences as a near-D.C. native have shown me that politics don’t have to limit human connection. However, pushing a race through executive order is different. 

The political division in this country over the past few years has made it exceedingly difficult for me to put aside my differences with people who support the current presidential administration. My struggle comes from the past year’s deportation policies, Medicaid cuts, the dismantling of the D.O.E., invading countries for no reason and…the list goes on. 

D.C. has been hit especially hard over the past 15 months of this administration, because it’s a federal district, and much of its economy and the metro area relies on the federal government. Mass budget cuts and sudden layoffs have left people struggling to make ends meet. Month-long shutdowns have left employees at home or working without pay, impacting them and every business that relies on federal workers. ICE has been kidnapping people off the streets since before protests erupted in LA and Michigan. The National Guard has been occupying the city since July and have blocked kids returning home from school from entering Union Station after getting off the Metro station.

And while all this is going on, D.C. residents still have little power in the democratic system, despite their population being larger than the state of Vermont or Wyoming. If you had an eighth grade field trip to D.C. (you probably did), you may have noticed that their license plates say “taxation without representation.” That is because D.C. has one representative in congress and she is not allowed to vote on any resolutions.

D.C. residents have been fighting. But without elected leaders with the power or media coverage, it’s incredibly hard to fight back with the same pressure as other cities. Plus, people here are tired. They’ve been living as political bargaining chips for a long time, subject to the control of individuals who do not actually live in their city or participate in their culture. 

So, yes, I love racing, but I am furious about this race. It’s being held because of an edict from a leader who seems to have genuine contempt for the city I love, and as a result, the residents of that city are going to have contempt for the sport that I love. This will feel the same as the military parade to them: a busy portion of the city inaccessible for several days just so that loud machines can disrupt their streets. 

The goal of a race like this is to bring in more fans and draw more interest to the sport. This will be a “street race”: instead of a permanent track, the race will be held on actual downtown streets, right in the middle of one of the most recognizable urban cores in the world. That has undeniable appeal! But making this entire spectacle yet another half-baked effort by Trump to bring glory upon himself could alienate potential new fans—especially if the fans who do show up are the sort likely to create a hostile environment for fans like me. 

For years, IndyCar has been trying to figure out how to grow its fan base. After some disastrous decisions in the late ‘90s, when the league literally split in two, the sport has been slowly climbing its way back to relevance. 

Interest in motorsports has been booming the past five years, and now is the time for IndyCar to capitalize. But that means finding ways to keep the interest of a new kind of fan. According to a survey conducted by F1 and Motorsport Network, women account for three quarters of new F1 fans; half of Gen Z respondents to the survey were women.

These are the same fans who can be brought to a more competitive series like IndyCar. Races often feature more daring passes or saves than FI races. IndyCar is also more economically accessible, as the average single day ticket is almost 90% cheaper than the average FI single day ticket. A recent study showed that women sports fans make 85% of their household purchasing decisions, which means that not only are they a relatively untapped demographic, they’re also a highly profitable fanbase.

But Gen Z women are also overwhelmingly progressive. According to an NBC survey conducted in September, only 26% of Gen Z women approved of Donald Trump’s job performance. Overall, 36% of Gen Z men and women approved of his performance in September. According to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted in February, that overall number has dropped to 25%. Young fans can energize this sport. What will they think when a marquee event for IndyCar is lorded over by Donald Trump (and given the nationalized politics inherent to D.C., will likely have a highly partisan atmosphere). 

I wish I could say I was excited to attend this race, but it’s unlikely I’ll even tune in. I don’t think I’ll be able to get past the anger and hurt that my favorite series is doing something so antithetical to why I am a fan at all: human connection, ingenious engineering, and fun races. 

I live in the “White House.” Not the one you’re thinking of, it’s what me and my three best friends call the place we live together (the house isn’t white; long story). ) My roommates and I are all very liberal, and we spend a lot of time discussing current events. I usually serve as fact-checker/historian. 

I have also spent the past two years trying to get them—and everyone else I know—to watch IndyCar. Now, I’m not sure to approach that. How can I sell something to my friends that has caused so much internal conflict? How can I answer their well-founded skepticism with optimism? 

My dream, as a fan, is to be able to share IndyCar with my friends without worrying about what the series might do next. I want to be able to show the thing I love off, and not feel like I have to hide a dirty little secret. I want them to feel a little bit of what I feel when I see Danny Sullivan’s ‘Spin and Win’ in the 1985 Indy 500, the whole paddock standing outside to watch the tornado at Iowa Speedway last year, Dennis Hauger driving backwards at Phoenix Raceway this year, Josef Newgarden’s pass for the win on Pato O’Ward on the last turn of the last lap of the 2024 Indy 500, Scott Dixon making fuel out of thin air. I’ll just have to hope they can see that part of racing—the part that can be for everyone—even as the sport seems more and more determined to pander to people who don’t want anything to do with people like us. 

The documentary Resistance in the Redline, which played on Jan. 22 in Carrick Theater, discusses themes of racism, housing, gentrification—and the intertwined ways they contributed to redlining in Lexington.

Redlining refers to the discriminatory practice of denying financial services to a particular community. The term was first coined in the 1960s, but the practice dates back to the 1930s, when a federal agency created color-coded maps for almost every major city in the U.S. They drew red lines around communities that were considered “undesirable,” predominately Black neighborhoods, and green lines around ones that they considered to be the most worthy of investment; yellow and blue fell in between these two extremes.

Black Yarn, which produced Resistance in the Redline, is a nonprofit organization based in Lexington committed to bringing light to the systematic harms that the Black community faces. In addition to film production, the group also conducts research, creates podcasts and short videos, and organizes community events. 

Resistance in the Redline presents more than 30 interviews with members of the Lexington community who have either been affected by redlining, have seen the effects of it, or have researched and examined redlining.

These first-hand accounts from Lexingtonians are what bring the film to life. Bill Wilson, for example, recounts his childhood view of larger, newer houses belonging to white people, while Black people lived in smaller houses. He asked his father about seeing a brand new house in their neighborhood that he says “look[ed] like a white person’s house.” His father explained to him that “Black people normally weren’t building houses or living in houses like that; that person was very, very lucky.” 

Adrienne Thakur tells a story of her mother’s parents buying their first home, which stayed in the family for over 60 years. Her mother, then in second grade, was excited, but Thakur’s grandfather told her mother: “there probably wouldn’t be any more birthdays and there wouldn’t be any more Christmas because it was going to take everything they had to own this home.”

Wilson and Thakur lived in the very same city as people in Lexington who look like most Transy students—white people. But as the film’s narrator puts it, because of inequitable and racist systems, “shared spaces don’t always equal shared experiences.” 

The Home Owner’s Loan Corporation, a federal agency originating from the New Deal, gave birth to redlining through the creation of their color-coded maps. Their ratings, ostensibly designed to evaluate investment risk, affected how resources were allocated to each district. Because of the ratings, people living in green or blue (more desirable) areas were more likely to have access to lines of credit, health care, internet, and education than those living in yellow or red (less desirable) zones. 

Today, well after the Fair Housing Act of 1968 made discrimination in housing illegal, the impacts persist. An average white family living in Kentucky has 30 times the wealth of a typical Black family. The average person living in Chevy Chase has a life expectancy 16 years higher than a person living on the north side of town. White people make up 61% of Lexington homeowners while only 33% are Black people. 

The imbalance of wealth is due in part to the decades of Black people being denied home loans, and the continued inequity of the mortgage process, with Black people having a higher likelihood of being denied home loans than white people. 

“We think of the words in the Declaration of Independence,” says Regina Lewis, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kentucky Martin School of Public Policy and Administration, toward the beginning of the film. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ However, all has never, in our history, included the all.”

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To capture the complexities of racism in housing that still exists to this day, the film  describes the “three R’s:” redlining, racially restrictive covenants, and real estate steering.

Racially restrictive covenants were written into deeds to prohibit property from being sold to people of a certain race, and real estate steering refers to realtors showing certain houses to people of certain races. Both of these practices, along with redlining, are illegal now—but the mortgage industry continues to artificially inflate the value of predominantly white neighborhoods. The median home value in Ashland Park, a predominately white Lexington neighborhood, is $504,100, while the neighborhoods along Georgetown Street, a predominately Black area, have a median home value of $74,800. 

Someone living around Georgetown Street can get an education, work hard, and save up to buy a home. But the equity of their new home wouldn’t increase as much as it would if they lived in a formerly green-lined community, because local governments continuously fail to invest resources into their schools, health care, road maintenance, and other services that increase home value. 

The film also traces the roots of inequity much further back than postwar redlining. After the Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved people were freed without resources, grants, land, or loans. They didn’t have the opportunity to succeed or grow wealth. They were set up for failure, and it continued for decades after emancipation. 

Art Crosby, the executive director of the Kentucky Fair Housing Council, compares it to a game of Monopoly in which some players have been acquiring property through many rounds of play. “Then a new person comes in and says, ‘Okay, I want to play now,’” Crosby says. “It’s really easy to say the rules are the same [for everyone].” But the history of oppression means that some players are starting the game behind. 

The film then explains how the city of Lexington executed a plan of redlining beginning in the 1920s. 

Derrick White, professor of History, African and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky, tells the story of soldiers receiving financial benefits from the federal government after they returned from World War II. Benefits included access to education and lower interest rates for home loans. 

During the postwar Baby Boom, the number of suburbs in Lexington grew. Deeds either stated that these houses were only for white people or explicitly excluded Black people. While Black soldiers received benefits from the G.I. Bill, they were unable to use them in the same ways that white soldiers could.

Beginning in the 1930s, federal housing authorities funded Lexington’s first public housing project, which was segregated. Aspendale, all-black development, was separated by an eight-foot-tall, three-hundred-yard, chainlink fence from Bluegrass, an all-white development. The fence came down in 1974 and the desegregated community became known as Bluegrass-Aspendale until its demolition in the early 2000s.

In the film, Jamari Turner recounts her experience growing up in Bluegrass-Aspendale saying that there was a strong sense of community. Kids were always playing outside, she recalls; everyone knew each other, and there weren’t major conflicts among neighbors. Few of the Bluegrass-Aspendale homes that were demolished between 2002 and 2006 were replaced with genuinely affordable housing, leaving these residents with limited options once the community Turner describes was gone. 

What happened to Bluegrass-Aspendale fits a pattern of displacement of Black families without giving them reasonable alternatives. The thriving, predominantly Black neighborhood Adamstown was destroyed and replaced with the University of Kentucky’s Memorial Coliseum in 1950.. Residents of Adamstown were forced to uproot from their homes for an arena and parking at a university that had zero Black students at the time.

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Despite these setbacks, Black Lexingtonians built a strong middle class within their neighborhoods. After the Civil War, resilient Black communities began to form in Lexington, mainly in undesirable locations: near the railroad, flood zones, and the city jail. 

Regardless of the challenges they faced, the Black population of Lexington doubled between 1860 and 1870. Black communities built their own economies, schools, and churches. Some of their developments are still visible in Lexington today, but others were erased as leaders prioritized urban development over the preservation of existing communities. 

Chester Grundy, another Lexingtonian featured in the film, was one of only 60 Black students out of the University of Kentucky’s student body of 16,000 when he attended during the 1960s. To combat the feeling of unbelonging, he and other Black students frequented churches, clubs, and the Lyric Theater to find connection. In the film, he explains that they wanted to make UK more welcoming for future Black students.

In one bracing moment in the film, P.G. Peeples, president of the Urban League of Lexington-Fayette County, describes feeling blessed that his experiences growing up in Lexington benefited from the work done by prior activists in the community—even though many obstacles remained. “It still was tough times,” he says. “But we said, ‘bring it on.’” 

For decades, Lexington turned a blind eye to the horrors of slavery and the various forms of legal and extralegal discrimination that followed. Resistance in the Redline highlights progress made in recent years by various activists and institutions in Lexington. Tandy Park now hosts seasonal farmers’ markets downtown; in 2018, the city finally erected a sign to explain that the park once hosted slave auctions. 

The aftermath of redlining continues to harm Black Lexingtonians, but there are other signs that the city is at least beginning to reckon with its ugly past. During the Civil Rights movement the Lexington Herald avoided covering the protests, reportedly because the paper’s management believed it would reflect poorly on the city. In 2004, the same newspaper released a series of stories about this lack of coverage. 

Films like Resistance in the Redline are essential to bringing light to the challenges that Black people still face today—and to educating our community about the root causes embedded in the histories of cities like Lexington. With the work of city leaders and organizations like Black Yarn, we can take the first steps of learning our history so that we can avoid repeating problems of the past. 

As Transy students we might make our own lasting roots here, or we may just be passing through for college. But at least for now, this is our home. And it’s up to all of us to work together to reckon with this history, so that we can imagine a new future: a community for all.

You’ve made it through 36 credits, dotted your i’s on your capstone. Writing intensive? Check. Upper level pairs? Check.

But a liberal arts education is not defined by bureaucratic details. To truly be a bat, there are certain things you just have to do in your four years at Transy. If you know, you know. But what if you don’t know? The Rambler is here to help.

Here are the 125 things you absolutely must do before you graduate. Seniors, better hurry if your checklist has holes. Freshman, get started now. Fly, Pios, fly!

▢ 1. Foolishly do a GE in May Term and ruin Play Term.
▢ 2. Get an overdue notice for a library book you forgot checking out back when you pledged to “read more.” 
▢ 3. Do the “Liberal Arts 360” while gossiping at Third Street Stuff.
▢ 4.  Have a conversation with Dr. Paden in Spanish even though you don’t speak Spanish.
▢ 5. Argue with your friends about whether or not a professor is hot.
▢ 6. Cry during sorority recruitment week (or witness someone crying). 
▢ 7. Get your initials posted on YikYak. 
▢ 8. Challenge Carole Barnsley to a game of pickleball. 
▢ 9. Give a holiday card to a Caf staffer. 
▢ 10. Carve a pumpkin for Pumpkinmania that leads a family member to say it’s a good thing you aren’t an art major.

▢ 11. Receive two noise complaints at once because your RA forgot to file the first one.
▢ 12. Go to a professor’s office hours unannounced; overshare. 
▢ 13. Write a CARE report about your friend instead of telling them directly. 
▢ 14. Write a CARE report on yourself just to skip the line and get a therapy appointment (pro tip!).
▢ 15. Come within inches of death crossing Broadway. 
BONUS POINTS: Get hit by a car; survive. 
▢ 16. Match on Tinder with a classmate and then never address it.  
▢ 17. Get your ID taken at McCarthy’s.
▢ 18. Get strep throat more than three times in one year.
BONUS POINTS: You have never had strep before college. 
▢ 19. Have Scott Whiddon conclude a conversation with, “Can I be honest with you right now? I loved this. This was the best part of my day.”
▢ 20. Chat with the Flat Earth activist.

▢ 21. Explain that Transylvania University is a real school. In Kentucky, not Romania.
▢ 22. Throw up at a frat party but like in a really cool nonchalant chill way. 
▢ 23. Throw up at a frat party but it’s really bad and a brother has to drive you back to your dorm. 
▢ 24. See your professor at a bar and play it cool. 
▢ 25. Eat fresh bread baked by Kurt Gohde. 
▢ 26. Gently place a DPS parking ticket in the trash and give it over to God. 
▢ 27. Slip into the elevator with randoms clearly in the middle of a heated conversation because you left your key in your room. 
▢ 28. Have sex in a chapter room.
▢ 29. Cut in line at SAB’s Brinner.
▢ 30. Receive an email reply from Maurice Manning. 
▢ 31. Get blacklisted from a frat.
BONUS POINTS: Get blacklisted from a sorority.
▢ 32. Say you’ll never date another Transy person. Date another Transy person.
▢ 33. Speak with Kerri Hauman about a problem and immediately feel a warm balm of relief. 
(Kerri Hauman is mother. So mother.)
▢ 34. Have a friend drive you to get tested for an STD. 
▢ 35. Be serenaded with “Happy Birthday” by Ms. Beth. 
▢ 36. Go to a darty instead of Zoom classes on a snow day.
▢ 37. Steal someone’s Crimmy.
▢ 38. Visit the Monroe Moosnick Medical and Science Museum in BSC (where Ozzy Osborne once filmed for his reality show), and see a 14-inch hair ball given to the university by Abraham Lincoln’s brother-in-law. 
▢ 39. Regret last night.
▢ 40. Shuffle between the baseball team’s tables at Caf to put your dishes away.
▢ 41. Experience Hazelrigg.

▢ 42. Lose it all at Keeneland.
▢ 42(0). DoorDash four Jimmy John’s subs high and forget about them until the next morning.
▢ 43. Have a love affair at Transy, get fired for your misbehavior, go mad, fall into obscurity and poverty, die alone, get buried in a potter’s
field, have some portion of your remains dug up a century later, mix said remains with a young girl child’s shoulder, and live out
eternity as a stop on Transy’s campus tour. It’s not too late. 
▢ 44. Shoot filthy looks towards your friend’s horrible ex when you have a class together.
▢ 45. Hit your head walking into the Phi Tau basement.
BONUS POINTS: Fall going down their “macbook wide” stairs.
▢ 46. Twerk in the general vicinity of a professor during Pride. 
▢ 47. Roll your eyes at “performative male” behavior. 
▢ 48. Lowkey wish you were wearing Olivia Fleming’s outfit. 
▢ 49. Grow a mustache?

▢ 50. Witness Eva Csuhai dissecting the failings of men, including her ex-husband (“the coffee cup does not walk its way to the sink and wash itself”). 
▢ 51. Survive Pizzapocalypse. 
▢ 52. Wait in line at Gratz only to hear, “sorry, the machine is broken.” 
▢ 53. Join three or more clubs’ GroupMe chats, never attend a meeting.
▢ 54. Change your major AT LEAST once.
BONUS POINTS: You change it after taking the first prerequisite.
▢ 55. Dance with the performers at the Transy Drag Show. 
▢ 56. Take Kremena Todorova’s Writing for Writing’s Sake May Term class and become obsessed with going to Kenwick Table, hoping you
run into her.
▢ 57. Struggle to print. 
▢ 58. Attend an Orientation event hungover.
▢ 59. Make a Freshman Year Friend Group that ultimately falls apart. 
▢ 60. Go see a band at The Burl, tell everyone that it’s your new spot, never go back. 
▢ 61. Steal just a little bit of toothpaste from your roommate, because you ran out.
▢ 62. Suddenly notice whoever’s on aux in Caf is feeling emo today. 
▢ 63. “Sniff test” a piece of clothing before running to class late.
▢ 64. Get an alert that your account balance is in the red after your Spring Break trip.
BONUS POINTS: Happens during your Spring Break trip.  
▢ 65. Endure a middle-of-the-night fire alarm.
▢ 66. Discover you can swap coleslaw for an extra Texas Toast on your Canes order. 
▢ 67. Meet Olive, Ellen Furlong’s dog. 
▢ 68. Have your car get broken into in the Bourbon lot.

▢ 69. Bang on your ceiling to tell your upstairs neighbors to quit fucking so loud.
▢ 70. Pie a Phi, Chi, Tri, or Pi, or get pied.
▢ 71. Manically refresh your email in the hopes they’ll call a Snow Day (they won’t). 
▢ 72. Pay off the ref in an intramural basketball game. 
▢ 73. Watch people flirt on the Transy Discord before you’ve even started Orientation. 
▢ 74. Get lost in Old Morrison. As a senior. 
▢ 75. Light all manner of illicit candles in your dorm.
▢ 76. Make a shot book page even though you have no idea what a shot book is.
▢ 77. Trash talk Centre.

▢ 78. Buy beer with your Transy refund check.
▢ 79. Get called “baby” by Miss Cass in Caf <3.
▢ 80. Cut or dye your hair in the dorms.
BONUS POINTS: You’re a girl doing the Canon Event Big Chop.
▢ 81. Fuck up a chem lab so bad you cry.
▢ 82. Bask in the sun on Alumni Plaza on a spring day and do nothing at all. 
▢ 83. Submit multiple papers at 11:59.
▢ 84. Walk out of the campus center into back circle to see children in speedos doing high knees and crabwalks. 
▢ 85. Give yourself a hickey and convince your friend it’s from someone else.
▢ 86. Sit awkwardly and feel old while a campus tour walks by.
▢ 87. “Shut up, Frank!”
▢ 88. Watch someone do the walk of shame through Back Circle.
BONUS POINTS: It’s you.
▢ 89. Find your laundry littered about the laundry room because they were in the dryer for five minutes.
▢ 90. Investigate the mysterious Pooletergeist glow in Poole Residence Center. 
▢ 91. Take the long way to avoid eye contact with someone you’re beefing with. 
▢ 92. Harbor a stray in your dorm without getting it ESA certified. 
▢ 93. Cook carrots five different ways or track your food intake for a week for Health and Wellness.
▢ 94. Open the UK transfer portal
▢ 95. Find your professor’s Facebook or Instagram. 
▢ 96. Attend a lacrosse game and wonder why the hell they are playing behind the goal. 
▢ 97. Instead of going to therapy, write about it for your Creative Nonfiction class. 
▢ 98. Get recruited for a sports team and quit, becoming a NARP by junior year.
▢ 99. Bust ass on ice.
▢ 100. Pick up a package in the mailroom and realize you requested the wrong work study.
▢ 101. Carve someone else’s initials into the wooden desks in the stacks.
▢ 102. Catch yourself singing “a pirate’s life for me” when you score a textbook on LibGen or Anna’s Archive.
▢ 103. Wear pajamas during finals to signal to everyone how stressed you are. 

▢ 104. Call DPS to let you into your dorm. 
BONUS POINTS: Ask them to unclog your toilet. 
▢ 105. Have a good cry early on in Winter Semester 
▢ 106. Go back home for dinner. 
▢ 107. Get invited to a professor’s book club.
▢ 108. Wake up to your roommate vomiting into a trash can while sitting on the commode. 
▢ 109. Nab hella food from the student pantry.
▢ 110. Pull an all-nighter in the MFA DArt Lab.
▢ 111. Use the same water bottle for an entire year without cleaning it. 
▢ 112. Play sand volleyball until it’s dark.
▢ 113. Do the macarena with President Brien Lewis. (If you can keep up.) (You can’t keep up.)
▢ 114. Grow apart, not on purpose, from your high school friends.
▢ 115. Screenshot your professor’s Zoom class and post the image on YikYak. 
▢ 116. Comfort your pre-med friend, sobbing, considering no-med.
▢ 117. Do each of the following at least once: Lexington Legends game, karaoke at Night Kitty, pool at the Green Lantern, ICB at Molly Brooke’s, get a Big Blue Weiner on Main.
▢ 118. Stay in Shearer past midnight.
BONUS POINTS: You have no artistic instincts but will finish that pottery or die trying.  
▢ 119. Go to CRU’s midnight pancakes because you haven’t found God yet but are very hungry. 
▢ 120. Hide your face so no one will see you’re tearing up at the chorus concert. 
▢ 121. Make bingo cards about your professors’ sayings and habits and have your classmates fill them out live during class.
▢ 122. Fall in love by complete accident.
▢ 123. Meet one of Zoe Strecker’s chickens. 
▢ 124. Write your last college paper.
▢ 125. Realize you lost the coin given during Orientation.