Partly Cloudy, 64°
After descending into the Caswell basement on an arduous reconnaissance mission last Saturday night, James Riley ’14 reported that the party was, as anticipated, lame.
Riley agreed to trek down the three flights of stairs between his friend’s room and the party on a solo assignment when intelligence about the state of affairs in the basement could not be collected offsite.
“All of our men were elsewhere. We had no one inside the Caswell facilities,” said Cooper Hill ‘14. "We had to get a man on the inside; the whole party was dark. We would have had no way of confirming whether or not the party was worth our time, if not for James’ bravery."
Hill and his associates were upstairs in his dorm room during the operation, receiving live updates via text from Riley as he descended into the basement and investigated the situation.
“We almost lost him, too,” Hill said, shaking his head gravely. “We lost contact for a while when he got stuck in this conversation with a girl from his chemistry class. We thought he was a goner until he alerted us that he’d made it inside and was probing the dance floor.”
Hill added, “He’s a hero. Any other man would’ve surrendered when the guy at the table was looking for a beer pong partner, but James is a hero.”
Hill and the others upstairs in his room all cheered when they resumed communication with James. Then, when James texted Hill that they “are out of Natty Light,” the predetermined code word that they would use if the party was lame and not worth the effort, they told him to get out of there and return to home base.
“We had an extraction mission planned, but James didn’t need it,” Hill said. “And that’s good ‘cause we actually may have been too high to execute it. I don’t know.”
