161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do, #115

#115. See how long you can avoid accepting a quartercard on Ho Plaza

I don’t know what it’s like at other colleges, but at Cornell, quartercarding, or handing out quarter sheets of paper to promote a cause or club, is a common occurrence, especially in the warmer months.  However, even more prevalent are the swarms of people trying to avoid getting a quartercard while innocently walking to class.

I think it’s been a few months since I got a quartercard on the plaza, but I did recently have one shoved into my face handed to me on the Thurston Avenue bridge.  Normally, I don’t mind getting them, but I do know some methods to lessen the chances of having to take yet another quartercard advertising a concert by a group nobody’s ever heard of in some hole in the ground café on campus, mostly likely at a weird time like Wednesday afternoon.

Method 1: Stare intently at the ground with your hands shoved in your pockets.  Especially effective if you’re wearing a hat, your hood is pulled way forward, or both.  (My brother says it makes me look like a duck.  No comment.)  This ensures that there’s no way to make eye contact and you may be ignored in favor of less suspecting targets.

Method 2: Follow a large group.  Quartercarders will target the people at the front of the group and/or those who express the most interest.  By walking directly behind a group, it appears that you are part of the group and so have at least heard about the cause or event, even if you haven’t had a quartercard shoved in your hand.

Method 3: Sprint.  Simple mathematics here.  At greater velocities, delta t for a given delta x is smaller.  Therefore, quartercarders have less time to spot you, approach you, tell you what their event is, and hand you the quartercard.  In addition, a greater velocity means that you have a greater momentum, and a larger impulse must be applied to stop you in order for the quartercarder to have enough time to do everything in the preceding sentence.  Hopefully, this impulse will be above the impulse threshold (a function of enthusiasm, desire to promote the event, and desperation) of the quartercarder and you will be left alone.

Method 4: Go ninja.  Method of choice for times when there are no large groups to follow, but there are still a fair number of people walking around.  Sometimes works on the Thurston Avenue bridge.  In this method, you wait until the quartercarder is either occupied with other people or facing the opposite direction.  As soon as this happens, walk behind their back as silently as possible.