Mustache Mayhem!

Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.

There was neither a solemn peal of the Clothier bells nor a beeping alarm to tell Swarthmore’s mustached marauders that their time was up. They merely checked their cell phones and exchanged glances of reluctant acknowledgement. Mustache November had to come to an end on a razor’s edge of midnight. The great shave-off had begun.
“I will miss my moustache,” elegized Cole Armstrong ’10, “like Napoleon missed his Republican Guard when finally bidding them farewell for the last time to depart for St. Helena to be poisoned to death by the treacherous British.”

Armstrong and the other hirsute heroes, including Registrar Martin Warner, sported mustaches of varying efflorescence for the last month as part of Mustache November, a worldwide facial hair exhibition tradition that enjoys particular success among college students.

Yet despite obstacles high and low, in the month of November all mustaches grow in one direction. At the thoughtful beard-stroke of midnight, Swarthmore’s brave and bristled were tamed once more.

“My lip feels naked,” said Warner, “but I will get used to it.”

Brendan Work

The Phoenix

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