For those of you who read the jumbled spam of emails which comprise the campus announcements, you already know that Carleton is offering a bag drive until May 23 where students can donate their extra plastic and paper bags back to Carleton. And for those of you who don’t read their email, now you know. This event is seeing overwhelming success, as Carleton students have been delighted to donate their unused bags. In fact, the Carletonian witnessed a line of students out the door of the CCCE office (don’t ask me where that is. Not because I don’t know, but because it should be obvious), clamoring for the opportunity to give away their bags. Due to this event’s sheer popularity, the CCCE is also hosting an emotional baggage claim, where students can go in and dump their unresolved emotional issues so it can be handed down to someone else. 

The emotional baggage drive will be running on the same dates as the regular baggage drive, which means it’s been going on for a while now. Some students have already donated, and the Carletonian has gained special access to rummage through the donation bin. Some emotional baggage which students have decided to donate include:

• 108 sets of daddy or mommy issues (they were mixed up)
• 17 sets of being the middle child
• 22 sets of being the only child
• 58 sets of height insecurity
• 47 sets of poor communication

And most prominently,

• 300 sets of needing external validation

The emotional baggage bin contains a startling host of issues belonging to Carleton students. Even more surprising was learning that only 327 kids donated. That’s an incredibly high concentration of baggage in such a small selection of students. The Carletonian also used the programming language R to analyze data from the emotional baggage drive. 

Running the poor communication results through an ANOVA test, the Carletonian found that students who donated their emotional baggage are strongly correlated with those reporting they run into their failed situationships on campus and have to go out of their way to not look that person in the eyes lest they acknowledge their existence. 

Other surprising emotional baggage data included the 300 sets of needing external validation, which the Carletonian ran data analysis on as well. For this, Carletonian analysts found a p-value of <.05, therefore rejecting the null hypothesis, supporting the alternative hypothesis that these are the students who MUST maintain a high GPA and complain about getting 93’s on tests.

This emotional baggage drive may be able to serve the smaller community of Carleton, as well as the larger surrounding Northfield community. While Carleton students can unload their issues at this drive, the emotional baggage will be recycled to where it’s truly needed. If you would like to see the impact of the emotional baggage drive, look to the pubescent teens of Northfield High School. They, like all high schoolers, have plenty of room for gaining mental complexes. And who knows, maybe the baggage you donate goes to someone who can use it for good, such as an aspiring artist or comedian! At the very least, it’d be good to give that emotional baggage to someone who doesn’t squander it by rotting on TikTok or “having an off day.”