One Guy Kissed 566 Different People in an Unsurprisingly Germ-Filled College Tradition

by Gena Kaufman

CN Digital Archive
CN Digital Archive

If I made a list of all the guys I kissed (just kissed!!) in college, it would include entries like "Guy in blue shirt at that one party" and "Guy in red shirt at the other party," so trust me when I say I have no judgment about the amount of tongues the average university student swaps.

Still, I couldn't help but be more than a little skeeved out by the New York Times' description of Stanford's tradition "Full Moon on the Quad," an officially sanctioned activity that involves a giant kiss orgy, followed by, naturally, a huge campus-wide bout of the flu (and other illnesses).

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Here are just a few of the article's details that make me never want to pucker up again:

* The director of the health center uses the phrase "participate in the exchange of oral secretions," which isn't his fault for using technical terms but EWWWW.
* The school doles out cups of Listerine, dental dams, and tips for avoiding germs (possibly the only time I've ever heard the advice "Don't floss").
* Some kissers wear "Bingo Boards" with 25 different kinds of kisses they hope to get.
* Stanford's mascot, "The Tree" kisses so many people it's referred to as "Patient Zero."
* This year's "Tree" claimed he kissed 566 different people.
*
It's rumored that a previous (female) "Tree" set a record of more than 1,000 people.

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Whoa.

You crazy Stanford kids. Keep it consensual, thanks for making me feel cool with the amount of making out I did back in my college days, and I hope everyone stayed as mono-free as possible.

Can you imagine kissing 566 people in your life, let alone in one afternoon?

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