1 Happy St

Earlier this week, a H.S. football player named Kevin Hart called a press conference in his high school's gym to announce where he had signed his letter of intent to play college football next year. It was a pretty big deal because he was going to be the first kid in his high school's history to ever play Division I football. So it was like a pep rally atmosphere with some of his classmates, some cheerleaders, some faculty, his family, his H.S. football coach, and even some local media folks. In his announcement, he informed everyone that he had signed with the University of California, Berkeley. Loud cheers erupted and everyone was happy.

The only problem? He made it all up. The University of California, Berkeley had never heard of him. He wasn't being recruited by anyone. The whole thing was Kevin's way of pretending that he was good enough to play Division I football.

Hilarious.

And sad.

And hilarious.

Kevin is a genius.

And a moron.

And a genius.

According to this study, college students who play drinking games at parties tend to drink more alcohol than college students who don't play drinking games at parties.

Translation: students who like to do keg stands and play beer pong and quarters tend to drink more alcohol than kids who don't like to do keg stands and play beer pong and quarters. Do college kids still play quarters? Wait, do they still do keg stands? I sure hope so. Keg stands were awesome. I remember one time I did a keg stand for like 20 seconds and then I couldn't hold myself up anymore so then I fell and hit my face on the keg. Or I think that happened. Maybe that wasn't even me. Well it happened to somebody at this party that I went to a long time ago. Or maybe it was a party I had heard about. It probably wasn't even 20 seconds. And they didn't fall. Where was I?

Oh. Another translation: kids who drink the most at the party get more drunk. More drunker. More drunkerreer. Thirsrter.

I think the people who conducted this study were drunk. Drunkerer. I'm drunk.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute performed a study where they asked students from 50 different colleges and universities across the country a series of multiple choice questions relating to U.S. History. According to the results, we don't know beans when it comes to our own history; on average, college seniors got about 30 correct out of 60 questions.

As you can imagine, educators and chairpeople and historians and parents and clergymen and politicians and bus drivers and the like are up in arms about the results, saying things like "we are failing our students" and "we need to focus more on educating our young people in regards to our own history" and "this bus wreaks of puke". At first glance, I couldn't agree more. 30 out of 60? That's horrible. But then I got a look at some of the questions.

Examples:

1. The power of judicial review was established in:
A. The Constitution.
B. Marbury v. Madison.
C. McCulloch v. Maryland.
D. The Bill of Rights.
E. A presidential executive order.

2. The struggle between President Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans was mainly over:
A. United States alliances with European nations.
B. The nature and control of Reconstruction.
C. The purchase of Alaska.
D. Whether to have a tariff.
E. Whether slavery should be allowed in the Federal Territories.

Apparently the folks behind the questions forgot about answer F - who gives a shit?

Maybe the educators and chairpeople and historians and parents and clergymen and politicians and bus drivers should leave these kids alone and let them continue to do important things like drink beer and tear down goalposts after their football team wins a big game. I bet if you asked those same students who won the blue ribbon for best beer at the 1893 World's Fair, more than half would know it was Pabst.

Hey, that's U.S. History, right? And important history indeed.

[Editors note: to take the quiz yourself, click here]