Darnall Hall, awakened from a long slumber by hordes of stampeding freshmen, once again takes to the twittersphere, but this time with an entire chorus of singers behind it to the Sound of Music.

Joining other tweeting pieces of infrastructure, the Healy Clock Tower offers some encouragement since its clock hands were stolen last year.

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With another year come and gone, many are looking to the future. The days of SAT, AP, and GAAP may be behind us all, but Vox has descended into the bowels of Georgetown-related Facebook pages to see what the incoming class has to offer. Courtesy of prefroshes with a sense of humor is our newest periodic feature: Prefroshes say the darndest things!

Here’s what we’ve learned so far:

The Class of 2015 has a keen fashion sense.

Incoming freshman have a strong sense of Georgetown tradition.

They also seem to have their priorities in order.

In what we can only assume will be can’t-miss television, GUTV plans to film a reality show about freshmen.

“Our reality show will follow five or six incoming freshmen through their first year at Georgetown—from budding relationships, roommate problems, to finding a place for themselves in an entirely new environment.” co-producer Alison Doyle (SFS ’13) wrote in an email.

Doyle will produce the show with Joe Mancino, a Voice contributor.

As of last Wednesday, Doyle told us that 12 incoming freshman shown interest in the show. This week, she and Mancino will hold video interviews to whittle applicants down to the final cast.

“After discussing what we wanted to get out of producing our show together, we realized that a reality show would be a perfect opportunity to learn more about all the aspects of television production and yet would still be manageable as we are both full-time students,” she wrote.

Between Darnall: The Sitcom and this untitled show, which Doyle hopes to air in the Spring, GUTV seems to be saturating the college television market with programs about freshmen. But we can’t blame them—where else can we watch the Amish sabotage elevators?

We’re about a third of the way through the summer. That means BBQs, beach trips, humidity, and, above all else, the rise of pre-frosh networking on Facebook.

You’ve been there. Adding everyone in the ‘Georgetown Class Of…’ group, chatting with kids you actually think will be your friends once you get on campus (and with whom you will end up awkwardly avoiding eye contact), and—of course—the frantic search for a suitable roommate.

CHARMS, that beloved roommate matching service, opened yesterday. As a courtesy to the incoming class, Vox has put together a guide for the future freshmen who wormed their way into our lovely corner of the Internet. We’ve got our tips below, but feel free to provide your own advice (or ask questions) in the comments!

Be honest. Casting a large net may seem like a good idea, but in the long run it’s a much better idea to tell the truth in your survey rather than try to seem like an excessively amiable person. If you don’t want to live with a smoker, don’t be afraid to say it! If you hate country music, say it loud and proud or risk ending up with a roommate who watches CMT exclusively.

Say too much rather than too little. As John Mayer would advise, say what you need to say. Don’t hold something important back because you think it might make finding a roommate harder. For instance, if you like sleeping with the light on, don’t leave that out because you think most people will find it a turn-off. It’s better to find someone who is okay with your quirks rather than create roommate conflict once you’re stuck with each other. Make use of the free response questions to give a broad and accurate portrait of yourself.  Let potential roommates know just what they’re getting themselves into if they choose to room with you.

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Victoria’s Secret is expanding their Pink Collegiate Collection—because really what your lingerie is missing is a college logo!—and they’re doing so democratically. To decide which 25 schools will be added to the collection, they’ve opened it up to the internet, allowing students to vote for their school.

Not even on campus yet and already showing us up as far as school spirit is concerned, the Class of 2013 has taken on the Victoria’s Secret challenge with gusto. Back on July 7th when a the contest was first posted about on the Class of 2013 Facebook group, Georgetown was coming in a lowly 170th in the contest. But after some concerted effort from the pre-frosh, we’ve shot up to 53rd.

Just how devoted to the cause are they? According to the discussion about the contest on the Georgetown 2013 Facebook group, besides just voting daily, some have even been deleting their cookies and using multiple computers in their attempt to stuff the virtual ballot box. Such commitment!

You can join them on their quest to get the Georgetown logo plastered on overpriced sleepwear by voting here.

Does she rock her style or what?

Yesterday afternoon, students on five different dorm floors emerged from their rooms to find that somebody had placed baskets of Garnier Fructis products in front of every door and set up bountiful swag displays in their bathrooms. It caused a real stir. When news got around that there was free stuff in the New South boys’ bathroom, for example, stampeding ensued. (The life of a freshman is nasty, brutish, and short.)

Reports are that Harbin got gypped. Lucky for Harbinites, though, the Garnier Fructis crew is throwing a veritable block party on their patio as we speak. It’s part of their “Sing in the Shower” campaign. According to tour manager Dan Humphrey, GF will visit 12 campuses and one karaoke fiend will win $500 and a Garnier gift basket. You can win, he said, if you “rock your style,” which I guess meant they’re looking for stage personality, not vocal talent.

Freshmen ears will be ringing and the Harbin Patio will be up to 5x smoother, 5x stronger, and shinier for weeks.

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The thieving nine!

Housing teases again. This time, they accidentally amped up the selection numbers of nine students hoping to live in Georgetown suites and apartments. The students were freshmen in the SNHS, a two-year nursing program, and their enrollment in this program caused Housing to rank them as if they were in the class of 2010.

Upon discovering the error, Housing emailed (full text after the jump) everyone in the class of 2012 vying for an apartment to tell them that they’d compensated by docking the selection numbers of the groups the SNHS belonged to. They’re also expanding the ‘housing market’ by making “additional apartments/suites available.” Where did they get those?

Aside from procuring extra housing as if by magic, not all students are enamored of the adjusted rankings. Jacqueline Wright (COL `12), who is in a group with an SNHS student, saw her number adjusted from 18 to 78.

“We were reported. We saw the email someone sent to Housing reporting that [an SNHS student] was in our group, but I’m not sure if the people who weren’t directly reported were moved back,” Wright said.

We’re not sure either, so we’ll let you know when we hear back from Housing. That might take a while, given that they appear to Wright to be overwhelmed.

“I guess they were swamped with emails,”  she said. “Housing was great through all of this. They were very reasonable, I guess a lot of people were harassing the office.”

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The Washington Post is good at a lot of things: Pulitzer Prize-winning Joshua Bell articles, investigative series on the kind of people who shoot their friends in the face, and reliable coverage of one of the worst teams in all of Major League Baseball. Notably absent from the list: telling freshmen the ways of the world.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the Post from running a feature over the weekend called “The Freshman 15: What Every First-Year College Student Needs to Know About Washington.” (Nor did the fact that this is already well-tred ground.) The article puts on full display all the worst qualities of the Post. The advice is at times preachy, inaccurate, and irrelevant. What’s more, they largely repeat what your 50 year-old parents told you on move-in weekend before you managed to escape them.

The worst offenders:

5. Forget the fake ID. The District is where fake IDs go to die. Give it up, McLovin. That expired Hawaii license might have gotten you 30s of Milwaukee’s Best at your local beer shack, but the bouncers in this town have you pegged: You stammer, you sweat and you don’t even know your own fake Zip code. Don’t believe us? Head to the 9:30 club. Test your luck, and let us know how that works out.

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Hey, class of 2012. If you’re hungry for any information you can get about Georgetown, this is your blog.

Vox Populi is the next evolutionary stage of Georgetown’s weekly paper, the Voice. We’ll be having a big freshman week of posts with more detailed advice (alcohol, sex) during orientation. Until then, though, this post should save you some time over the summer and some hassles during your first semester.

Ask any other questions you have in the comments and we’ll help you out. Also, keep checking the blog this summer for more posts about Georgetown and DC.

Q: Do I have to read Before the Frost and write the response paper?

A: No. If that’s your thing, go for it, but nothing bad will happen to you if you don’t. My orientation adviser said that people who don’t do the papers get bad housing lottery numbers for sophomore housing, but the idea that Housing could coordinate that with New Student Orientation is prima facie ridiculous.

This brings up a useful thing to know about NSO and Georgetown life in general: unless alcohol, drugs, criminal activity, or something truly outrageous is involved, Georgetown doesn’t have many ways to punish you for not doing what it wants. This means that you can skip book stuff, convocation, or any other NSO event with impunity.

After the jump, 10 more, plus a bonus.

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How did The Independent, which actually trumpets its objectivity in its name, become the blindest Georgetown booster this side of GAAP weekend? I don’t know how the eventual popular history book about Georgetown newspapers will answer that question, but I can predict that book’s Appendix A: An Insider’s Guide to Life at Georgetown.

Writer Jenna Weiner spends most of the piece straining to remember her last campus tour, then typing it. Presented without comment, the four parts of the article most likely to be included in Blue & Gray:

• Over 300 words on how to use Rate My Professor
• “It is your four years, it is your Georgetown. Make it unforgettable.”
• Jenna advises using the laundry room if you’re worried about laundry.
• “You will come to love the dining hall”

There’s no mention of actually useful things to know about, like outrageous GOCard replacement fees, the worst stir fry cook, or Georgetown Day’s open container amnesty.

To Jenna’s credit, she never uses “Joe and Jane Hoya”, and The Independent’s guide to protesting is good. Still, freshmen and those who want them can expect better new student information soon from this very blog.