Spring Spurs Student Parties Across U.S.

Just as Reading Period was beginning at Harvard, colleges, across the nation were cutting loose in a last minute frenzy of spring partying before the beginning of final exams.

At Dartmouth College the spring equivalent of Winter Carnival. Green Key Weekend, was celebrated with customary abandon Fraternities gathered to match musical ability in an afternoon long melody contest known as the campus hums" and student drivers piloted chariots pulled by companions in a traditional "recreation" of the ancient Greek races.

At Cornell University, an outlandish crew of more than 1850 costumed celebrants competed in the annual Phi Phi 500 a local fraternity's combination of party and charity walk-a-thon. The 1.1 mile course looped through the center of Ithaca starting at and returning to the fraternity's house.

At nearly a down stations along the way as the marchers passed town bars and restaurants participants were required to down a cup or two of beer or soda.

Spring Fling

Brown University students danced, partied and enjoyed a stream of rock bands for three straight days two weeks ago, during their annual Spring Weekend.

A highlight of the annual festival was an attempt by more than 600 students to set the record for the world's largest game of I wister, an event in which players must position randoml, chosen hands and feet on colored dots that span a cloth game board.

While representatives of the Guinness Book of World Records declined to cover the event maintaining that I wister is not an international game organizers declared a new record set anyway.

And further south, where they do things big, more than 12,000 students from the University of Texas and residents of Austin mingled for the 20th annual celebration of Eeyore's birthday Eeyore is the perpetually gloomy donkey that appears in A.A. Milne's "Winnie the Pooh" books.

"You can do whatever you want and it's really nice," university employee Bill Brooks, an eight-foot boa constrictor wrapped around his body, said in a story that appeared in The Daily Texan.

Penn State

The size and enthusiasm of the gathering for "Eeyore's was matched only by students at Pennsylvania State University Despite gray skies and a steady drizzle that turned their fairgrounds into a sea of mud about 12,000 people turned out for the ninth annual "Sy Barash Regatta" celebration on May Day.

The day long festival of music and games was termed by some the largest regularly scheduled party event in the country.

A voluntary no-alcohol policy assisted in keeping the crowd under control, police officials said.

And in a bid for perpetual glory similar to that attempted by the students at Brown, the event included a world-record try. Munching burgers donated by McDonald's which co-sponsored the regatta with a Penn State traternity and sorority. Mark Petruccelli did his best to top the world hamburger eating record.

Unfortunately, his bid to best the record of 20 1/4 burgers eaten in less than hall an hour fell short nine burgers and 15 minutes into the contest when Petruccelli, complained of nausea and said he couldn't go on.

"He was right on pace [to break the record] but his stomach couldn't handle it," said Alan Cohen, foods co-chairman for the event, in the Daily Collegian, the Penn State student newspaper.

There was only one sour note in all this excitement. The great-grandfather of all these celebrations, "Easters" at the University of Maryland, celebrated on Easter weekend, was cancelled this year by Student Affairs Vice-President Ernest Ern. It was the first cancellation of the event in its 92 year long history.

Easters, Ern said, died of its own popularity, as thousands of students from other colleges descended on the school for the weekend it became, literally, too wild Afraid of injuries and damage to university property, he said, college officials were forced to close the event down.