By Menachem Wecker
In order to complete the 101-task challenge posted on the myGW portal, students need to maintain a rate of achieving about two items per month spread out over four years.
That is a cinch for tasks like eating a Manouch hotdog (#2), inviting your family to attend Colonials Weekend (#78) or rubbing the hippo’s snout for good luck before a test (#61).
But some tasks are far more challenging, like attending every GW men’s and women’s basketball game for a year (#77), participating in GW’s study abroad program (#7) and getting security clearance (#52).
Still, several GW community members have racked up impressive numbers on their Colonials to-do list.
Chris Rotella, B.A. ’08, executive associate in GW’s Division of Development and Alumni Relations, has completed 84 of the tasks.
“I am a big GW tool,” he admits.
By not wanting to be a Colonial Cabinet member, Mr. Rotella missed out on number 82. He most regrets skipping out on number seven—the study abroad experience. “It would have been incredible to be in Europe for three months,” he says.
Mr. Rotella says the hardest task is number 101, “Graduate in the city of presidents,” because “it kind of encompasses all of the rest into one culminating event.”
According to Deborah Snelgrove, B.A. ’85, associate vice president for GW’s Division of Student and Academic Support Services, the original list of 101 things was conceived by two former GW staff members: Amy Greenwald Foley, M.A. ’93, then associate director of communications for the division, and Bill Baroni, B.A. ’94.
Ms. Greenwald Foley, now senior associate director of admissions at University of Delaware, and Mr. Baroni, a former New Jersey state senator who is now deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, met at the time with student leaders to develop the list under Ms. Snelgrove’s direction.
The list was introduced in a student handbook and planner given to freshmen in 1992, according to Ms. Snelgrove, and was an annual feature of the printed handbook until 1998 when the handbook, planner and list all went electronic on the GWired site.
The list, which was recently updated, contains 101 items, “because 100 was so ordinary,” according to Ms. Snelgrove. “Our students’ experience is extraordinary as exemplified by the list!”
In interviews with students and alumni conducted before the recent updates to the list, members of the GW community discussed what they would change about the list if given the opportunity. Some of their suggestions—like Mr. Rotella’s of giving to the senior class gift campaign—correspond to the changes actually made to the list.
Mr. Rotella also recommended “ride every line of the Metro” and “join a D.C. kickball team.”
Ben Balter, an M.B.A. and J.D. candidate, suggested several other potential additions, including: “start a blog,” “give directions to a tourist,” “learn to cook,” “get quoted in the Hatchet,” “picnic at a concert at Wolf Trap,” “get mentioned in your professor’s blog,” “find your local newspaper in the Newseum’s front page gallery” and “join an acapella group.”
Mr. Balter, B.A. ’09, says he has scored 72.5—he gives himself half a point for eating a Manouch pretzel, because he won’t eat a non-kosher hotdog—“unless someone beat me, in which case I’ll fudge the numbers a bit.”
He says the most fun items on the list include seeing a Nationals game (#14) and an inaugural parade (#71) and watching July 4 fireworks on the Mall (#55).
He is embarrassed as a law student to have never seen the Supreme Court in session (#44). “For some of the bigger cases, you have to camp out the night before,” he says. “It’s worse than black Friday at your local electronics store.”
Natasha Dupee, a junior majoring in women’s studies, scored in the “mid- to upper-70s” on the list.
Ms. Dupee is particularly proud of five of the items she has accomplished: eating her first Manouch hotdog (with friends also trying their first Manouch dog), participating in alternative spring break, interning in D.C. for the summer and attending every GW men’s and women’s basketball game for a year.
Student Association President Jason Lifton has completed 57 of the 101 things, including watching the changing of the guards at Arlington Cemetery (#68), which was part of a class project for a dramatic arts class, and visiting the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial (#16).
Mr. Lifton had no trouble losing his GWorld card and getting a new one, only to find the old one (#30). “Let’s put it this way. I should have bought stock in GWorld my freshman year,” he says. “I invest in a new card on a monthly basis and have accumulated a nice collection of old cards. That said, the picture I took at Colonial Inauguration wasn’t half bad, so I decided never to retake the picture. Same picture, 10 new cards!”
But Mr. Lifton’s greatest accomplishment of the 101 things was surely not only running for Student Association president (#34) but also winning.
Every GW student should have the opportunity to run for office in a Student Association election, he says, and to experience the endorsement hearings, Facebook groups, web pages and “the sheer exhaustion that comes along with a full two weeks of no sleep.”
“The 7 a.m. postering, when we had 20 volunteers get up with us and do a full tackle 50 yard dash from Kogan to the Marvin Center to get the best postering spots, was a ton of fun,” he says.