by Annie Sullivan
There are campus rumors. Some are rooted in the truth, while others are absurdly fabricated. However, they continue to be passed along from student to student.
So where do these outrageous rumors come from? According to Aaron Samuels, in the popular movie "Mean Girls," “Stupid girls make up rumors because they’re bored with their own lives.”
I’d like to give Chapman students a little more credit than that, so I looked into a couple of these rumors, and here’s what I found.
We all know Chapman’s been expanding in every possible direction. New parking lots, design studios, and massive concrete buildings: It’s hard to ignore Chapman’s aim.
So when someone says, ““I heard Chapman bought Orange High,” it seems logical enough. Chapman’s running out of space, the freshman class gets bigger every year, and the school has published multiple plans to expand: seems legit.
Artist Credit: Bianca Adamo
No. False. Incorrect.
“Chapman is not buying Orange High School and has no interest in doing so,” said Chapman’s director of communications and media relations, Mary Platt.
Platt admitted that while she didn’t know what the source of this persistent and untrue rumor was, she speculated it came from a Chapman historical fact.
During relocation from Los Angeles in 1953, Chapman College (as we were then) bought Orange High School’s original campus. Platt explained in an email, “Memorial, Smith, Roosevelt, Reeves, and Wilkinson Halls, as well as DeMille and a couple other structures, were all part of the original Orange Union High School.”
Platt thinks the source of this rumor could have been students “mishearing and misunderstanding” the real history of Chapman in Orange.
So no, Chapman is not buying Orange High School. We already did that 60 years ago.
Artist Credit: Bianca Adamo
We’ve all seen them. The white, gray, black, and brown balls of fluff hopping around North and South Morlan dormitories.
The Morlan bunnies are notorious on campus.
In fact, their furry fame even extends off campus, to blogs and websites for incoming students. While rating and discussing certain dorms on campus, the Morlan bunnies are almost always included in the pro’s section.
Due to the animal’s picturesque contribution to our campus, the whispers proposing that “Chapman buys bunnies to supply the Morlan population” wouldn’t be the hardest rumor to believe.
Well, you can stop trying, because that rumor is completely and absurdly false.
Director of the Office of Housing and Residence Life, Deborah L. Miller-Calvert, wrote in an email that while the rumor was “cute,” it had absolutely no truth to it.
So no, Chapman doesn’t fund the Morlan population, but you know what they say about bunnies… they probably don’t need any help. Lucky us.
Artist Credit: Bianca Adamo
One of the first things you learn as a freshman, aside from the notorious Morlan bunnies, is Chapman’s definition of the term “rolled.”
Before midnight fountain hopping or even play fair, you’ve experienced or heard of what happens to parties in the quiet community surrounding Chapman’s campus: they get “rolled.”
It’s same process every weekend: the party starts, invited friends and wandering freshmen arrive; party gets rolled by Orange Police Department and Public Safety.
But what you don’t see as a freshman, or even as upperclassmen, is what happens to the party-throwers after everyone migrates to Albertacos. Maybe it’s a warning, or a ticket, or revoking the privilege to study abroad, but whatever the punishment is, it doesn’t stop these parties from happening.
Because in two or three weeks, there’s a party planned at the exact same house.
And didn’t some guy named Einstein say that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? So the rumor saying Chapman changed something about the disciplinary process would make sense. It would be easy to believe that, “instead of probation or taking away the chance to study abroad, Chapman changed their disciplinary process and now they put your name on a public website.”
That might intimidate the students enough to limit these events.
Alas, another rumor.
The Dean of Students staff has “not implemented any new consequences for breach of peace cases at neighborhood houses,” DeAnn Yocum-Gaffney, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Associate Dean of Students, wrote in an email.
Yocum-Gaffney explained that there are some individuals and houses that have multiple incidents and hearings, and these are considered “cumulatively where sanctioning increases with each incident.”
So no, Chapman isn’t creating a public website to get back at the school’s most notorious off campus party houses and inhabitants, but they also aren’t taking these matters lightly.
