The Life of the Party

Driven by success, competition, and a desire to conquer the world, Harvard undergraduates tend to leave their social lives in the dustbin. What often emerges is a stilted, stifled, or unfulfilling campus social scene.

What can be done to ameliorate weekend life within "the ivory tower"? Many students have come up with interesting and creative possibilities to spice up the standard, routine weekend party scene of keggers and cocktail parties.

Brenna S. Haysom '00 and her first-year roommates hosted a Communist-themed party in Grays West two years ago.

"We were sort of reminiscent of the days of the high Cold War," Haysom says.

Guests came through the doors to find graffiti-decorated walls and "industrial squalor." One student came as Chairman Mao Zedong with a "Little Red Book" and another with a hammer-and-sickle head ornament, though most of the more than 100 partygoers came as "Russian Euro-trash" youth, Haysom recalls.

Drinks served included vodka and Molotov cocktails. Haysom explains that in her experience all first-years were "sort of desperate" for these types of parties.

"People are so psyched to have alcohol," Haysom says. "It was a really good party."

Tanzid Shams '99 of Adams House hosted an island party the first weekend of this month, in keeping with the "spring break spirit" of exotic ambience and tropical drinks. The event attracted more than 150 party-goers.

Guests wore hula skirts, sipped pina coladas, margaritas and Kahlua, and danced to Jimmy Buffet, Bob Marley and merengue tunes. One male student wore a bikini top and thong, Shams says.

"It was more fun to make an effort to do a different party" than to just "get trashed," Shams says.

Some students go all out in their zeal to host a good party. Soman S. Chainani '01 says he and many others worked for two weeks in preparation for a Studio 54 party he hosted in Quincy House on Halloween.

Chainani, who is a Crimson executive, says a total of $500 was spent on decorations for the 100-invitee event. Glow-in-the-dark stars filled one room, a disco ball was the centerpiece of the "disco room," and the love room featured a rose-covered bed and a wall covered in murals.

Chainani also helped to throw a Mardi Gras party in March, complete with a "pre-invitation" two months prior to the event, followed by another two weeks before the get-together.

For this party, a "VIP room" was created for those who paid a $15 cover charge, Chainani says.

The Lowell House resident says the affair was different from a typical Harvard party of talking and "schmoozing."

"It was almost like turning a room into a club for a night," he says.

Several parties hosted in the Quad recently took on a wilder tone. From the debauchery of the Swan White cast party last semester to a lingerie party in Cabot House, some Quadlings experience parties of a different sort.

A Christmas-season party started by Sarah D. Pershouse '99 and friends has also become an annual event. In 1996, they hosted a seasonal party with a "touchable fabrics" theme in Adams House.

"It was a fun idea," Pershouse says. "I think people got into the novelty of it."

People wore such tactile fabrics as leather, vinyl, velvet and silk. Pershouse says an important feature of the event was the "suggestive invitation" that people could send to "their crushes."

In its two successive years, other Adams suites have carried on this tradition, Pershouse says.

Finally, there is always the possibility of getting creative with parties during the week--namely, study breaks.

Jesse S. Downs '00 and Alexandra C. Budabin '00 hosted a Halloween study break in their Canaday Hall room during their first-year. In preparation for the event, they painted gravestones on the ceiling and walls with Tide detergent, which glows in black lights. Each gravestone was marked by personalized anecdotes to represent each person in the entryway, says Downs.

"It was fantastic," Budabin says.

She says one cross-country runner's gravestone read that he ran himself to death, while a computer science student's tombstone read that he had "Quaked" himself to death.