I don’t think people at this school lie quite enough. It’s certainly true that we’ve all pulled one over on our professors at some point or another with lines like, "My computer crashed," or, "I’ve been really sick lately," but there’s something to be said for truly bold-faced fallacies.

And when it comes to cold-hearted, varsity-level equivocating, I’m fairly confident in stating that just about any other school in the country could easily grind our smug little "Ivy West" liberal arts grins into the carpet.

What this campus amounts to, for eight months out of the year, is a great big ball of integrity that bounces blithely from place to place without a care or an ulterior motive in the world.

That is, except for the nights on which room draw occurs. For those three evenings, the malevolence between students that would call each other friends at any other time of the year spreads like an epidemic, infecting everyone that enters the general vicinity of the Frank Dining Hall Blue Room.

Unfortunately for me, this phenomenon caught me completely unawares, as this was my first occasion to participate in the yearly event.

Without prior knowledge of the maneuvering required of participants, I approached the evening with little anxiety. Earlier that afternoon I took a few minutes to browse Pomona’s website in search of a room that might prove suitable.

As an incoming senior, I assumed that my options would be virtually unlimited, regardless of the fact that my assigned number (216) was nowhere near the top of the class. I suppose I had heard rumors of the hassle that actually drawing a room could become, but I brushed those nagging doubts aside, attributing them to underclassmen that found themselves somehow "shafted" by the system.

I firmly believed that there was no need to worry. After all, I was going to be a senior, and what could possibly go wrong?

As it turns out, the point of room draw is not so much getting what you want, but ensuring that the people drawing below you get thoroughly screwed. Not in my wildest dreams could I ever have imagined the carnival of corruption that transformed every student present into a bloodthirsty savage prepared to rip out competitors’ hearts at a moment’s notice if the need arose. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an event at which the tide of emotions goes into ebb and flow with so little notice, bringing with it mood swings ranging from rapturous joy to utter anguish and leaving no student unaffected.

I arrived upon this scene, as I stated, with little idea as to what lay in store for me. I had no intention of drawing into one of the larger sets of rooms that were being doled out first, but I had nothing better to do with my time that evening, so I casually strolled down to Frank, thinking that chance might toss a floater my way. Incidentally, this cupcake did land on my plate, but a barrage of curveballs and spitters accompanied it, with the occasional machete thrown in for good measure.

It was interesting to me, on a purely sociological level, how the bonds of friendship could be forged, severed and renewed in the span of approximately fifteen minutes.

Even so, far more entertaining were the looks of disheveled agony on people’s faces as the rooms they coveted were swiped from under their noses by others that only moments earlier had been conspiring to aid the less fortunate.

From a personal standpoint, the evening was fairly successful, but it did not go over without its little mishaps. Prior to arriving, I assumed that I would try to find a single somewhere on north campus, preferably close to my friends.

However, as soon as I crossed the threshold, the frenzy took hold, and I was powerless to resist the machinations of the draw. The hall was almost completely full by the time I arrived, ten minutes early, and the buzz of arrangements and number averaging made me aware that perhaps I had missed the boat on this one.

Maybe my easy way out wasn’t the way to go. Perhaps these people knew something I didn’t. Then, it was too late.

Before I knew it, I had thrown myself headlong into the fray, thrashing wildly for a top spot, a scheming devil on the outside, but internally a tightly wound ball of stress. From that point on, my memory of the evening lacks tangible qualities, but I know for a fact that before I emerged with my Norton-Clark single, I had been stabbed in the back at least three times, and dealt out my own fair share of fatal lacerations.

Now, one might think that this process would sour a person towards the ultra-competitive nature of such high stress situations, but in my opinion, there is no way that everyday life can live up to the adrenaline rush of life in the pit.

In the days following this emotional roller coaster, my life has grown stagnant, and I lack the most basic motivations that propelled my studies and social interactions previously. Thankfully, I have come up with a plan.

It seems to me that the problem with room draw is that it’s altogether too short of a process. Granted, the time spent deliberating over the best options may drag on agonizingly, but when it comes right down to it, there must be a way to sustain the rush.

What I propose is that we move room draw to the beginning of each year, and instead of letting people pick where they live, that the school randomly assigns each student to a room and then designates a week or two at the start of the year as a no-holds-barred free-for-all during which time living quarters could be swapped.

This proposal enhances the anxiety of the process in a couple of ways. Firstly, students could use any means they deem fit to get the room they wanted, which would inevitably result in not only traditional back-stabbings, but also sieges, massive degrees of intimidation and potential for full scale wars.

Secondly, with the entire summer to contemplate the inevitable chaos, we would be prolonging the misery even further.

I realize that this goal is an ambitious one, but I have faith that with a little hard work and the collective loss of the student body’s moral scruples, it’s a goal we can all feasibly accomplish.