Alternative Facts of Brown: The definitive list

You’re probably aware at this point that the current administration has a weird relationship with facts and the truth in general. This was made explicit by the exaggerated statistics given by press secretary Sean Spicer, explained away as “alternative facts.”

In this spirit, we evaluated some of the Alternative Facts™ floating around campus. Here are some of the questionable truths that you may have passively accepted as fact, you sheep.

“The spicy with is a delicious sandwich.”

Anyone who claims this is true and is also not eight raccoons stacked on top of each other in a trench coat has clearly never eaten a spicy with sober. The spicy with is without a doubt the driest sandwich to grace Brown campus. Don’t try to say “They’re the Wendy’s reject patties!” to make them seem more valid. You’re only digging a deeper hole.

“Brown University is a safe campus.”

Yikes, where to begin? DPS really tries their best, but for god’s sake College Hill is a pretty unsafe place considering the average net worth of the surrounding area. As we all know, no one is dumber than rich white kids on their own. Someone got stabbed in the face twenty feet from me in the Metcalf parking lot in 2015. If you want to get robbed, spend a day walking down Meeting St with your phone out.

 “Living in Perkins is way better since its renovation.”

I don’t want to rag on my Perk peeps, but you know what they say in real estate: location, location, location. Living in the boonies of College Hill is bad enough, but the interior certainly strikes the human heart with despair. Even with the renovations, the rooms will always give off a little bit of a prison vibe.

“Untitled (Lamp/Bear) is a glorious, artistically enriching investment.”

Oh, please. That immense creature haunting Ruth Simmons Quad only makes my morning walk to class even more of a surreal nightmare. I wonder if the Corporation deliberately chose to spend five million dollars on the arts in a way that a solid majority of the school doesn’t care for.

“Fetty Wap and Mac Demarco were amazing headliners for Spring Weekend, way better than other Ivy spring festivals with Janelle Monáe or Chance the Rapper.”

Don’t get me wrong, 2016’s Spring Weekend wasn’t a bad time. All I’m saying is that Mac Demarco runs the risk of sticking a drum stick up his ass on stage, and Fetty’s performance didn’t exactly bring the house down as much as it made the drunk freshman fall on top of each other. (Tinashe cleanly scalped me though.)

“Brown students love going to sports games and cheering on our boys!”

First of all, you have to take a bus to the damn football stadium, so that keeps most of our lazy, hippy-dippy asses away. I’ve legitimately never met anyone on baseball or basketball or soccer outside of the parties at the sports houses themselves. Props to them for existing solely in the gym or in a drunken stupor.

“Brown’s campus diversity rivals that of the other Ivies.”

There’s an inherent hypocrisy in a private university that was literally built for white people by black slaves and that has a tradition of attracting people based on their existing privilege boasting diversity as one of its defining aspects.

There are plenty of non-white people, sure, but black students only make up 6.5% of the undergrad student body, whereas the US population is at least 13.3%. Check out this article on socioeconomic makeup at Brown. And don’t even get me started on the faculty diversity… wowza.

“Brown students are among the happiest in the nation.”

This isn’t entirely wrong: Brown definitely has certain core characteristics of inclusion and camaraderie that make campus environments much more open. But I have never seen a more anxious, depressed group of young adults.

I know three students who curate depression meme pages on Facebook or Instagram. Most Brown students in the heat of midterms are only happy when they tell someone they’re miserable and they receive a similar response.