This October, one mystery Friday is going to look a little bit different on campus. This week's WOCly Newsletter stated that the college’s storied “Mountain Day” has now been replaced with “Cigarette Day”. Thanks to Ben Oliver, WOC’s new director, students can celebrate a beautiful fall day in the proper fashion, by smoking an irresponsible amount of college-provided cigarettes.
Cigarette Day has been described as a “campus-wide celebration of the historic practice of smoking darts”. All campus rules surrounding smoking will be disbanded for the day. Staff and students alike are encouraged to light one up whenever they want to, wherever they want to. Williams Facilities staff are currently working overtime to disable all smoke detectors across campus in preparation for the first (hopefully) annual Cigarette Day.
Rather than the traditional pots and pans, WOC leadership will wake up first-years by blowing a mouthful of Marlboro smoke under each student’s door, so everyone can rise together in a fit of terrible hacking. Further, all students will have five packs of cigarettes placed in their mailboxes that morning.
The major way in which Cigarette Day will differ from Mountain Day is that classes will NOT be canceled. Instead, students will attend their regular class schedule, but each classroom will have 30 packs of Newports that the professor and their students will be required to chuff back before the class finishes. Doors MUST remain closed while cigarettes are lit.
We found WOC director Ben Oliver sweating profusely in the WOC equipment room and interviewed him to learn more about what prompted the switch to Cigarette Day this year.
“I said this in my Williams job interview, and I’ll say it to you: one of my biggest strengths is being in touch with the needs of the student body”. Oliver paused to wipe his forehead with an already damp microfiber cloth, “One of the first things I noticed about this place is how many cigarette butts were all over the ground. As a fiend, I get it. As an environmentalist, I do not get it.”
Before joining as WOC director, Oliver was COC director (Colgate Outing Club). Oliver explained that Cigarette Day was a major success at Colgate, “Once the school encouraged those kids to just carelessly rip em’ wherever all day, the cigarette butts on the ground really piled up, and that got the campus climate-activist-types all riled up. Next thing I know I got 200 trust fund gays from Brooklyn organizing “campus cigarette clean-ups”, and the cigarette butt littering disappeared within a week. All thanks to a college-funded nicotine bender.”
We thanked Oliver for his time, and he thanked us for our work by offering a few loose, bent-up cigarettes from his vest pocket and a WOC-branded pen with the cap all chewed up.
We caught former WOC Director Scott Lewis for an interview mid-handstand on a box of American Spirits, “Cigarette Day? OH yeah! I’m preppin’ alright!”. It was only then that we noticed the lit cigarette hanging out of his left nostril. “All honesty, I wasn’t super on board with it when Ben first proposed it to me. I told him, well if we’re all gonna be smokin’ I at least wanna get high! But then, he showed me all these vintage National Geographic magazines, and all those dirtbag Yosemite climbers in the ‘70s were absolute chainsmokers and I thought, WOW we gotta get our students more in touch with historic outdoor culture!”
We asked Lewis if he smoked cigarettes when he was younger, to which he responded, “You’ve got all the facts wrong! I’m still young, and I’ve never stopped smokin’!”
Cigarette Day 2023 lighters are available for purchase on the Paresky steps beginning this week, Venmo or cash will be accepted. The Health Center can be contacted at (413) 597-2206 and will be operating with increased hours and staffing through the weekend following Cigarette Day.
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