Affirmative
By Alice Statley
Unpopular opinion: yes, make the call. I’m speaking to everyone except those select few who yearn for the drama that comes with the inevitable CAVA call. You, sirs, are kind of the worst. For the rest of you heart-containing humans, please feel free to read on unperturbed, because we’re talking about the call of the ages. It is the only one that can end in miles of medical charges for absolutely no treatment, a dean disciplinary hearing, and a deep-seated, life-long fear of authority and Blue Raspberry Svedka. Most importantly, however, it is the call that is the ultimate sign of a party well done.
But back to the situation at hand: you’ve temporarily halted Nigel’s 21st birthday celebration in your EC suite because Jessica is facedown on the couch, responding to neither the smashing of pots in her face nor repeated announcements that Mr. Brightside is next on the queue. In essence, things aren’t looking too hot. They were going swimmingly before Jessica pulled out the damned toothpaste – it’s always the most innocent stuff that make the best chasers. But she swore she could handle it and you were naïve enough to believe her. Needless to say, before long, her dancing degenerated into something resembling a sensual grind against the suite fern and her incoherent professions of love turned into ugly sobbing that was evoked by either the plot of Forrest Gump or the fact that she’d finished her 2.5 pound bag of candy corn the night before, you couldn’t really catch which it was.
Illustration by Sahra Denner
You’re starting to seriously consider making the call. You’ve assigned Rebecca the task of googling CAVA – the success of which can be illustrated through a comprehensive list of her search history, which progressed from Cabo to Canvas to Canada to Contradiction before arriving at the mac daddy itself. With that completed, the decision is left up to ye, ye who is certainly more sober than Jessica and Rebecca, but certainly still sauced.
The Pros and Cons run through your mind like the multiple times throughout the night Jessica pre-pass out tried to run from you in search of all things nuggets and baseball Bobby from across the courtyard. Pro: Calling could save Jessica’s life – she’s a great friend and has a promising future. Con: Calling could save Jessica’s life – you saw baseball Bobby first.
Wait, is she blue? Alright, joke’s over; bring in the dancing lobsters. Shoot, maybe you are drunk, Rebecca. Call CAVA. Sure, Jessica may be emotionally scarred from being carried off, half-conscious, in a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance only to drive less than a block away (dramatic) to the hospital, but who knows what could have happened if you didn’t call? She told you last week that she was going carb-free and if she’d have somehow found herself at JJ’s…all bets of carb-less-ness would have been off. Or she could have run into Bobby, and no one is more efficient at flirting than she who is minutes away from being CAVA’d.
Jessica will thank you someday. By that time, the two of you will look back on this experience fondly. You’ll get to say, ‘Hey Jess, remember that time you said you weren’t going out and then did and decided to chase with toothpaste until you passed out and got CAVA’d which forever put a strain on our friendship, completely gutted your bank account, and instilled within you a hatred for all boys named Bobby?’ That or you’ll never see her again. Which, honestly, may not be that much of a loss. Anyone who’s getting CAVA’d, chasing with toothpaste, and delusional enough to think they can forgo carbs might be worth letting go. So get yourself some good karma, rescue that fern in the corner of your suite, make your party one for the books: call CAVA today!
Negative
By Nicole Kohut
Drooling on the floor of JJs, a mango slushy in one hand and an obliterated quesadilla resting on his forearm, the kid looks sloshed. Curious first-years start to gather around the scene, one pokes him with a fried mozzarella stick, and some begin to ask if we should call CAVA – the ever elusive, party-killing service that we had only ever heard about, but never scene in action. We know the rumors, but one can only imagine the peril that arises out of a CAVA call. Particularly, no one ever knows what happens to the “caller.” The unqualified team of undergraduates take the incapacitated student for an examination, but is the caller subjected to an interview or, worse, a phone call home? Suddenly, I am offered as tribute to make the dreaded call. I only knew the kid from NSOP. We weren’t even in the same OL group – our paths collided when I accidentally dropped my surf and turf on him and he asked me to pay for his drycleaning. Yet now, for some unforsaken reason, I find myself determining his fate. How am I supposed to judge this young soldier’s incapacitation level? Did RC@C really expect me to listen?
Illustration by Sahra Denner
No, I worked too hard to get here (the Ivy League) to be subjected to such madness. I will not be dragged into this fatal misconduct. Moreover, Stacy is here. I’ve been trying to get with her since the Glow party and calling CAVA will make me look like a buzzkill. With that reasoning, I’ve made up my mind– CAVA will not be called tonight. Yet, the eyes of scared youngins continue to look to me for help, assuming I know the answer. Even the woman aggressively flipping quesadillas seems to be waiting for me to act. Am I, perhaps, their chosen leader? Godly, even? While the position is flattering, I came to Columbia to study financial economics– a CAVA infraction is a potential blemish on my record that I am not willing to take a risk on. Thus, I must employ the critical argumentation skills that gained my acceptance to this bountiful institution in order to convince my lower-ranking peers that CAVA is not an option for tonight’s incident.
I decide to begin my line of reasoning with the only thing I know they’ll all understand at this point in their undergraduate lives – the Iliad. I turn to the crowd: “Was it not Homer, our fearless literary leader, that said ‘Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter?’ Unless you’re a Barnard or SEAS student, you know these words are Homer’s way of indoctrinating the necessity of vigilance, determination, and conviction in his readers. As Columbia students, are we not expected to take the words of Homer– the messages of the exemplary Core Curriculum– and apply it to our real lives? This man here, who nobody even knows the name of because he apparently lives in a Furnald single, is our preliminary test as first-year lions. We must place ourselves in ancient Troy and think to ourselves ‘What would Homer do?’ Well, he certainly wouldn’t call CAVA. No, he would see that this random student has clearly had his first wild night. Does he not deserve to bask in its glory?”
It was at this point that I realized nobody was actually listening to me. The kid on the floor (apparently named Jeremiah) chucked up a combination of jungle juice and popcorn and seemed to be doing fine– he was even in the line for a fresh quesadilla. Due to my valiant efforts, CAVA would not be called tonight, and Jeremiah’s reputation would be spared.
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