Invasion of Privacy: Wizard on Orchard

Photo courtesy of Camille Wilding

While it may look vastly different in the daylight, Orchard Street is home to many Geneseo students over the weekend and is where the Wizard roams on their days out.

To add another interview with an icon to the books, this week we spoke with the Orchard Street Wizard. For those of you who have not been out to any fraternity parties yet or have not been on YikYak, the Orchard Street Wizard often makes appearances at frat parties, decked out from head to toe in robes, a hat, and a full-on gray beard with long hair. Occasionally the Wizard will pull out a long pipe to complete the ensemble.

We started out by asking a little bit about themselves and what they were involved with on campus. The Wizard is a psychology major with plans to go into police work, more specifically detective work. As far as other campus involvement, they said they were focusing heavily on coursework at the moment, since it is their last semester here. When asked about what made them choose SUNY Geneseo, the Wizard pondered and then replied that they had heard the academics were good here and loved the campus walk-through. Now approaching the end of their academic career at Geneseo, they are still happy that they chose this school. 

When asking if there was anything they did not like about the school, the Wizard said that was a complicated question to answer, adding that “Some things are frustrating but not necessarily problematic, I have some friends on the Student Association, so I get to hear about a lot of the problems, but there aren’t always solutions.”

We also asked if the Wizard had YikYak and could see any of the posts about themselves, but it turns out that none of the devices the Wizard owns are capable of downloading YikYak. 

Then we started digging into the origins of the Wizard— Why did they take on this persona? Have they done it before? Why specifically a wizard? We learned that this is the first semester the Wizard has made an appearance. They said, “It’s a final semester thing, I figured why not do something a little crazy.” As far as the origins of the costume, the Wizard said they actually had the pipe first, and thought it would be really funny to get a wizard costume to go with it. As for why they started dressing up like a Wizard on Orchard Street, they said it was to make people happy and bring joy to the campus, saying, “This might be really fun for other people, I might as well take it to the frats.”

Then we dug in and started asking about their favorite and least favorite frats. As far as the Wizard is concerned, they consider Men of Action and Change (MAC) their home base, saying, “It’s the safest and friendliest.” The Wizard added, in addition to MAC, “Sig Nu is really great too, they’ve cleaned it up from past years.” They said, “I don’t know about all the frats, I have only been in a couple, but if anyone ever wants me in a frat or would welcome me, they can totally call out and let me in and I’d be more than happy to come.” As far as least favorite frats, Sig Tau wasn’t kind to the Wizard—they were incredibly rude and apparently cussed them out. 

We also wanted to know about the Wizard’s music taste and what they thought the frats should play. They answered, “My music tastes are a little odd so I definitely wouldn’t make suggestions because they wouldn’t fit, but most places are pretty good with their music.” The Wizard also acknowledged how every frat has their weird song moment, something we can all agree with. 

Due to the fact that the Wizard is leaving at the end of the semester, we had to know what would happen to the Orchard Street Wizard; Would it die out? Be passed on? The Wizard said, “Obviously I am out of here at the end of this semester, but people have been asking me if I am going to hand this off to somebody, and I definitely would if somebody showed interest and wanted to keep this going.”

In closing the interview, we asked the Wizard if there was anything else they wanted to say to the readers. The Wizard replied they were “really thankful for this opportunity, because they want to bring awareness to some frats that are dying out that don’t deserve it.” They said that “frats are like a family to people and support them, and it is sad that people could lose that.” With that, we hope that you enjoyed reading about our local wizard, and stay tuned for our next Invasion of Privacy!