iScream for iPods

What’s the easiest way to get people to do what you say? Wait, scratch that. What’s the easiest legal way to get people to do what you say? The consensus around Harvard Yard is to offer them iPods.

Take this year’s Freshman A Capella Jam. Crimson Key set up a white screen, and freshmen willing to forego shame and shake their respective groove thangs competed for one of those shiny pieces of electric goodness in a dance-off.

Samir J. Paul ’10, a participant in the booty-shaking bonanza, explains why he was willing to put his money maker on the line for an iPod. “The iPod has a cultural cachet that few other MP3 players can even dream of competing with,” he says. And thus the tiny music player lured him to do something that only two others were willing to do.

Indeed, Crimson Key undertook the competition for two reasons. “We were trying to give the audience some entertainment during intermission,” says W. Hugo Van Vuuren ’07, Crimson Key secretary, “and offer some individuals the opportunity to become famous.” Van Vuuren, stealthily, is also an on-campus Apple representative.

Not everyone, however, appeared to have been entertained, and some were downright annoyed that they were expected to cheer for the contestants. “I didn’t want any of them to win,” groused Mihir Gupta ’10. “What incentive do I have to get a sore throat so that other people can get an iPod?”

Strong words, but maybe this bitterness ties to the slightly manipulative nature of the dance-off. In fact, how do we even know that an iPod was given away?

“I have pictures,” says Van Vuuren. He produced several photographs for FM of Harvard students posing with their new iPods, crushing our conspiracy theory like a cockroach in Lowell House.