{"id":7730,"date":"2025-07-22T21:05:36","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=7730"},"modified":"2025-07-22T20:42:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T01:42:43","slug":"tale-from-a-spit-list-survivor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/tale-from-a-spit-list-survivor\/","title":{"rendered":"Tale from a Spit List survivor"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a morning run along the beach, I jogged back to the dorm, fishing for my lanyard, only to realize the key card to my room was gone.<\/span><\/p>\n

With 30 minutes until class, I retraced my steps \u2014 the sailing center, the playground, the fountain. By the time I\u2019d walked an extra 4,000 steps, I accepted my grave fate: Spit List.<\/span><\/p>\n

The legendary cherub tradition \u2013 publicly posted on a giant poster in the dorm lobby \u2013 shames oversleepers, jaywalkers, key card \u201cmisplacers\u201d and other rule breakers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I confessed the loss to my community and academic associate. Immediately, she scribbled my name on the poster.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like the other 17 Spit Listers that first week, I received a Saturday night text from the CAA\u2019s: meet at 6 a.m. in the dorm lobby with an Associated Press (AP) Stylebook and a tube of toothpaste.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The four CAAs told us to circle up and then selected another cherub (thankfully) to lead a morning stretch. Then, hand in hand with a partner, we embarked on a 10-minute walk as the CAAs snapped photos and tried to hide their smiles. We stopped at a lawn, where the CAAs told us to memorize an AP Stylebook section about essential and nonessential clauses (\u201cthat\u201d and \u201cwhich,\u201d for the uninitiated).<\/span><\/p>\n

After we memorized the 97 words, we individually recited them while balancing on one leg. If we succeeded, we were allowed to squeeze a blob of toothpaste on a CAA\u2019s finger and be released. If we failed, we looped around a bush three times and waited 10 minutes before trying again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although I survived the experience unscathed, I knew I didn\u2019t want to endure it again. So along with always taking a crosswalk and setting five alarms before bed, for every run that followed, I slipped my new key card into my phone case and clutched it tight. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How losing my key card led to the strangest Sunday morning of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":8370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[468],"class_list":["post-7730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":468,"user_id":228,"is_guest":0,"slug":"naomihsu","display_name":"Naomi Hsu","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/234554707e717331b0aa1495b72a50cbb2f32fa9319cb9d5041ebdbb564dc344?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Hsu","first_name":"Naomi","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7730"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9921,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7730\/revisions\/9921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7730"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=7730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}