Hitting the Champagne Crunch

WHEN I received my invitation to the annual "Champagne Brunch" early last week, I was excited about going. Really, I was Getting together with all my freshmen entrymates had a certain charm to it, a sense of recapturing my youth.

I discussed it with the friends I'm still in contact with from freshman year, and we all were looking forward to seeing the others. This is the first "Senior Event," after all, and I should get used to attending these sorts of things. After all, yesterday's Champagne Brunch is a tradition.

Besides, I'm as sentimental as anyone about these events. Despite what the class marshals/official mouthpieces have to say about having fun and building class unity, these events are about ego. We attend these things to find out how superior we are to the other people in our class. Or, to phrase it differently, we try to find out why the people in our class aren't really in our class.

"What have you been doing, Beth?" "Well, isn't that cute!" I can't wait to see you try to turn that into a job/future/life. I didn't think I would have a problem feeling superior to the people in my old entryway. Why should anything change after three years?

Go up to someone, "Boy, you look great! Did you get a nose job?" Go up to the pre-laws, "I'm sure you can improve on your 41 LSAT if you take Stanley Kaplan. It does wonders for people in your category." Go up to anyone you know, "Hey Carl, how are you? Sorry, Bill, right? Jim?"

DESPITE Mother Nature's seeming disapproval in the form of torrential rain, I refused to be thwarted and took the "Champagne Special" shuttle from Currier. I was surprised to see everyone all dressed up. Suits and ties? Excuse me? Isn't this the Freshman Union, the one with Teddy Roosevelt's antlers (cut right from his head!) and the butter pats of Damocles? Is there a Bar Mitzvah in the private dining room?

I hope someone is impressed with all this sartorial splendor. Maybe it's the staff. I remember the mutual love and respect we shared with them as freshmen.

The women at the Brunch were dressed to their frumpiest. It looked like a page out of the Daughters of the American Revolution fashion guide. "What's Chrtistian Dior offering this year? Plaid skirts and solid blouses." My grandmother, may she rest in peace, would fit right in.

Nothing is constant except change...except at the Union. The lines are still long and still slow. Braying fools still jump ahead of you to be with their friends. People still get in the right line because it's shorter when the left line is much closer to the food. There is still a mad mob around the drinks and the salad bar and breakfast pastries.

And, you still can't find a seat! It is the same impersonal zoo it has always been. Elbows, drinks, faces and now Winthrop ties are coming at you from almost every direction. There is a huge bottleneck by the Cheap Champagne Bar where seniors can prove how senior they are by drinking in the morning while fending off the banal chitchat of leering, over-friendly marshals.

A strange event was occurring before my eyes--some seniors were videotaping the whole affair! Apparently, my classmates did not want to forget how it used to be at the old Union. What better and more natural way to remember the good old days than videotape? "Smile, Sandy! It's for posterity. Remember the time we short-sheeted the proctor?"

Another big problem was the way the tables were set up. It was too crowded to sit with your entryway, so you were forced to find anyone normal looking. Just like being a freshman again.

Typically, people sat with the same ones they eat with all the time. Nice to meet with the usual crowd in the Union on a rainy Sunday, eh?

But look at all the people you see walking around you. There's Ted. Did he and Patti ever settle the paternity suit? Didn't Sarah get kicked out of the Undergraduate Council for nonattendance? Do you think they really wanted her to attend? Is Phil still on disc-pro? He's not smart enough to handle butane.

Is Julie an official honorary member of the D.U.? Oh, you have to have sex with all the members? Well, how many does she have left? How can Joe be in the Pi? Isn't there a minimum drinking requirement? Besides, I thought he was cut from the team. Oh, I hope Mary tells us another spine-tingling tale of action and adventure involving her research on cell division!

IT'S not the gossip that goes on at these things that bothers me. How could I feel superior to people if I don't find out what they're doing? It's the poor manner in which I was forced to go about it, squeezed from corner to corner catching glimpses of the past.

But there was no room for actual interaction. If there were, I'd be complaining about having to talk to people I've tried to avoid for three years.

I suppose it's not the planners fault. From my experience, any event in the Union is doomed to failure. Which the "Reunion at the Union" was. The nominal purpose of Senior Events is for the seniors to get together for their last fling and have a great time before our relatives come in and ruin it at Commencement with their drippy sentimentality, boring reminiscences and insipid advice.

The real reason is to get us together and construct fake memories of the great time we've had here so we'll feel obligated to give Harvard our money. First in installments, then the balance when we kick. Unfortunately, the first event was such a miserable failure, I figure the Alumni/Alumnae Associations owe me about $20 at this point. Make it out to cash, please. It's for a good cause.