In my Foundation year, I witnessed the cleverness and bravery of other students, who enacted challenging performance pieces in the hallways during lunch hour.

In one striking protest piece, a young naked woman rolled around on a tarp covered in inches of bright brown mud. I cannot remember what her piece could have been protesting or been in aid of, but she was quite committed to her performance. It was brave to say the least.

A Scottish student named Andrew did a memorable political parody, aimed at taking the piss out of the American political scene and consumer culture. He was dressed up as a version of Mickey Mouse, with a collection of cardboard cut-out limbs attached, resembling a cartoony puppet version of the famous mouse. In character, he spoke to the little hallway audience that had formed, asking them to love him. Next to him was a cardboard cut-out of a television with an image of Ronald Reagan with a wide open mouth on the screen. It was a great moment when the song “Happy Organ” started playing, and a hidden air popper behind the TV Reagan face made popcorn start spewing out of his mouth. To me, it was a pitch-perfect comment on immediate gratification and two-dimensional pop-political culture, using cheap cardboard construction and fun cartoon imagery.