If you’ve never talked to Alesandro Cecere, he’s probably fine with that. “Teenagers would be better dead,” he said when asked his opinion on high school students. “Or with mustaches. I guess I’m what they call an old soul. I kind of want to be Clint Eastwood from ‘Grand Torino;’ ‘God damn kids get off my lawn.’ Am I allowed to say gooks?” On the surface Alesandro Cecere seems like someone who might not be paying attention, but those close to him know he’s very thoughtful; he just prefers to keep those thoughts to himself.

Cecere likes space and cowboys and Nikola Tesla and the 1800s and computers and post apocalyptic fiction, and he doesn’t care who knows. A man born out of his time, Cecere longs for a world of brass, gears, and attention to detail of days long gone. “Where did all the aesthetics go? What happened to all the brass avian-themed toast holders? No one cares anymore.” he said. Cecere likes to turn everyday objects like video game controllers and goggles into “steampunk” creations, which mostly involves painting them brass and gluing old clock parts to them.

With hobbies including cooking, computers, photography, making films, guns, and fabricating objects, Cecere is a far cry from the average BSM senior. He also enjoys spending time with his girlfriend Lauren Kretsch, who he met through the game assassins. “She shot me real dead,” he said, “but it was a Nerf dart of love.”

Cecere, a second generation Italian-American, has visited Italy three times. “I really don’t like Italy,” he said, “It’s a sad broken place. And I am very sick of peppers and sausage at every family gathering and people filling my backpack with pasta as a joke.” His uncommon name has been the source of some confusion at BSM; as a freshman, he was invited to PRO because Ms. Guzman thought he was a foreigner.

Cecere isn’t sure what he wants to do in the future. “I don’t know [what I’m doing next year]. I think I’m going to college.” (He is attending Iowa State.) “I like art, but also guns, so I could be an assassin. They need to be artistic and have guns, right?”