The Michigan Daily Takes Advantage of Student's Trust (for a story)

I’ve got to hand it to the Daily. Even in my absence after graduation, it seems to be a fully functioning, and occaisonally interesting paper to read, but that’s probably because the only thing I did there was write sarcastic film reviews making werewolf puns and bitch out Showcase Cinema for not having student ticket rates. Anyways, they just wrapped up an investigation testing student’s trust of their fellow students on campus. The findings are interesing, but I'm thinking that the results of some of these tests might have been different if Lisa Haidostian was a guy.

They conducted several experiments of varying degrees of ridiculousness. First up, they tried to steal people’s laptops when they were in the bathroom.

The first (result) was that, generally speaking, students don’t take the responsibility lightly (when asked to watch another students laptop). Several times our thieves were chased halfway across a floor. Often, people caught the thieves right away and asked for the laptop back.

But here’s the catch, and pattern number two: when our thieves said they were friends of the laptop owner, they were consistently let off the hook.

Schwarz said this was a consequence of people’s tendency to trust those they can identify with.

“In a campus environment, it’s pretty much a default that you trust people who look like you,” he said.

Well I know I always trust anyone who's brown-haired, hazel eyed, and stunningly handsome. Next they tried asking to use a stranger’s bathroom during tailgating:

The guy who I will take to be the one who’s never had a girlfriend shouted after me, “If you shit I’m going to kill you! Only number one!”

I escaped inside and panted in the bathroom for a few seconds. I heard them laughing outside at my expense. I emerged, told them it was for a story I’m writing, and asked if they had trusted my intentions.

“Sure I did,” one guy said. “What’re you gonna steal? A dirty sock?”

Finally, I’m not really sure how they even thought of this one, trying to get a bite of pizza from a stranger. My guess is that it's probably going to get the same result as if you walked up to someone and asked if you could honk their boob. As you might imagine, this didn’t go so well:

Two separate times students offered to buy me a slice, but refused to let me even have even “a tiny nibble” of their slice.Why?

“Because I don’t know who you are,” said the LSA freshman who wouldn’t give me her name and was mindlessly texting as she responded, as if she is often approached by strangers to share in a slice of pizza together. “Because I bought this piece of pizza.”

One girl said “I don’t want your mouth on my food,” and another told me that college students have herpes.

But a few guys didn’t seem to care. Probably hippies:

Finally, on the picnic table outside Backroom, a benevolent soul said, “Go for it.”

I took a bite of a hot slice of cheese. It was delicious. I asked him why he let me try it and if he was creeped out by the situation.

“She doesn’t look like a hobo,” he shrugged to his friend. My confidence swelled.

Haidostian, I salute you. I’m not sure if I would have had the balls to go and eat other people's pizza. I have however stolen about 45 laptops on campus. You hear that Crime Notes? It was me all along!